as promised, a tip for and to nolly



•<>•

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace

•<>•

it is as if I've been stripped bare and their is no air or
barrel handy,
bankrupted by exposure of my less-than-clean ***** secret,
scrapped from under my tongue, my genuine creativity,
it is no different than yours or hers or anybody else, but

"I need to believe," he screeches, "say it ain't so!"

time again to tally up the wins and losses,
check the standings, the numerical columns,
nope, wasn't selected to be MVP or even loved by the
algorithmic ridiculous secret sauce
"poem of the day" blah blah blah

bottom line: "You’re Pretty Normal"

comfort or consternation, exhalations of relief,
or just another nail in the shutting of
your depression coffin calculation

this no longer unspoken arrogance undressed
brings me to a quiet place,
where you are welcome to sit beside,
this puzzle together, nuzzled,
perhaps more soluble

they don't make Advil for the mind,
so read the good ones,
and be reminded of this

your published spoken courageous poetry need satisfy
only you, and no one more

in there lies the rub, the vive la difference, we identically different,
no longer a secret,
every poem is the difference you make

August 2017
in the sunroom,
Shelter Island
<•>

BONUS POEM!!!

Nolly's Haiku #17/#70

with good knowing that
distress and forethought,
are its mother and father
that this poetic output but a derivative
of your unique self,
see,
maybe, you be
maybe
just wise enough

to curse the birth of poem at age seventeen

but just wait Nolly,
till you are seven tens, and poetry's folly,
make you even more practiced in cursing,
still asking, why
and getting the sendoff, kiss off,
of the one true answer,
nobody knows
so scribble a life time when you start at 17
and when the ripe and wizened answers in your old age
have yet to arrive

then you can call yourself an accursed
wizened but wise'ed old poet