~
took and tucked her in my pocket



a rare Monday holiday, and whomever, undoubtedly
an impractical man-someone, (always our fault),
decided to dampen the lawn and the entire countryside with a steady, not drizzle and not rain, something in between, and a dolloping, artisanal, organic, grey creme fraiche fog that
permits hinted glimpses of sea and land, home from away

a perfect day to finish that overdue library book,
and the deletion of unanswered email notices of your ever increasing criminal status,
both a delicioso rainy day, deep dish pizza pleasuring

or
go for a "walk and talk" in the rain with oneself,
properly attired, naturally, in a yellow slicker and silly hat,
(a perfect car target)
observing how the bay gets refilled, and the elm and the oak
drink themselves tipsy on an all-day-grey goose ******,
all the while looking for side-of-road weedy, wordy poems
that will look nice in a vase day or on a colorful plate from
Saint Paul de Vence


more a "walk and compose" insists the brain,
denying the legs and feet the full advanced three credits,
for providing nothing more than cerebral transportation,
poor brain, inferiority complexion, thinking the female does all the truly heavy duty thinking stuff and of her,
nobody ever thinks or kisses!

so I took and tucked her in my pocket,
(your brain's gender contrarian to one's lower physical gifts),
and poem-picking, away we went, to wet sand beaches
looking for shells, bones, forgot plastic buckets and shovels,
i.e. articles of inspiration incorporation composting composition

just me and she for the other 'her' chose to curl,
herself upon her spot under the always shedding blanket,
watching Richard or Henry or one of the Mary's plotting,
on what we agree must be a perfectly British style
spy's rainy day, or an Agatha ****** mystery
or a visit to the Towers

a little pause between showers, the seeding clouds,
catching a breath, allows the birds to exchange trees
in what appears to man as suicide by diving musical chairs,
while the seagulls oink, "perhaps a cucumber fish sandwich with a nice hot cuppa?"

alas, alas, only flowers that must perforce remain unpicked,
here and there a solitary dorming daisy uprising,
from cracked concrete protruding, but nary a poem of somber consequence found

so to home and hearth and some telly,
me and she, where upon arrival
took and untucked her from my pocket,
my empty poem pocketed persona somewhat mocked
by she who regales splendiferously on her couch throne

our composure discomposed and discombobulated and wet,
instead wrote this trip report and submitted it to the teach
as a homework assignment

5/29/17 8:00am precisely,
upon the where shelter isle

~~
The Trial of His Worthiness 2017

for betterdays, explorer of my complaints to the heavens,
and Patty, who asks,
who writes like this...answers from an old man



~~~
the 2017 baptism yesterday, by calendar dictate,
to my park, nature's commune, the poet wills himself to be
forcibly removed from city, greeted in solemn robes of blue/green,
by the triumvirate of bay, animals and flora & trees interlocking,
who stand in judgement of the humans interloping off-islanders
summer internees

to the double entendre dock removed,
so the bay, the Chief Justice, now a bit hard of hearing,
from the thunder and lighting of cymbal and drum crackling of the winter waves clashing, can hear my deposition clearer

the chief prosecutor, the tallest tree, wraps her branches,
around my legs, my feet, my heart, my head, not to restrain,
but to listen to my internals to adjudge the electrocardiogram
veracity of my words, a natural lie detector machine

the animals requested and sequestered to jury service,
large and small, from forest, the beneath-the-deck rabbits,
all learned in the human language, after 5 centuries of
less than social *******

put to me queries only I could answer

why have you returned?

humanity wearing me so, come to nature that knows only natural laws where existence is primary, good and evil are undefined and premeditation of ****** for no purpose of one's own kind is rare

will you write of us as in years as past?

will write of the commingling taffy of your
salt waters and my salt tears,
taking of your oxygen gifts, returning my dioxides,
both of us sharing the munificence of a warm sun goddess,
will plant my irises and kiss your cherry blossom leaves,
will step aside, over the ant mounds, harming nothing living,
for rightful life is not accorded by precedence or size
or your chosen version of a holy book

will you play for us your human music?

contrapuntal canons, adagios of Barber, Adele & Dudamel,
"a song for you"by the master Charles, some by the
poet Cohen, and even of a Rocky Raccoon, and for our kids,
a tale of a Yellow Submarine and the Dr.'s Mississippi Mud,
dash of Joni's pure voice, Eva Cassidy's unreal, none better,
rock to Elvis, Beethoven, Mozart and the Zombies,
**** deer demand Pavarotti (who knew)
all but  a chocolate sauce for a sundae of your own air strings,
waves baying, rabbits madly dashing, and birds texting,
the bellows of trombone honking of the
s-hit and run Canadian geese,
multi colored seagull's violin-like protestation squeaks of
'feed me human,
my survival share of the catch'

the tree limbs released, to now stroke my skin, pat my head,
the ants perform an arabesque, the gossipy fish come to the surface as
his Honor, Justice Bay, pronounces my sentencing term:

come,
stay with us warmed and welcomed,
shaded in our attentive embrace human
and of us
be a witness deposed, testified,
of our true nature

go,
to your unattended, impatiently waiting, Adrionack throne, go,
(once of us, a living tree departed)
observe and record, without distortion and human bias,
as you have so oft in years past,
tho mere eye-blinks to us,
life and death and preservation can coexist in a harmony

perhaps your infant species may learn from nature & beasts,
that bounty well fair shared is what humans call
the worthiness of living
~~~~
5/28/17 11:09

~

old stars: the roar of no more

pop up phrase precisely previewing the status quo,
logic argues that a crisp immolation poetic appropriate,
no second chance from cosmic to earth dust risk reversal,
no sadness attaches -
the circle line day trip coming to an end

old stars are not cemetery artifacts,
no blaze of glory, no blade of heroic story, no blare of horns,
a last twinkle, a final tinkling and the soundless
roar of no more,
the star records, the citys deeds, the video feeds,
updated, amended, erased,
old star exits the stage, its light shedding nights, eclipsed,
the poet, the writer, the playwright debate the stars obit,
collude and write
a roar no more


*5/23/17 7:23am

This poem is dedicated to Steve Yocum,
author, poet, and soldier
farmer, father, grandfather,
man exemplar,
whom I honor
and honors me,
with the noblest title in all humankind,
friend.

But above all,
I honor him most,
as a tireless, truthful, harpooner
of the examined and the unexamined life

~~~

"Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into
crinkly eye-lined smilers."

~~~

these mine words writ many years past,
dusted off phrasings,
on dusty shelf long lain,
mined from notes,
decades steadily collected by steadily diminishing ears and eyes,
gathered most from self-taught lectures
and self-deceiving dances,
garbed and wearily grabbed
by the addict-strong
 observational need,
persistent and perpetual,
to pay off fresh debits,
renewables owed
to the lovely,
to the loopy,
inhabitants who excite and inspire
my so far, rebirthing, youthful,
yearling heart
who provide the special crazy that
justifies existence

just men,
connected by a bond of sonship,
kinship crowning kingship,
blood types as different as an
A is to B

both shall weep in one blood,
I, as I do now,
while midst the nascent commencement of this sonnet,
He, at its commencement,
for a good friendship has no
beginning or end,
but is a circular track,
a loop,
familial by repeated runnings,
yet never, coursed in the exact
same manner or speed

this thought,
this knowledge,
bring a smile to this crinkly eyed composer,
that the metaphysical
will always surpass the binding physics of mortal physical,

that two man,
who have
never met,
race side by side,
not in competition,
but in the mutuality of composition,
each a candle holder,
both writers,
observing the dark illusions,
re-making each into a carrier,
a shedder of light,
each a debt giver and a
debt holder to each other,
hosts to all the loopy,
comfort caressers,
to each other
and to all
who too,
are light-bathed by being in possession
of the title
*friend

Of Baseball, Poetry and the Human Condition




~~

From  “The Art of Fielding.”* by Chad Harbach

"You loved it,” he writes of the game (baseball), “because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about the Human Condition.

The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not."

~~
and thus, the circling noose grows ever small,
binding the obvious and unblinding the oblivious

more than the mere, poetry in baseball, for both forms of art,
knowledge intuited from watching the catcher's body weave
this way and that, a dancer en pointe, arms raised in worship,
addressing the heavens with a body's broad brush strokes,
all to catch with concentrated skill, a lazy, towering popup,
climaxing oft with an exclamation point -
a perilous desperation leap
into the dugout encampment of the inimical opposition

yeah, yeah, sure, sure,
you knew that,

tho daring to verbalize same,
before the age of thirty,
presumed maturity,
was not an act of the sane of heart,
or the sound of mind with body melded

what you dared not admit was that the conditional principle,
was primal and not tangential, though perhaps,
some itinerant fathers foolishly mumbled incoherently
of life's linkages and motifs parallel

of
that desperate beauty, the ferric magnetic irony,
that our full access pass to envisioning the finery,
imaging the stuff of our own daily creation genesis,
whether concocting undisciplined disassembled parts,
called words,
into a singular line, a stanza that froze your lungs from
the boredom of the regularity of heaving and breathing,

was in no way different
than the curvature of the boy's arm
in desperation outstretched, seeking spectacular safety for
a well hit ball of cork into a worn leather mitten and thus
confirming his humanity to the watching tribal membership

and these momentary moments of momentousness,
will live forever until we die, judged of equal stature,
a soldiers stripes, ribbons of his theaters of service,
medals of the honor and the errors of his own
truthful, youthful and crucial
human condition