parse and praise the phrase,
checkerboard fraction,
appréhendé immédiatement,
a poem title!
put aside to marinate,
stamped "will not expire,"
doing the research legwork,
**** it is a real thing!

toujours,
where the best words and titles come from,
if one listens well
romantic notions swell the chest,
all the love affairs over so many decades,
all checkerboard games
with Kings a-crowning and Queens a-moaning,
poet, no way, never planned ahead,
always lost by a fractious split,
more than a fractional loss,
losing
most triumphantly!

each lover took and left a fraction behind,
a numerator, a denominator, never a whole number,
for then there would be no poetry need

you want,
have need for
une idée fixe
whom I should be, but i could be a
multiple choice answer
a three scoop ice cream treat,
or perhaps, a mix of forty favorered flavors
a new one,
chaque coup,
why not?

our first disagreement
both of us wish to nominate the other to be the nominator

the denominator is a definition of what is the whole
because i am gracious,
foolish and less than whole
already
I concede cause I am in already in retreat,
conceding comes supernaturally nowadays,
so move me forward on the checkerboard
and triple jump me, and any way
I am pas de nom
we close today with an American
yay...

Writing Lessons for a Better Life
Nov 29, 2016 by Morgan Housel
Writing is one of those things you’ll need to be decent at no matter what business you’re in. It’s also one of the hardest things to get decent at, since it’s 90% art, 10% illogical grammar rules. Novelist William Maughan said there are three rules to good writing. “Unfortunately no one knows what they are.”

But here are a few I’ve found helpful.

1. Make your point and get out of people’s way

Readers have no tolerance for rambling. Lose their attention for two seconds and they’re gone, clicked away to another page.

The best writers tend to use the fewest words possible. That doesn’t mean their writing is short, but every sentence is critical, every word necessary. Elmore Leonard, the novelist, summed this up when he advised writers to “leave out the parts readers tend to skip.”

It took me a while to realize that a reader who doesn’t finish what you wrote isn’t disrespecting your work. It’s a sign that you, the author, disrespected their time. When writing, I like to think of a reader over my shoulder constantly saying:

What’s your point?

Just tell me that point.

Then leave me alone.

Part of the reason this is hard is due to how writing is taught in school. Most writing assignments, from elementary to grad school, come with a minimum length requirement. Write about your summer vacation in at least 10 pages. This is done to maintain a minimum level of effort, but it has a bad side effect: It teaches people to fill the page with fluff. We are masters of run-on sentences and unnecessary details because we’ve relied on them since second grade to meet our length quotas.

We’d all be better writers if the standards flipped, and teachers demanded length maximums. Write about all the major Civil War battles in no more than two pages. That’ll force you to make your point and get out of people’s way.

2. Connect one field to others

The key to persuasion is teaching people something new through the lens of something they already understand. This is critical in writing. Readers want to learn something new, and they learn best when they can relate a new subject to something they’re familiar with.

Finance is boring to most, but it’s a close cousin of psychology, sociology, history, and organizational behavior, which many people enjoy. Write about investing in a way that is indistinguishable from a finance textbook and you will capture few people’s attention. Write about it through the lens of a psychology case study or historical narrative, and you’ll broaden your reach. “Pop-psychology” and “pop-history” are derogatory terms. But most “pop” topics are actually just academic topics penned by better writers. Michael Lewis has sold more finance books than George Soros for a reason.

This goes beyond explaining things in ways people enjoy and understand. Connecting lessons from one field to another is also one of the best forms of thinking, because the real world isn’t segregated by academic departments. Most fields share at least some lessons and laws between them. Adaptation is as real in economics as it is biology. Room for error is as important in investing as it is engineering. Explaining one topic through the lens of another not only makes it easier for readers to grasp; it’s a helpful way of understanding things in general.

3. Sleep on everything before hitting the send button

I’m a fan of reading more books and fewer articles.

The reason books can be more insightful than articles isn’t because they’re longer. It’s because they took the author more time to think something through.

An article that takes you a few hours to think of, research, write and publish is subject to whatever mood you’re in during those few hours. Maybe it’s cynical, or pessimistic. Or analytical, or fatalistic. Whatever it is, it might not reflect the calmer, thought-out view of something that took you days, weeks, or months to think about.

I’m shocked at how much I want to change an article after I’ve slept on it for a night, and still want to change it days after it’s published. It makes me realize that if I stewed on the topic for a little longer I’d start thinking about it in different ways. I’d remember better examples, or a better way to phrase a sentence. I’d realize the original argument I made was flawed. Since one sharp example or clever phrase can transform a piece of writing, something you spend twice as long on might not be twice as good as before. It could be ten times better, or more. “The first draft of anything is ****,” said Ernest Hemingway.

A lot of what we write isn’t time-sensitive. You could sleep on it for a day or two or more. And most of the time, you’ll be glad you did.

Also, don’t read the comment section.

even tho the fire was never really lit truly human,
their tousled hair and sad eyed lowland blues owning the fullness of natural emptiness ain’t no crime, like a double negative,
to which no one no cares no objects when spoken

those bad boysenberries radiate a flirty tarty aure, venus fly traps
for those needy to do a saving, the sweets of the the three poems
memorized for wooing, oft another’s undoing, the top button
releasing a burning bush of chest heat
being misleading the  reddening cheeks

was a bad boy once of ill repute, daddies and mommies warning
their innocents of my word of mouth reputation, making me 100%
irresistible, so all forgot when climbing into my two-seater to go
moon gazing swooning,  learning the moves practiced in nightime

bad boys still need saving sooner but usually later, cause
moon gazing is still a thrill for his new audience of grand children,
proof that some of them boys are hiding well enough stuff
beneath their veneer

be the miner of a thousand years, teach these child boys well,
crack them open, let the empty escape and light rays spill in
**** if some of those bad boys grow up
now, just to be  bad poets laughing
at the foolishness of the early days of
discontented shortsightedness incontinence of a soul fumbling

presumably presumptive
as you got zero clue  of
what stuff God made me,
where I lay me down in
the cool of moonbeam light,
unsure if another sunrise
will heat my body to awakening,
surrendered to the unknowing
knowingly, for I am so sure of
so little, that I query with every
torrential rain, why did I deserve
this un-expectorated baptism for
which and why, what I got, no clue

piety poet of the way spends his every
waking glance thinking stinking, why?
All the angels look away, forbidden
to barest hint minimalist to protect
and provide this rank random single specimen specific of living kind, his
purpose for which creation came his way?
so I’ll save you instead and the trouble of thinking for the correct answer to the question posed,
hell sure, you my confidante of this
confidence man,
a lousy truth teller,
and an even worse liar

write, God?

so it is.

the things you love, you worship,
quiet-like burn you,
returning your favor
with fever.

was innocent, naive.

didn't know the sun could
blister hearts,
you babe,
were my sun,
centric universed.

your hurt,
gift packaged,
disguised as warmth,
went
way way past dumbfounded
surficial flesh.

doc pronounces.

time will heal you,
begging for magic pills
shamelessly.

surgery, I need surgery,
blood transfusion,
excise this poison,
**** it out.

nope, dope,
use your pretty words,
like aloe,
to salve and soothe,
stay away from the
sun of love.

from each poisoning,
traces accumulates,
blisters burst,
love becomes
untreatable, untenable

the danger is not realizing
that in eight minutes,
she, sun goddess,
can travel 93 million light year miles,
leaving you gasping,
eight plodding human years later.

a genuine photograph taken by a relation,
of Wonder Woman commandeering a
Manhattan avenue by aft. daylight,
leading children of the neighborhood and
their guardian angels, the NYPD, in a
rousing calisthenics warmup routine,
for it’s the day of witches, goblins, masquerading,
and pre-internet, nice, sweet trolls no older
than six years of age, Wonder Woman too, the rigors of an
evening of search and recovery, collecting the
well gotten treasure *****, found by early dusk’s
s l o w l y disappearing light, amidst stunned,
aimless wandering adults
and miscellaneous grownups,
All
wonting & wondering:

*is innocence still a thing?

is in the spaces between the words where the unspoken
can make imagination leap oceans in a single bound

let us be a tad explanatory,  
the accuracy of hi)s(tory,
starts with the evolution
of his revolutions,
his tree rings are
2.481481 multiple
of some of you
and this vantage point
just is,
neither dis or ad

my window fire escape is in NYC,
mon arrondissement est Le UES,
my-e-scapes, my e-names,
multiplying and manifold,
all revealed and revered,
even the state sanctioned one,
the nomination law-approved,
all are in the consciousness and the conscience
flowing in his thousands of writings,
all delivered
by the ancient viaduct roman
in the cerebrum of him
by the whim,
by the command of muses,
by their voices becoming,
now residents in his head

those tasking demanding, never satisfied,
poetry gods/goddesses remade the human,
plucked him to be a science project,
began by teaching him observation,
the meaning of colors
in comprehending feelings
by employing the senses five,
working as a team coordinated,
a team of superheroes
(POW! BAM! SPLAT!)
armed with the powers of
kindness, modesty and a
love for the sensuous,
that speaks volumes sensual
with no words, and the sound
on low
and together then, extract
the elements and plaster all into story
with the truth and fantasy interspersed

all his accumulated lovers,
future current and past,
look over his shoulders
as poet composes
suggesting constructs and textual emendations,
this's and that's, and don't forgets,
and some,
what does it matters...to this unusual text

fear nothing, except restraint, make knowing distance,
a precarious safety net, at best, no, not your best friend,
safety comes from the roots of who you are,
and so simple, there they are, written out for you,
in a thousand plus easy to follow steps

it is not distance that's the issue
reminds me, Herr Professor Albert,
(who takes the fall colors thru his eyes)
but time, yours, his, the chiefest enemy,
unless you can bend its curve
in shared poetry intelligible and cloudy
<•>
4:14am

the instant, the instance, is that your body?

the clear cleansing storefront windows
ask for clarification.

is that your body, presently?
is that your body presentably?

just in that secular instant, again, over,
the body’s inquisition clarifies, asking,
requesting in a babel of foreign languages,

repeat after me!

each window pane that follows repeats the query,
the themes in each, tiny variations,
the variables of rhythm, timbre, harmony,
engine timing minute minutiae alterations,
in that passing milli-instant,
each a separate instance for each separate pane.

in every instance.   in every language.

the accusations tonality oscillates in wavelength pitch.
quest nonetheless similar,
     is that your body?

all the replies are mirrored reciprocal.
that was my past.
this my present.
the next, a future vision.

the here, the now, all of it, each a flashcard.

the insistence!

when your body falls finally upon
the sidewalks concrete filthy city Persian tapestry,
the shameful answer tastes always the same.

always the same.

only I know


when I email you
tidbits of life,
that I need only
address you as b,
for in a nano second,
my tablet will acknowledge
that I am addrssing
in secret code mine own, my
b-loved

only I know


how she stirs and sleepy stretches
over eternal minutes,
and awoken final,
says,
show, email me your early morning
scrabbled scribbles

I blush and reply

it is too early yet
this new born morn
to make you weep



~~~
7:05 am
NYC

Perhaps
you divined
everything, each word,
is musically inserted
in the bonds tween us

Them
those
poems that untie with
shoelace knots so quick
reveling, seeing her bare back,
is but a bridge over waters
that demands crossing,
for a mid-way joining

When the night is dark,
trembling, each, we stand
by each other, tumble &
fall where we stand

Anyone can see, our unique
trinity, the admixture of
she-me-us, as we untwine
rolling downwards
on a staircase to Heaven,

Nothing makes me wonder
  more; she is east, smoothie~polished,
  me rough hewn from cacti
  and dusty dirt, the only thing
  polished is the tune, sung to her,
  much practiced, strummed upon
  her cheeks, hummed into her soul

If
I had a box of wishes,
  they would each be a
  song that we sing, that
   made angels cry

cannot find true rest,
all the tumult in this world,
writ both large and small,
saps my upraised arms
alternate
flexing angry fists eager to strike hard
my revived new **** enemies,
and gods inexcusable and conspicuous absence in
Barcelona, Finland and my own
Charlottesville,
and
to quiet comfort commiserating, and storing
all the pain of individual souls I've acquired willingly

and the sunset comes quiet,
trying to sooth by adding
a gentling cream of cooling breeze,
the squirrels eye me suspiciously,
sensing the amiss within,
and all perfect sailboats voyaging past,
yet none stopping at the dock
to offer condolences or solaces

my watch ticks louder

each tick,
a worrisome cursed reminder
this real life seems to be endless struggle
interrupted by small comforts of little voices and
promises that escape is inevitable

each tock,
a fresh notification
the week's approach will contain
another visit from
Hamlet's ghost,
warning of warring factions
battlefield clashing
in a chesterfield plain
between two of mine shoulder blades

constantly reminded how lucky I am,
makes me grow quiet and put pen to one side,
and try to balance accounts, using this time,
pencil and erasure

I need a break and some glue
I need reparations and a battle plan
or happily learn to surrender
and accept being a
dumb terminal,
a slave,
that doesn't ask for
peace of mind
and knock off this poet of the
no way

this,  their-poem, emitting their call-sign,
those who once checked the box
of in love..a status of joyful revelation,
for all to see, all passerby’s, all witnesses
to the outstanding glowing skin,
the perms-frozen half smiles that
never are erased, you secret it not
so much,
for your body entire expels
the scent secreted of a world
in orbit
around
each other

then the unexplainable, threads go worn,
a slower tearing, one by one, till there
is not one, nary more any, you then
check the invisible box,
“not in a relationship”
and it feels like
a load has
been dropped onto you
from on high, flattened,

now cloaked in a demeanor
that cries out
they
put a load
right on me,
and you seek
excuses to recall ecstasy and

you start dancing to forget,
like a centrifugal whirlpool’s vortex,
whipping up the air surrounding

to heat a forgetting, till the until,
of collapsing shame offers up
arms to drown you, a relief offering,
and the words to “Yesterday”
are everywhere
reverberating


walking down the street
a somebody smiles to at, just,
for you,
without cause,
but a causal triggering
a singular event,

just a smile with edged up corners,
and suddenly you feet golightly,
and inexplicably inextricably
in the moment it is
all you can see,
and one starts to dance
to well
remember

and a poem
forms upon your silently moving
lips,
and a dance to remember
is finished,
starts up
a new one,
with similar familiar steps
a dance to believe  in~

and laugh when
you say your name

out loud

you!

are the poet of the way,
a new word choreographer

and there will be a way,
always another way…

for the Missouri Ma'am, a reminder, for the "show me" lady,
who should know better than
like a novice lawyer,
never ask a question,
the question,
you don't want to
know the answer to...

struggling for months to answer truly
your Aristotelian query,
from now over a year ago:

who the hell writes poems like this...?

the older early answers are writ in another place, three, four drafts,
by another's face, and another hand, curdled and burdensome,
none to ever see complete-shun

now I believe, those early answers provided are out of sync,
life is messy and stressy and my pre-pubescent, precipitously yet
carefully considered, visionary imaginary invisibles, naive,
now comes similar, like this piece, which sat down and wrote 
in a minute, charging myself a lot,
mostly the costly breathing the stupid from a failure stench,
whose face is locked into a grimace

without missing a heartbeat,
messy and stressy,
fully forged, seeing a head ahead,
breathing out the fire of the dying dragon who does not,
give no longer giveth a good *******

see the man on the street, the man,
lying on the street whose cardboard sign says:

for two bucks,
will write you a commemorative,
custom tailored for the occasion, name and season,
no waiting, done in five minutes

four lines $2
eight lines $4
(obits cost more)

who the hell writes poems like this...?

the sad angry ***** *** on the concrete,
who stinks from
overuse and misuse,
everybody's fave faun, now gone,
now writing *****
for a living dying

now, that's who writes poems like this!
ask him nothing, and he will rhyme it for you, child,
the prior life, previous name, the perchance poems, ah, who cares...
just don't ask a question, that you may not want to know
the answer

brown skin farmer girl (this changeling poem)

~

we are I’ve decided

alike and unlike.

I know, an epiphany.

we are both brown skinned,

the sun has wrested my skin

buried it in dark loamy,

soiled brown side by side,

now alike.


your hair is long(er)

now, mine too.

a cascading mountain ranging,

edging south from your Columbia,

to my  Columbia

over my ears, down my neck,

which like yours, dreams knightly

of being loved by endless kisses,

a prince(ss) charmant

~

we could not be

more different,

than how god us designed.

but here’s the rub,

people change,

they dream of becoming,

reinventing the original design,

and this explains

not the why, but the how,

how this poet came to write

this changeling poem.

~

and you think we could not be more different and
more alike, and you would be rightly correct.

someday it will be willed (have I told you lately that I love you?)

that the poetry ceases,
no more birthdays notated
calendar closed, the ***’s axed,
kitchen junk drawer, a consignment store,
no longer needed, the futility of saving
knickknacks, maximized, the no lasting
value proposition, realized, eulogized.

pictures of beautiful automobiles,
decorated with beautiful women,
will forever be last year’s models,
one calendar too far, not long enough

no more of

have I told you lately that I love you?

wrote you plenty love poems so, hereafter,
you won’t be bereft, left farklempt,
arranged one-a-day, on a timed delay,
so many more that will appear in your
inbox until you too, no longer choose open it.

no more “sirprising” I love you statements,
taped to the milk carton, it was so willed,
the daily counting, record keeping, who first,
how many, secretly added to a grocery list,
in stuff that was so beloved, exasperating,
making you just right amount of crazy, smiling....
someday it will be willed, so,


here’s the first of many more....

<>for Sally<>

the heavens that guard your garden voyages,
the moonlight that illuminates the foliage,
your global family, and your recipes, are all in on it

rotating guardianship of souls that need overseeing,
for we don’t need, we desire,
that the world be fulsome

your
presence
is
our present
to ourselves,
fulsome and rich,
making our gardens more verdant

then again,
perhaps you are correct,
we do not need all our eyes upon you
but selfishness sometimes, is a fine thing...

wrestlemania

traveled cross country,
wrestling with extended
celebration and an
unexpected death;
the body maladjusts,
only to be disrupted
when time zones reset,
hard a-heels upon return,
packing up again for a
sacred pilgrimage
to a summer place
of sheltering, where poems
grow and dangle like participles
from local fruit farms, one
need only pluck and taste,
attach your moniker
and then feed them to the
joggers & walkers running past

send them all on their voyages,
hopefully protected from
travel disorientation and the
cycle of rebirth

with luck, bits and pieces of me
will accompany said word whispers,
them shreds and shards
requiring healing,
or just pruning,  
exiting old words,
fresh fruit berries,
roadside acquisitions  to b
carry me stained & strained
& happy new travels o‘er
this fruited plain

Perchance it loves me too?


<>
Vicki and patty m.
<>

no one loves the same,
the moon, or me,
or you two too,
exactly exact,
or, especially
each other

every stream of light refracts differentiation,
rays scattered and triggering you-know-what

it is never by
perchance,
always by
first glance

rays that are moon ordained,
plotting paths on the river and bay
that check my souls consternation
asking me nightly,
come walk on water,
come to visit me,
when I am a verdant blue

once upon a time,
the moon would come to me
by early afternoon, so had a
doubleheader of celestial admirable

moon,
for its plotting morning carryovers
going all the way occasionally
to afternoon sunlight,
as if it is like love
that passes
through a checkpoint,
saying, see!
a safe transition
to the east/west passageway
of your humanity heavenly inclusive

I’ve loved creatures,
human and even better than them,
feminine and masculine,
never made any difference,
for it was never a competition

my whole soul went wet,
Olson,
from then till now,
when the love word escaped
my lips, troublemakers, happily,
the misery it provided was ecstasy,
made the poem solutions even better

but by now, august August,
woe within me, strong the sadness,
the end of summer chilling forces,
makes sure the dividing line
is redrawn and love and moonlight,
once inseparable,
are again fully distinct and

perchance,
come September
hopefully I’l forget and I won’t remember
all the rest,
just the best of the best of
you two poets scheming,
how to enlighten the world
with blue moon words




2:16pm,Sunday August 25
2019

~for VB~

<>

“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?”

Song of Myself (1892 version) BY WALT WHITMAN

                                                §§§

­there is special delight for the city dweller,
when the first clean flushing of brightest spring green
disrupts the unending graying city ribs of worn concrete,
the alternating lifelessness of blasé brick, pretending
off-beige, ***** pale blue, a sooty furnace red,
well done,  a good pretense that they are, of color.

I am among thousands whose as a child my breath
gave way, taken by gasp, when first made
entrance to the green diamond sparkle oasis of
Yankee Stadium, hid by the urban dreariness of The Bronx,
near sixty years vision sustained with perfect clarity on
retina-implanted, a shock, an earthly con-trast.

today, an old-timer, a first timer, I’m gifted Whitman’s Song of Myself,
from a friend and poet, who lives hardy by a Port,
another islander like myself, surrounded by wet roads and
pathways to the Northern Pacific, amongst timberlands of
forested and natured grass, a differing kind of stadium,
both of us silently saying, thanks Lord, for lending us yours.

even temporarily, this day, your emeralding grass handkerchief,
equates our dispositions, so differently identical,
your name, our initials, in opposing corners, embroidered,
your grass tapestry upon this troubled earth, a scented, joint, poetic
remembrance, that though it’s but words that bind us, we! we know!
the songs we sing of ourselves, we sing in synchrony harmony.

                                                   §§§§§


Wed. May 13, 2020
Manhattan Island,
by the East River

before commencing his third
poem of the day, to review,
reiterate, reorganize his day’s
life, and his life’s day, to establish
better value, logical priorities,

He thinks,
better to let woman sleep,
as no pressing pressures
of  decisions or choices
need be made before noon,
and another huge mug of
coffee seems logical, wise
and a prudent next step

and no sin needs forgiveness,
by the act of sleeping late

He’s torn,
between readying the
coffee machine’s unending
needs for water, beans, snd
careful waste disposal,
shaving a  2 day stubble,
and starting his next poem,
when he grins stupidly, or
stupidly grins, for clearly
he has made and an acknowledged
decision, certified by a silent
exclamation of duh!

He reassures,
his inner demons
that all will be satisfied
in no particular order as
the day is young and the
coffee hot, good and satisfying
and he can  type letters without
spilling coffee (again),  and the
world will be no worse off
or improved if he focuses
on completing this dirge

here then the third poem:

life is nothing but an
endless series of decisions,
many, most, low hanging fruit;
ironically, the big ones,, the
important one, get made quietly
without malice and forethought, by
deliberations so quiet they go
unnoticed.

At Nine o’clock, he will
wake the woman,
because he’s lonely for company,
but wisely
will bring her coffee and breakfast
in order to
soften the blow of his arousing action

candle on the typewriter


~for V.B~


lit, to better see the typewriter keys,
as if the those longest fingers needed guidance as to
how to lay down a word, each a brick, mortared to the next
knowing full well, permanence a laughable notion,
and the old house lives on by the good graces of storm kings

the cat, lazy supervising, purring delightedly,
when the sunlight requests their lips porch presence
to see what the island gods have proffered to the inhabitants,
this new morning to feed the soul and the soil, and a cats tummy

never mind the mis-stacked old occupant documents,
important enough once, that too, yellowed by
times relentlessly agile agent aging imprimatur,
the candle is a needed, a promise to oneself, that the words
hidden in the keys, require that shadowed glow, to find the
way-out, to be released unto life, bonded onto bonded paper

you reveal in silent photos so much,
even your best work, a younger version,
who says a lit candle on a typewriter, that’s crazy,
and you laugh, crazy with - from words,
that reveal all, but not as much as the
light of candle burning on a typewriter

all day long the internet sells wisdom like
fruit in bins fronting the bodegas,
the one Spanish word every New Yorker speaks,
some ripe, some not and
some on the cusp of going home as mulch to the wet earth,
sooner than later

you can't squeeze the wisdoms proffered like a piece of fruit,
from the exterior, there rarely be a dashboard indicator saying
check engine light or this one is one worth picking

so gobsmack like Dylan croaking in an obvious in a way something obvious yet you thinking hey! that's interesting, read
earn good friends
something I ain't done so well and yet here I am,
passing it on like I know what the fruit-picking trick is,  
but on your fourth cup of joe and it's barely noon,
in your seventh decade you take the right to croak,
even if you aint got no expertise, that the emphisis
is on the earn part

you dont buy 'em in the store, no winning the lottery,
gotta use your eyes and no, lovers don't count neither,
guess you gotta stick out that hand, have somebody's back,
unasked,
and being gracious when saying thanks,
but then again never had more than one or two,
but for fhem
I'd lay down my life for them to survive so not exactly clueless

earn good friends, that sounds bout right...that, the right way...

the cause & the cure,
co-conspirators at war,
my body and mind their battlefield,
the barren bombs of depression lobbed
indiscriminately and carrying the leukemia cells
of a surrendering mind who can see no hope of peace

the neurons spread the word of defeat imminent,
the leukocytes gather for one last anti-hero stand,
the troubles, the ones seen and foreseen, should be
labeled explicit and dangerous, airborne transmitted,
so do not touch the letters of this lament from hell sent

too many mouths to feed, my shoulders sloped
from prior decades undoing; the nine lives,
the held back reserves, expended for no gain
the weary remnant deep marrow hide
but it's hopeless for the man
who was pushed aside
by technology and the destruction
of human touch,
even the body
removed by machine

come to sight this site
once a fortnight,
the volume, ***,
a straight line curve, - all
fingertips to the sky appointed,
my followed favored poets get
per force, my attention immediatement!

but
costly for/to the new writers
whom with so few (‘cept Le Gomez)
panning for gold, mostly fall posthaste
to add to deep sea coral reefs below
where lower & slower is an unnoticed
state of sleep, you be the carnival barker!
or a Moses
crossing a
black letteral sea, by the hello,
repost please, the new babies,
otherwise they suffocate from
the unintended lack of oxygenation

it’s a small and costly gesture tho
$$$ free, we well risk losing the new perspective, updating jargon (parole gergali!)

we risk absence by obsolescence, if using
old software, astride our high horses,
putting our heads  up our __
in a nosebleed trivial Jeopardy stratosphere

so shrewdly share, share a link or like,
for we all would be dustbin paper, better
suited for beach bonfire shredded kindling
    if someone
had not grasped our words for even more to
love

it’s a daiquiri colored morn, countlessly
as I, gazing never tiring, of a vista I’ve seen,
awoken to, endlessly changing, voyagers of
birds and boats, the redecorating minimalists,
moving pieces on a latticed shadow lawn

the Sun eastern, asking the trees to turn and bow,
hence the shadows their branches cast are a waffling,
hopscotch pattern irregular, so jumping from/to
yellow-green sunspots, the children are delighted by a
new game, moving to and from and between an ever
changing crazy chessboard of light-patches unsquared

described, written of, yet here I am, once again, a servant
despairing, looking for new combinations of superlatives,
though I never spoke before of it as a vista,
until today, wondering why, perhaps because
it’s here, one lives, one doesn’t conceive of  being
part and parcel of a vista, humans, just visitors,
pawn observers, gallery visitors, art appreciators,
transient hobos after forty years, truthfully claiming
that they’re merely still, passing thru, passing by

9:40 am, respectable hour to meander over
to the throne room, the four Adirondacks, them,
the year round poetry nook authorities, are equal
sunned, shaded, simultaneous, stately shadowing,
observing, advertising as perfect for composing,
willing to make verbal suggestions, rhyming notions,
especially when the poem pays proper obeisance

and so it does, and so it is, as you can clearly read


9:53am Sunday Jun 14
Year of the Pandemic

Clueless, Restless, but then the Moon Speaks!


can you see clouds at night, askes the moon,
my train, my assemblage of word worshippers,
who ask me by the thousand for clearer answers,
“one if by day, two if by night” is my evere’d reply,
bereft of confidences, steps unsteadied, full of distemper,
shaky uncertain, so answer all, once more, but only with
difficulty am I understood, for the simplicity so so great!

the moon comes to you nightly, never! never are you ignored,
your lost alone words always well heard, we are two together,
we are all two, if by night, my lune bright, ours, your answer!

Together Nightly, Are We Not Poets of the Way?

Sent for our amusement, pleasuring admiration,
our funny bones, and galore (glory)  of creation,
Texas squirrels are nuts, like crazy,chasing each other ,
up trees, across the wide expanse of the backyard,
where’s the Davy Crockett sharpshooters when
you really need them? (1)

now that baby rabbit, fearless or stupid, insists on
running on our deck, looking for applause for his skinny
legs hopping neath the chaise lounges, at any ole time,
guess this ain’t the love poem you were expecting,
then again you’d be wrong again and agin, but the
grandkids going, going, gone and applause muted

anyway, one of these days gonna stop and chat with
these two species, what they’re thinking about, the
human menagerie,  its depleted numbers, wherefore
and why, did the reduction of the human stockyard,
emboldened them to occupy territory they’d otherwise
shy away, hear what they say, gonna make a good poem

p.s. the avians yap and caw 24 hrs a day, presumptuous beasties noisy
__________________­_

(1) “In fact there wouldn't be a Texas if it weren't for squirrel stew. Don't condemn the idea of stewing your squirrel problems away. That's right! Davy Crockett and his Tennessee sharpshooters wouldn't have reached puberty if it were not for squirrel stew. Besides, what do you think they ate on the long trip from Tennessee to the Alamo? Enchiladas? Nope! You guessed it--squirrel stew.”

https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/recipes/squirrel.html

Love Letters to & between Men

are composition easy, the components, blunt edged,
declarations of affection, without affectation

verses but not stanzas, are all that required,
homer direct, no fanciful piping, no trimming needed

your strength, character, manly wistfulness,
gives me leave to grasp your shoulders all about

no feverish whispers, no cloaked hush, delicately interfering,
only an “I love you man,” a simple declarative compositional

firmly pronounced, eye to eye, hand to shoulder embraces,
acknowledged with crinkly eyed smile, met with a summarizing

“me too.”



2/12/2020
2:25am