You kidding

Lived a long time coming,
Picked up yesterday my three year old boy,
Third of a third of a third of a third
Of a half of me,
Who I only see once a year,
And we fell in love once again,
all over as is our style,
Annually, annuellement.

We belly kiss,
Fist bump,
High five, talk jive,
Tell each other grand stories
Of dragons in pizza parlors.

Each of us,
Trying the other out,
To ascertain just what
Stuff we are made off.

I love to put him to sleep,
My fingers, rhyme writing like Pradip,
To the turning tires of mom's Toyota van,
When the tired is a steady stream
Of word mumbles of which I understand
A word here and there, but an epic poem
He recites, a verbal dream, a slippage
To that place where three year old bones
And crying go when they pass the point of
Exhaustion.

Rub his cheek with circles of forefinger,
Stroke his head with full palm of my hand,
Close his eyelashes with gentle fingertip kisses,
Take the toys from his fists without any resistance,
Sure signal time for both of us to nap.

His surprises endless,
His cunning now legend,
Alternating disguises tween
I a big boy,
I a baby,
As the situation arises that will
Get him what he wants,
A masterful manipulator.

Which is funny cause I still do that too.

But when he stops me in my tracks,
It is when somehow the brain that has
Just crossed the thousand day alive marker
Says the profound, the uncanny, the
Philosophy of the world weary that is something
That I think just about every thirty seconds.

It is when after some particularly wild reverie
I compose, of seals that swim from his Frisco bay
Around the world to mine, on Long Island
Pacific to Atlantic, and after ten minutes of
Escapading with Batman and his mates,
He looks me and takes me down with this
Almost clear-spoke sabered wisdom,
But in the juvenile voice soft sleepy, of a babe of three,

you kidding(?)

Half statement of fact, half a soulful-questioning,
How does this three year old comprehend
The essential difference between dreams
And reality, that is separated, wheat, chaff,
Milk curd, cheese, the spider silk line that differentiates
All of life essentially.

Yes kid, I am kidding,
I tell that to myself every thirty seconds,
To keep me sane, straight, true,
But I whisper it to myself grownup style,

Who ya kidding?

So it appears that when they say
Out of the mouths of babes
They were talking about adults
Who are hoping they can still be three,
When wisdom and silly are just the
Same-thing.

You kidding(?/!)

Yes I am.
Just a kid,
Kidding you, kidding himself,
Pushing his very own stroller,
Writing crazy stories he calls
Poems, lovely little things,
As soft as your skin, stories of him,
That always end,
With belly kisses and a
you kidding.

The dot by your name,
The yellow lighting bolt
High tide warning
You have sent me a message private.

A tap, a flick,
We are communicating,
Comparative woes and lives
That could not be more different.

There but for history's twists,
We would share the same country.

But here comes the confess.
I do not rush to read them,
A savory, a wine that must decant,
Just knowing that you care
Put me in your prayers
Is nothing short of insanity.

Who puts me in their prayers?
Who confesses to saying prayers, anyway?

The pleasure of knowing that a you-message awaits,
Eye candy for the my mind,
But more real more truthful is
I am afraid for myself.

Distance real and virtual cannot be overcome,
Your troubles, a surrounding circle.
No angle, no escape, and I am there,
Next to you, as close as I want to be,
I, cannot be close enough.

Do you notice that I write these days
Tween midnight and six,
When the painkillers wear off?

You gift me 97 pages of reveal,
After page 2, you make me squeal.
Wordy tears are unveiled at 100am,
Force myself to open, to it, deal.

Three times a day, with food. Pain killers.
So from now on,
I will eat at midnight, take that pill,
And maybe sleep.

But for now, but for you,
There is no pill that drives away the pain
That is ten years old and still haunts.
Different pains, different pills.

But what I can do,
Is put you in something
With which, I am way out of practice,
Knee'd, put you in my prayers,
Which always get answered, tho
Ain't necessarily positive.

This pain has me hobbled.
Besides, when in the past,
Knee'd, always made Him uncomfortable, so,
I write vertical, standing up,
Overlooking the East River
And you reject my your-composure admiration,

Ok.

Here is a funny word that captures you,
And me ironically, the now stand-up poet.

aplomb
— noun

imperturbable self-possession, poise, or assurance.
the perpendicular, or vertical, position.

You possess it by the kilo.

If you say it out loud,
One of us will laugh,
And one of us still be weeping.

100am and the prayer thing comes back to me,
Way too easy.

But reciprocity of kind
All I ask for.

I know the creator is up, listening.
Cause we talk, as you know.
None will be more surprised than
He,
To see a black dotted, yellow lighting message
From his earthbound buddy.

Will it be opened,
Or like me,
Left unread, for the savory pleasure
Of knowing he has me vertical too,
Asking for his intercedence?

I don't know.
So while we wait, I give you this poem
Free and clear.  You own it.
This lighting poem,
This prayer.

Pocketbook

Transformational intercepts,
messages to the brain.

Time babe, it's time,
to take a next step.
change the bulb
to a higher power.

100 watts insufficient to light
the forward motion of a
Great Leap Forward,
like in a prior writ, when,
limitation awareness
was a borderline crossed.

Like learning to walk without tottering;
We probably don't know we passed a line,
invisible to ourselves,
but all clear to everybody else,
on that special day, one,
that just came and went:
when you could no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

We were accessorized with body parts
most useful to make our way thru life,
but our exterior-designer
neglected to provide pockets knowing
full well that fashion acessorizing
was more that just a way to carry tools;

Individuation, maturation, needed,
a way to communicate I've arrived

Ain't no child no more,
double negatives
a thing of the past,
cause once you leave the
comfort of the abode with
handbag corpuscles inhaled,
from that day onwards,
you could no longer:

Walk these feminine streets,
leave home,
without a pocketbook,

Judgement day becomes
Every day, nowadays, so,
when from the cave you emerge,
and face the world:

Gonna need what ya gonna need,
to negotiate the way through,
don't matter what's
inside your handbag
or your head,  
if you are eight or
eighty eight,
you know,
you believe, you need
in handbags,
as much as you believe in god

I am incomplete,
my body undressed for all to observe
If I walk down the street
after that day,
that came and went,  
when you could no longer
leave home without a pocketbook

Amusing ditty,
nah that's not my speed,
this is a treatise on
serious matters,
when changes in our lives occur,
when we earn a stripe on our sleeves

Pilgrim progress to
a feeling of vive la difference!
who I am is not who I was,
awoken from a previous dream,  
marks on my body will come,
some wanted,
some unwanted,
some happily dismissed
like the curse of braces

Free at last,
free at last to forget
a painful child's past,
sometime it's losing,
sometimes it's adding on,
but for sure, the day I changed,
was the day,
when you could
no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

Oh boys,
don't think you are excluded
from this rite de passage,
I'm one of you and I know
what we kept secreted
in our over stuffed wallets.

Ain't referring to our student org. card
or the emergency folded twenty
Dad gave you in case,
somehow you got
on the wrong bus and
ended up on the
wrong side of town
where bad things
could be found,
somewhat more easily.

Like the comic book store,
next door to the tattoo parlor,
next to where the
Nice Jewish Boys
where never supposed to go,
and the Stars of David and crosses
were removed discreetly prior to arrival,
like Portnoy foretold in
Technicolor detail.

I know you well recall
that bar mitzvah party, school dance,
When the bottles fell to the floor
unbroken, spinning, pointing to you,
When you realized it was that day,
When you could no longer
leave home without a wallet

Times they don't change
all that much,
and pocketbooks now called
Handbags I am told,
and year old babies play
with iPads like they were
born knowing how!

but I ain't impressed that much,
cause I know that it may  
come sooner as the world changes,
there still,  always be,
a day of  painful,
transformational,
generational passing,
when indelible, invisible
birthmarks somehow
became both visible and erased.

Though they may
come different ways than they use to,
in case new parents need guidance,
**It is still that day when
their little girl,
can no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

My professor tells me-
"You have to be a strong individual."
I arm myself, I fight my demons,
I strive for the dignity and worth of individuals,
I can stand strong
Because I draw my strength from you.

Weighed down by social realities and unjust inequities,
Angered at the politics of life,
I lie in anguish and sorrow
And in my sense of incapability and numbness,
I think of you.
You, who cries with me and makes me smile,
You raise me back to living
Because you believe in me.

When I choose to talk philosophy,
And struggle to articulate my confusions,
I can stand
Because I know you don't judge me.

I see a little girl, bathed in dirt,
Her only toy a stick picked from the gutter,
And I break a little inside
At what is, and what ought to be.
When I'll eventually be convinced to take up a role
In such games of power,
I know you will be there to keep me tied to sanity.

When I lose my faith in human goodness,
Eclipsed by the hunger of men and women,
You take my hand and make me believe
In the beauty of art, of language,
Of music that punctures the soul and soothes the hurt.
In a world that understands only violence and *******,
You show me friendship and compassion.

You could say it’s impossible to isolate oneself from the world.
You’re right.
But let not the whole annihilate the part,
Let not the universe overcome the soul.
When I begin to feel small and insignificant before the magnitude of life’s challenges and wonders,
You remind me of who I am.

We, who must share our lives with millions of others,
Let’s make our lives our own.
Why should the world bind us?
Why should life find us
Waiting for the world to change?
Let’s not sit through as the movie of our lives plays in the background.
With you by my side,
I can say loud and clear:
Come, let us stand strong together.

If I have to agree with you
in order to be right;
I don't think I need to be right.

When shall I wake thee, she asks,
A whisper, unseen for mine eyes closed,
Answering you in silent composition.

When thy chest nears stony fractured cracking,
From the wanton want of me,
When the fount that be
Thine eyes, nearly closes,
Neath tears of its own issue,
Shed in unrelenting haste,
Bemoaning and tossed by
My relinquished absence,
Have no more capacity or place
To run, to pool.

Come for me before the last grain fells
The glassy timepiece that measures
My rest completed,
It's shattering a grain too late, too far fallen,
A poem never writ, forever unfinished,
For rest and complete in a single sentence
Has nothing to do with me.

Come for me when the smile creases
The laugh lines etching thy face,
When the knowledge realized, fortifies,
That this man not one, not forty, not a hundred,
Sleep winks obtained, a goal unobtainable,
Unless you lie beside him...

He is here.
He is near,
A free floating electron,
Available for children's parties,
When the balloon maker bores.

Cut and paste me,
Drag me to a browser,
For my annual physical check-me-out.

For a silver dime,
He'll make up ten rhymes,
Money back guaranteed.

Not amusing sufficient?
What did you expect?
At three thirty three am
A perfect poem,
A perfect life?

I know not of gossamer,
Of sprites, muse's delights,
I know what I got,
I also know where in the world
NML, a/k/a Nat, be at.

Here be here, up all night,
Reading your poems,
Saying his prayers.
For god only knows,
There are a hell of a lot prayers need saying,
There are a hell of a lot prayers need answering,
Poems that need writing,
And poems of yours that need
Loving....




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