a quote from Samuel Johnson, or Dr. Johnson, the storied eighteenth-century poet and essayist who once said:

“The sole aim of writing is to enable readers a little better to enjoy life, or a little better to endure it.”

<>
our “sole aim,”

Oh what burden the doctor places on our shoveling pens,
to be earthmovers
that dig trenches, uproot earth,
that lies and hides our faces, entombing our hearts,
eliciting and erupting emotions that cannot be contained,  
nor controlled,
indeed, deserving of replanting in
our shared selves, transplanted into a communal flowerpot
of our multi bursting colored commonality

lift my composing tools,
peer into
winter blue skies guarding the towers of
Manhattan isle, longing for guidance.
lusting for specificity of direction,
how,
how, to easy our burdens
with carefully selected and
careless wonderful words,
words that deal out caring uncarefully,
with a graceful recklessness of abandon
that open thy tears,
lift up the edges of your lips,
so that my duality is your duality,
the burden shared.
the burden eased…

to cry and laugh simultaneous,
lift and lighten,
a momentary distraction,
a cut flower in our vase,
that lasts but brief,
yet with each gaze repeated and
repeatedly,
well stains us with
eyes uplifting

“What can a poem do?”
—————————-


”A poem
is a not a tourniquet
when you’re bleeding.
It’s not water when you’re thirsty
or food when you’re hungry.
A poem can’t protect you from an airstrike,
or from abduction, or from hate.
It’s hard to write when our words feel
like they’re not enough—they can’t do
the real, tangible work of saving lives,
or making people safer.”
(see (1) Maggie Smith)

<~>

as is my wont,
I write,
as is my Natted~inhabited,
retiring to the local watering holes of
Cerebrum & Cerebellum,
them regular haunts,
where all requests are mailed, processed, satisfied & marked;
‘return & render to the sender, who’s on a cerebral ******!’
and that request?

‘give me the words’ (2)

those ‘to do’ words, floaters, direct to top of list,
those ‘can do’ words, that can effect the affect,
spare the despair, realize the fungible, concretize cures,
soften hard waters, giving a worsening worn life fabric a
curated baby blanket feel, a 4-ply human tissue of

‘words that tell me everything’ (2)

salve solution verbs that bounty-wipe spills in entirety,
vacuum up spillage spoiling of 17 days of terrible nouns,
uncovered-unknown rages caused by inflicting prepositions
released a hatred rising,
safety rebury it deeper, drug & destruct the sleeper agents,
and let me start over again with

‘telling me everything by saying nothing’ (2)

the pausal silence, the quieted spaces tween the heartbeats,
where ‘reflection,’
the noun,
and its world of alternations,
reflection,
the noun,
look inwards, but shining outward,
this, this!
is where the poem goes to do!
enervating & arresting

its contradictory powers
rock you into wild docility,
possessive and submissive,
contradictory interferences,
smoothing the roughness,
closing the gaps it opens,
healing the caused truthful cuts,
with words that tell you
everything and nothing,
open the holes, filling the gaps,
that is what a
poem do,
in and by
the manner it is spoken…

<~>

“Sometimes a poem is the stone you carry in your pocket—the one you rub when you’re worried.  Let’s fill our pockets with poems.”
(see (1) Maggie Smith)

poem removed pending the death of hatred

October 2023, ten years later…dedicated to all my dear friends here,
some who may be reading this for the tenth time!

<|>

you need two hands, one foot.
counting my years.
each finger, worth a decade.
each toe, well, a century...

birthdays.

point of inflection,
point of opportunity,
presents itself,
to rewrite history.

a second coat of paint,
gift-wrapped in weak excuses.
how I lied, how I ain't,
grimm-fated fairy tales
somebody else created.

invisible suits of gold-cloth
worn to my party of
past rewrites and
future versions three and more
foretold.

one single thought,
memory,
seizes my heart,
as I fall to my knees.
cracks my temperate ease,
renders open the
woof and weave
of recycled deceptions,
causing all to be revealed
when I ask,

what if the poetry ceases?

you know prostrate?
you tasted grief?

have you not but
one pain,
one act,
one deed,
one memorization,
act of cowardice,
act of desertion,
mistake made, taken,
for which
forgiveness
can never
be given,
be taken,
attained?

do, does, did.

let me then
win the birthday lottery,
let floods of relief from
daily chores, not drown me,
chauffeurs to drive,
masseurs to massage,
cooks to cook,
les delicious treats,
keep theologians, logicians
on retainer, if needed for
explanations.

none know, or can provide,
still and yet,
a priestly sacred chord,
grants relief,
absolution,
a song of hallelujah
the ache of
perpetuity worry,
an ancient pain,
grows fresher daily,
the loss of one,
of my body,
my primal knot
unreasonable,
everything should be
permitted to be untied,
on my birthday, no?

this day, these days
breathe through words,
molecules of vowels,
stem cells of consonants,
the fabric, the tissues of life,
veins are a dictionary
of corpuscles,
red blood cells are
nouns of nutrients.

this day, these days,
the infection of my soul
is tempered, kept at bay,
tamped down from the
full flowering
by white blood cells ,
champions of rhyme, verse.

what if the poetry ceases?

Though the bones creak,
the body they carry. resurrected
once more,
for morning, afternoon
and evening prayers.

thrice daily poetry I recite,
roses red, violets blue,
my marrow transfused.

though my prayers refused,
the poetry act immolates
the fringes of my disease,
for which the common cure
is not yet currently invented....

what if the poetry ceases?

but be assured, told
scientists hard at work,
on the
forgive n' forget drug.

meantime,
take a bubble bath in
rosemary and mint
trap some words,
tap some words into
your cell phone bone,
the poetry heat that
provides aspirin relief.

through this poem,
on one day annual,
I am relieved, relived
the muse is feted, sated,

gone for few moments
concerns, worries of
exposure today,
agnostic's foxhole of hell
is dis-remembered,
the gloss returns,
the faux dispatched,

ain't birthdays grand?

what if the poetry ceases?

what rhymes with
Sorrow?

mmmmm,
could it be
Morrow?

bath drains, rosemary and mint odors dismissed,
the Argentine disparu,
the Spanish Medievalists,
the Neo-Raphaelites,
all gone,
didn't they have birthdays too?

Michelangelo didn't know
the Renaissance come
and gone,
and nobody
tole ya?

please recall t'is the day
after my sweet city recorded my
naissance in the
Hospital of the Flowers
on Fifth Avenue.

the 'crats put the datum
in the bureau with the
night creams and
the statistics
as follows:

on this day +/- a few,
seven or twenty decades ago +
a few centuries,
a question was born,
and an ache that is
sometimes relieved,
by a poem song.

though do not celebrate,
t'is a day to calibrate,
review, edit, tinker,
rewrite, often a stinker.

always one thought recycles:

what if the poetry ceases?

(how will I breathe?)

<|>

“IF we are each created in His image,
how glorious is the diversity of our deities,
each of us a tiny drop of paint on a tableau
of a small planet, insignificant but
uniquely beautiful intelligent species of godlike creatures,
“deities~human”

<|>

wise enough to know mine philosophical shortcomings,
for they are many,
insufficient wisdom, more than sufficient laziness,
but sometimes even the *o b v i o u s
strikes a rhyming chord,
even so, delving into God’s image
is for the foolhardy,
ergo ipso facto,
I am that,
that fool

but the boundaries of common sense poetry,
offer healthy delimitations,
and as rhe day wanes, eyes go blurry,
I am content to laurels~rest:

I do not count the times,
I’ve called out my beseeching deities,
I do not count the numbers of names,
we have designated and available for them,
or how many I’ve employed, and which replied
or the varied shapes they assumed,
to get my attention,

but this is a poem,
cannot leave you hanging,
if you paid your dues for joining me this far:
the due is due you:


them
(their ONLY pronoun),
keep their answers
short and oft inexplicable,
yet strangely satisfying,
for being a deity
they employ common sense,
and the answers frequently found
on a list of Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ‘s)

the most common response,

“but you already knew that!”

The Doctor has a Sense of Humor!

<|>

give a surgeon a scalpel
and an excuse,
and the artist emerges,
for creativity is a good surgeon’s
natural habitat

Sure, sure, there’s a plan,
with best and acceptable outcomes,
but when messing with a real heart,
a sly *****, with numerous deceptive guises
at its disposal, you never for sure never know,
despite all the advanced imaging techniques,
exactly
what you will find once you go
spelunking
in caves of life and death

so, he takes a bit from here,
and a bob or two from there,
there a cut, here an incision deep,
Old McDonald provided a body,
or a canvas, and the Doc
is happy.

So I uncover holes where he
probed, redeploying the healthy,
like a good designer, Doc rearranges
and repairs, a travelogue of splicing and dicing,
his handiwork

Now standing over you for many hours,
can get tiring, though each ***** be
different, unique even, but leaving
a little marker, a stylized signature,
is well, is the rightful discretion of the artiste!

So you can imagine my surprise
when the tubes removed (ouch!)
the bandages ripped off in a
signature move of a delighted nurse whose
loves seeing grown men cry from lesser trivialities,
you cannot imagine my surprise
when I discovered my new tattoo,
upon my chest front and center!

Herein please find your heart repaired,
and revitalized:

Please Note!
We guarantee our work for minimum 15 years
(Aug. 3, 2038),
but our disclaimer
we assume NO  responsibility after that
if you should
happen to live for 30 YEARS or more

Dr. P.

~My portrait was painted by Jackson *******~

<|>

“there are no lines or lies in my writings
there are no definitions and perception is only your truth.
Therefore,
my poems are splats and drips, you make them into paintings that hang in your own private museum,
but signed by me as first passenger”


<|>

when did I write these words?

can’t recall, though undated,
they seem all too familiar, and thinking that if I didn’t,
I should have…
for the title of this ‘poem painting’ has lain in quietude,
a resident in my file of
“someday writs, awaiting,”
when the itch demands you will
essay
the admixture of words and swords
that will cut a newborn reciprocity of thee and me,
an unbound bind that ties and frees us
from and by our shared senses…
today, an  inadvertent blinding sunlight stumble is demanding a
fulsome scratching

<|>

the portrait of each is the irrational intersectional of splats and drips,
each viewer, reader, filters the image through a common
uncommonality,
which is as it should be,
for if we are each created in His image,
how glorious is the diversity of our deities,
each of us a tiny drop of paint on a tableau
of a small planet, insignificant but
uniquely beautiful intelligent species of godlike creatures,
human

<|>

the précis of this conundrum conversation bewilders,
a single word drops,
of plaint, paint, blood,
a seconds blush blurred
that is the building blocks of imagery
I state is mine,
but now realizations swiftly fertilize,
the portrait is not of me,
but of me blended into thee,
and this poem,
is our composition
that hangs in each of our primary
museum,
newly re-titled,
**A Passenger, Realized

And So the Day Begins (Bring Them Home)

~ With love for T.R. & S.R., my friends ~

<>

Their spirits, sensed, well kept,
in a sudden breeze, a sudden sneeze,
at the precise exacting, millisecond,
when skin, mind intersect, coinciding,
Mine, Theirs, and wet eyes and
smile traces arrive unbidden but both
together, always simultaneous and I know,
full hearted, full throated gasp grasping,
my soul and hands, touching, clasping,
in the kitchen odors, morning coffee,
early daylight across my face sweeping,
on the tongue, their taste on mine,
and I am present in this moment
as they are too, with me forever if
but just for a heartbeat, maybe two,
stilled yet, my heart trembles as it fuses
with Them and Everyone of Us is renewed,
and so the day begins,
Oh Our Children!
remembering, a point on our journey,
our always unbroken continuum.


<>

7:17AM
July 22
Two Thousand and Twenty Three
but one more day until…

~for my dear, dear friend, T.R.
who tills the soil of Jordan’s Garden,
from which life springs eternal

<>

see your words, sent direct to my ears and all our mutuality of senses,
fingertips tasting the soil, the moisture, the granularity,
the chemical composition and the color, always the colors…

our gardens are our children, each similar but always,
unique, altogether different, altogether similar

how I love the how-work of it;  how the soil, you, suckle each other
with nutrients of tears, Georgia heat, outcomes of
the summer produce(s),
a refresher course of memories, of frustrated endlessness

we see heaven only by looking down, you, me, on our hand and knee,
touching each plant by hand as if soft stroking a cheek of our children

in some spots, the ground unyielding, keeping its riches
stored for another day, only then, when it wills, offer up
its specialty - a surprise, a wind-blown in, seed sprouting

it so many different ways, the work gets harder, and yet,
more tender, more desirable and we do not wonder on it

for this the way, of planting, and planning human desires,
tempered by elements over which we relinquish a
sense of control, yet forever knowing, happily, renewal~marked by

the forever and ever on seasonality
of a rebirthing garden
that sustains
us






6/25/23