For Al, who left us, Nov. 22, 2014

With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.

Al,
You ask me when the words come:

With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,

Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for body restoration,
Transpositional for poetic creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.

Al, you ask me from where do the words come:

Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,

The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.

The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.

The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.

The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here, 
poem aborning!
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied!

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.
__________
(this poem more than most,
for its birth celebrates
my loss, your loss,
which cannot be exonerated 8/7/18)


__________
written at 4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012

Greenport Harbor, N.Y.

In a strange mood - see/write art



in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^

in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.

knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.

a *****, well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.




^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell


Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me

The Blue Canoe*

Had dinner at the Blue Canoe again,
A once every summer ritual,
Open aired, open to the senses, this eatery lies,
Nestled in the grasses, on the bay, in the port...

Had the onion rings that come
Wrapped around a boat mast,
In size order, smallest on top,
With BBQ mayo, superseding ketchup.

Watched the ferries shuttling,
As the sun collapsed, exhausted,
And slipped into the bay for a quick swim.
The ferries must work till 1am.
No dunking for them, either.

The clouds were magnificent.
No, I cannot write a poem about the cloud colors.
Their shape shifting inexhaustible,
Mine eyes high on their creativity,
I'm just not good enough a poet to tamper with that sky.

Green apple wedges and Caramel dipping sauce.
Best desert idea. Four bucks.
After dinner, see Wolverine?
Nah. He'll keep.

After-dinner stroll.
Want to try the carousel?
Suddenly the Nana~Grandma is seven again
Twice? Yay!
Of course, I do, snag the gold ring.
Yes! Red ticket! Free ride!

The band is playing Henry Filmore marching tunes
In the open space nested next to the carousel.
Old people liking old music.
Oom Pah Pah. Cute but boring.
What! No Mraz? We've been had!
Ferry home. Water smooth.
Breeze, a steady, warm two knots.
Time and Temperature? Perfect.

We drank a sparkling rose.
We had a sparkling evening.
Long week, tired at the molecular level.
I think I took my jeans off, nothing else,
Never made it to under-the-covers-land.
Woke up at 245, to write it all this down,
Recalling the last time we ate at the Blue Canoe.
When I was a better-poet
For then, I wrote....

Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,

The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your ship babies to sleep.

The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.

The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian Prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
Declaring, without stuttering this time,
Peace on Earth.

The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, a very old bartender's recipe,
Salt air, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, marine gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order,
Onion rings.

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here,  poem aborning,
Contract with this moment, now satisfied.*


August 2nd, 2013

Ask me for directions, meet me there, so we can compose jointly, drunk on senses overloaded...

friends or frenemies (feminist safety instruction card)

a coastal flight, boredom has me riffle through the various
offerings in the seat pocket, and on the safety instruction card
come across this...
<•>

she’s blunt, direct, proffers me an either/or choice,
game on either way, pick door A or B, up to me,
she’s no lady, but a hipster shooter using semi-automatics,
three lines of verse, rat-a-tat-tat, your guts spilling,
hoho you’re dead or kicked in the *****, at the minimum

if only she knew what she was up against

I got words for which there ain't no antidote,
can whip her into a lovers frenzy with cooing metaphors,
slap her with stingers so that she’ll retreat hasty to another site

friends or frenemies, how juvenile, how sweet, how absolutely
childish girl, no interest, play in my arena, I have studied with
the masters and lionesses and offer you no terms but this:

be my lover

extend your reach, speak slow and soft, open and willing,
my sonnets demand close attention, slowing and holding,
building links into chains that make boundaries into a single
tie that binds, not for now and not for later but for the only measure that poets alone command: forever

concede and give up that conceit that tough is a defense,
lose everything for rewards you have yet to witness, conceive,
in my circle is in my circle where the intuitive rules and gasps of shocking come so frequent, they are normal breathing

be my lover

knowing that we will never meet never see the inside of
the furnace that can be dreamed-created with tonguing verbs,
adjectives that dance intertwining pas de deux,
oh my femme fatale, my agent provocateur,
let us learn together how,  to teach each other
come,
will be the only action word ever required

come
come write me
come together
come close my eyes
come open them wider
come free me to be a one two

anger is false brevity - loving is the languid forever languishing flames of golden burning orange caramel, word chips of
liquidity that verses, penned passioned calculations,
see how takes many stalks needy to  birth bound into a
single sheaf, count the wips of smoky wispy slivers,
combine and separate, the calculus of recombinant,
offering a unique poem with a momentary invitation,
an equation of equality and there is no diverse different


<•>

the first class steward sh/wakes the dozing body
with an apology;
“landing soon, would you like some breakfast before we land?”

the sleepy soul replies,
come to me with water,
just water...for my dream

Gene splicing recombinant E. coli:
What could possibly go wrong?

Dedicated to you.
Fair Warning: a long road ahead*

MAJOR WARNING: Anything you say can and will be used...


Excited utterances,
Acerbic witticisms,
Utter stupidities,
Elegant inanities,
Can and assuredly will be used
Evidentially, eventually,
about you in the court of poetic justice,
as inspiration, original source material,
proofs of our collaboration
with the enemy,
whom Pogo fathomed long ago,
is us

A Vermeer-vectored light ray
will reveal with luminous clarity,
all that you have spoken,
been secret-thinking,
template of colors for future sketchers,
inspiration for future poets,
far, far better than me

this dishonorable, low repute,
poetic eavesdropper, poet-as-recorder:
revels in the smoke and ash of
absurd, common sensible trash,
the trite and tragic,
the pith and prissy,
the calm and hissy,
all your lovely revelations
of human frailty and asininity, most
adorable

that you n' I are blessed
to have combinated
in a manner most
curiously original,
now recorded in my
digital memory,
proving positive the unique,
discreet charms de notre
humanity

Even your silences are
most curious fodder,  
the sighs you sigh so hard
and yet again, even harder,
unfair game, mined as
veins of golden material
for my aquatic scribblings,
as I float downriver on
currents of compulsion
to promote vicariously,
our joint disjointedness,
our grade A, prime choice,
recombinant genetic,
absurdities

Rembrandt will honor us,
we, the Comedic Elders of the City,
paint us upright avec expressions
most suitably gravitas,
but see the poetic jester,
find him underneath the table,
in manner most levitas,
out-sticking his protubered tongue,
like a common geni-***,
a la maniere de
Einsteiny

When I cross over the Styx,
limbs turned to
potash, dust and trash,
my blush transferred to earth,
to color the good earth red,
my body eradicated yet,
our body of work extant
a written record of us,
our very own
Dead See Scrolls,
shall be an amuse bouche
for our loyal satrapped
retainers

Let the scholars
dicker and obfusicate,
delve and explicate,
each turn of phrase,
write tomes on the catacombs,
where in jar and cracked vessel discarded,
these Poems and Catechisms,
the collected processes of our mutualism,
your edicts, pronouncements and verdicts
captured as
dots and dashes,
zeroes and ones,
wait most patiently
for shepard boys to find  

You err most grievously,
if you relegate this note
to the dustbin of simple ditties.

Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet *poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended

Mock me not,
for anything you say to our chagrin,
will be fully attributed
and recorded on the Web
of long-lived embarrassments

A fevered dream you might say,
rumors and excuses of
visions of drug induced haze?
a theorem most plausible,
but the redacted versions will not conceal
that all my words were Indo-rooted in
a dialect called,
collaborative

This I pen
as apology, thank you note,
written notice, subpoena served,
for as long as you emote,
my fingertips will gleefully record
with love abundant in their artful device,
your mutterings, putterings,
and in cahooting,
right here, shall be,
wrought and wrote,
treasured and kept

life is our poetic reality,
you are the best ever
metaphor,
the one poets
keep stealing from
each other,
at the intersection
of our eyes crossing

your disruptive crying poetry,
bring to me in NYC,
and I'll take you to
poetry slams,
tango parties, a real Chinatown,
blow smoke up your nose,
Waltz step on your toes,
drink with you
in Central Park at five am,
visit half a dozen museums,
take you to the ballet,
and then you can maybe,
cross a few to-do's
off of our mutual
intersections

care taken,
if you want hide deep,
but to late for thee and our world,
your name on the roster
of poets by night,
tinkers, soldiers,
and some who tailor
poems bespoke
for the ones who
dare not reveal their true (s)elves
in the words they write.

1431
poems in ye old inbox,
genteel knocking,
whispering thru stolid front door
love me a little lot,
little lot, love me?

these are the holy-of-the-holies
attention-me-crystal-cries,
prayers, wry observations, nature collations,
me and thee adorations,
heart rendering
screams of need,
these are the moments in your life
raw-roughened gifted
or threaded smooth cursed,
but tendered unto my caring

am old man.
my poetic voice is just
memories that are
repetitive lies and lines.

speak in simple sentences declarative.
this is nature's way.

darkness approaching is indeed my
au courant poem, mon actuellement.

I have seen betterdays

ain't young enough to be afraid no more
write what pleases me.

this day leases me
what pleases me
and this is as close as I can come
to being human
and writing my flawless poem.

Anything I can do to keep you,
happy and poetry-free
from midnight
till the **** crows
and slumber trumps
the restless words
that will wait
till mo(u)rning born,
and the kingdom of poetry,
awoken,
comes alive

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger,
by force majeure,
Declares, here,  poem aborning,
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied.

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me

long have I searched for my
flawless poem,
knowing it my be
my next one,
each a doorway to the next

this one, and the
one before,
never good enough,
keep the essay going
in fourth gear

I taste skin,
like a good poem,
the cheek, the shoulder bare,
the in between spaces,
the minty hint of décolleté,
the ankle chain,
turning my breath heated,
tips of red noses,
I take and
I keep
and no,
no refunds, no returns

nowadays,
grandpa's tools
outdated, shelved,
in their final
resting place,
blades dulled,
the technology
of his verbiage,
rusted by old age

the reads diminishing,
his touch, antiquated,
his best days, resting on top of
the ocean internet waves
his summertime buddies,
sand sun grass and
sea air perfumes,
singing,
"awe, we got ya,
cosy and comforted,
awaiting you in your chair,
overlooking our truest
sheltered applause"

so I write for me,
write for her,
for with her,
in love's sight,
life is
easy like Sunday morning,
and
that's why I'm easy,
like Sunday morning

wake up unscrubbed,
sleep still in the eyes,
dream crusted,
probably unaware, child,
that you are a poem
sleeping

when a little girl,
reverting, designing
real from dreams,
processing, reforming,
the dreams lusting
to be poems
to go awandering

don't
let the sin memories
of ancient words,
black gold bubble up
with the first striking of the blade

Delve
(excavate your soul deep)
Not

I did not come this poem to write
I did not come to repeat
Solomon's poem,
nothing new under the sun

don't,
daunting
wish to delve into my delusions,
my original sin
the deceit
the conceit
I am unique
I am original

*Experience anew,
Each time,
Say:
This is my first time,
This is my first work

I do not need your validation.
I validate myself
and in doing so,
who else
comes along
for the ride
on our tide?

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

Be Fertile and Radiate

With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.

Al,
You ask me when the words come:

With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,

Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for for restoration,
Transpositional for creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.

Al, you ask me from where do the words come:

Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,

The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.

The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.

The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.

The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here,  poem aborning,
Contract with this moment, now satisfied.

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.
___

4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012

Greenport Harbor, N.Y.