(I love) Dignity

tearing words apart,
a part
of  a joy I cannot
explain or share exactly

knew a man once,
forty two years gone,
died too soon enough,
soon enough,
he and I will be
the same age

this man
a duck out of water,
a stranger in an adopted land,
trouble-stooped, a hard life, well lived,
never bent,
dignified in every step

I cannot remember him
ever kissing me, tousling my hair,
holding my hand, loving me in
a manner I wanted beyond  desperately

yet here I am, 5:22 am
weeping tears recalling him
in glimpses long ago seen,
adding them all up to get a
single sum

Dignity.

tearing words apart,
a part
of a joy I cannot/explain,
share precisely

dig
in
to
my
chambered memory storage units,
unlocking those rusted locks with freshly oiled
tears
and loving the dignity he exampled

to the son he could not kiss, hand hold,
but taught him the one lesson, digging deep
to respect life and stand apart,
stand with dignity.

all else will follow

the son kissed his children plenty,
in a vain attempt to make up his missed
homework

now the grandfather,
now the grandfather
is still kissing
his last hope, his newest babes,
rolling on the floor,
so silly kissing belly buttons,
smelling their skin repeatedly,

in a manner most
undignified

still weeping
the son,
he tries to sort it out

and forgives and does not forget
the man that taught dignity
in everything,
even, especially,
in slow dying,

forty two years is a long time to wait
to weep.

it takes two hands in the dark
repeatedly
to collect all the waiting patiently
wetness and the
accompanied sniffles,
so undignified,
the son smiles at himself
declaring unabashedly,
digging out from himself
a poem, a self-reflection
on time tarnished reflections
clear enough to make him
sob,
believing

I love dignity.

Aye Aye
(Poetry is the Adhesive of Our Lives)

6:33 am

for Joe*


once again,
in a strange bed,
in a strange city,
left a cold snowed city climate
debtor-in-possession,
owner of a carryover question
of yours,
what was a
winter prior posing,
is now a plane plain ride over
have coming with me
awaking,
by a sun provoking,
the answer,
now strange composing
in a visually warm city where
beautiful tanned bodies
are mined in beach sand

and
this,
my answer,
it too,
mine,
it too
being mined,
subconsciously working, coming,
f o r m I n g
in my always busy,
overthinking,
daily nighttime shift of
repositioning from a
dark night ended reposing,
into a
sunny day answer deposing

t'is a tricky one,
when one poet asks another
straight out,
after the the fashion of the day,

of my poetry,
whattaya think,
whattaya know...

about
my very own
words,
this communal place,
HP,
an open bed,
where we lie down with strangers,
where we lay down our words,
wake up lovers,
or worse,
ignored,
wake up encouraged,
(can one make hallelujah a verb?)
or refuted,
disputed by
the either/or
ignorant silence of the masses,
of what's truly good,
or sunk
under reedy rushes of swamping
despair,
at the ignorant adulation of the
endless trite, puerile

not one
for shooting from the
hip,
on a subject so
delicate,
that my paused,
slow mo response,
to you,
of course,
misunderstood,
as a red badge of no courage,
a refusal to answer
in this demanding age of
virtual, instantaneous any and every
stray dog thought

multiple shades of a Miami sunrise,
burnt oranges and Van Gogh blues,
frosted strawberry internal pink toppings,
whitish cream cappuccino streaks,
makes one wonder about the
creative design team that brought us the
universe and this all over
sunrise,
all natural, organic visual breakfast
that comes to remind me that
your answer,
you...

for all of us,
in our lives
there is always poetry infused,
there for the seeing,
and
for some,
even
adhering to our
private places

for you, Joe,
there is always poetry,

in this work,
is the continuous process,
self-recreating,
and this sir,
aye, aye, sir,
this one writ,
hopefully a satisfactory answer,
perhaps...
one of resolution,
of adhesion,
silicon bonded

for such is the nature of
this particular Joe,
an inquiring soul,
a nurtured one,
another poetry-partial-birth
child of mine,
born on-line

so,
requiring special handling when
creating, crafting,
******* lines of my presumptuous presumptive
"expertise"
in all matters that
our emotional heart
is the make-up-the-rules-as-you-go
rulemaker

thus,
peril,
fraught, and
simplistic excessive
frugality of word/feelings,
dangerous and inappropriate...

I loke (love + like)^
your poetry fine
the slow revolution of the screws
of growth so readily apparent...

But,
always,
a but,
my demands upon you,
so great,
the expectations of expectations,
greater for you than I dare share,
only since your quest
is my bequest
so shockingly that you dare
directly request

herein,
asked and answer attempted,
yet the risks are I lighthouse beacon
angle too high,
becoming too troublesome,
an Excedrin headache

You don't see,
You don't comprehend,
the way I do,
how far you have come,
your train,
upon which
I am a windowed, winnowed,
passenger,
a pseudo parent
in Loco (crazed) HP Parentis

so it breaks my heaVy heart,
that I want burdensome you better,
so much better...

Oh Toolmaker!
from your
as of yet
swelling unrealized
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears

I want to be forced
by you
to shed my own
tears,
gasp, intake my own
bloodied breath,
sweat when reading yours...
hopelessly selfish,
wholly unsatisfied...

I want
your refreshed wit  born in
Whitman
winters

tales of your Connecticut icy hot
Frost
should lay me low by new poems as good as
Lowell's

tease me, seek me
let me beg,
make me yours,
like Sara Teasdale's
"I Am Not
Yours"

I will you!
will you be,
recreate anew
William Carlos Williams

make me gnash my teeth
when you limerick like my first hero
Ogden Nash

moor my heart like
Marianne Moore

be a new American Master
of this awesome trade,
accepting of this modest tirade,
make new tools still invisible
that will become
more powerful than
any man's hand
can mechanical design...

most of all force me to
reside inside your adoms
locked in my soul's firmament,
until you have fashioned me
into
an obedient tool,
forcing me,
to weep my own
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears
that your words
backhoe excavate
from their hidden places

be mine own
GI Joe
poet~hero

hopefully,
this answers your question,
what I think
of your poetry voyage
to levels of heaven
you are yet
unacquainted

looking forward to an
aspiring spring,
a robust salute of
Aye, Aye,

for I  have fixed the spot in the sky
with the adhesive will keep your star aloft
tween you
and the rest of us
plodders

but now be bounded to lift
us to
unbounded highs
on the wings of the highest
expectations*

of all of us who
admire your journey so...
will not e v e r be satisfied,
until
you exceed,
you succeed,
until
we are such
so sated, so satisfied...
that we see the music,
dance to the words,
in places where the silence
of listening
is the greyest gift
one can give...

The Marginal Difference
Tween Child And Adult**

awake Sunday stuff to do...
another unit of life decapsulated,
where one will compromise
with all those lofty
make believe dreamy would-be goals
that course thru the brain,
when sleepy morphs into
the to do list at the premier  of today's
wacky wakey consciousness movie

and a poem forms on lips
that have not yet been
coffee'd
into adult responsibility

the list purview'd,
and you purvey,
foresee, attending,
bend back that pointer finger
looking right at ya guiltily

one and enough,
believe getting that one done,
will be
satisfyingly crossed off that
grownup
groaning
tatooed list
of the unavoidable

one will make the
marginal difference....
tween child and adult

Aging Poetry Well (proving the valor of writing poetry)

no more write, post, establish
to your immediate satisfaction,
what you are
what you think
is an amazing piece of
just you,
plus+comprehending
the world needs it, you,
ASAP!

needy for the
cosplay contemporaneous sharing,
curse of our
instantaneous time

from now on
deep down, gonna let it
casket age,
let memory
of the intensity
rust sufficiently to
get some time~plied
rusted accurate actualized
perspective

maybe trash it,
maybe tinker and
spot-check edit,
but if it is going
to stand
time testing,
let it pass a
first Herculean
examination of
fire and forget,
returning later
to collect it,
the wounded
that,
refusing to die,
thus proving proof,
the valor of
red badged courage of
writing poetry

is it worthy long after
the internal commotion
has passed,
just like
an ordinary
but very first

"I love you"

forming and reforming
then blurted in  
a wunderkind awkwardness,
that can't be
taken back,
well, *** and all that

put me aside,
could be weeks,
months,
researching
the thing I love most,
waiting for the day I
need it worse,
a lot less,
so I can
do it better

maybe even go back
look up them
odd old folks,
written in
longing ago high passion,
and come at them
differently
or wistfully,
not
and like me,
age
for better
or
for worse

Part II  of "Got 0 Followers"

aim high
to keep
it low

expectations
such an
Awesome Awful
curse
others infect
you with

don't, yada yada,
ya wanna be like
Tom, **** and Jane,
even Harry, a transgendered
friend and fellow (ha) outcast,
all with a good job
prospects of a
goodly tented long life?

so ya write poems
to nobody
about nothing and
you are pleased
to be pleasing just yourself

in writing you have
nothing to prove,
so read them
like keepsakes
ya like,
keep 'em & me hid,
in the shoebox
under the closeted
pile of ***** clothes,
special designer outfits concocted
so they keep my remains,
privatized and unsanitized,
my equity,
hidden,
disguised as disgusting

but for god-sakes
don't follow me,
unless
you want to curse us
both with
Expectations of Expectations,
then comes with
illiteracy of
Affection

then the literary
pre-tension
that always follows,
leading to

Affectation,
the first derivative of the infection of affection

yeah,
then comes
caring
and it instantly it's too late,
you're *******,
right up the mental heine,
lost condemned
ruined annihilated
crushed subverted
crushed into
mental death camp suffocation of more, please ma,
can I have some more?

**crap, why did you have to go and follow me?