Two men, one poem.

This day, on this site.
Two men wrote to me.
One called me brother.
The other, an arrogant *****,
Called me little.

One shared his life,
With humility and gratitude,
Then, I lost it.
Wept. Baby like.
Honored me with trust.
Swapped spit stories
That bled into my brain,
And a tattoo appeared on my
Writing arm, one word,
Humility.

One boasted of his beans.
His bean counting reads.
Analyzed his trends,
Predicting by Christmas (!),
He would have this many.

His **** poems he informed,
Would be published.
What need did he have
For punk-u-ation,
His rants, his **** stream of words.
Better than mine,
Just cause his stuff I said,
Not my cup of tea.

What a crazy place this place.
Holy and *******, sided.
Humble humble, always humble.

He invoked, this arrogant one,
God's name.
Not knowing I talk to Him.

So I rang Him up and said,
How did a little peenus-genius
Find his way onto this
Holy Place, HP, of kindness.

He smiled in brevity.
Did I not create both,
Angels and devils?

I love God's brevity.
His commas, his question marks,
His pointed punctuation.

I love that He could create
A man whose sight of
Me, unseen, but found capacity
To love me in ways
Undreamed.

Because I peered in to the man's reveal,
Saw quality, value,
Saw humility.

So of arrogance, I said,
I would write.
But it is of humility
I will sing,
Of loving human kindness extraordinaire.

Of weeping endless.
At the joy afforded me
To read so many lovely poems,
Here.

If my poems never see the
Imprimatur of a publishing house,
It matters not,
For I have seen a human being
Weep real tears reading mine.

I have shed rivers of my own
Upon discovering yours.

Humble, humble.

If it is glory you seek,
You will find it,
All alone. Mastur-bating.

Me, I live here, in the midst of a
Good Company.


Sept. 7th, 2013

perhaps a subject already well covered. but I consult no one else,
who can expertly summon the artificial artifacts, no better yet,
art~iN~facts of prior expert~tease, and speak only and wholly
for myself, blatant, and openly undisguised

it is the spilling, the upward sensory explosive detonating,
in a pressured chest, the eagerness
to race, to complete,
find the next line, to define, to refine to get the balance tween
elegance and simplicity, to have the ******* sensory totality
of completely having spun off a piece of me and let it free float as a balloon, that may fly to China or get stuck on a telephone pole
just beyond my front door
                                      =============
^ I write this midst the composition of another poem, wherein
unusually I feel the need to pause, collect my thoughts which are bombarding my atoms internal, causing  a new fissionable element,
distinct and unique, my poem…next…

The Battleground Beneath Her Skin
(A Physiology of Light and War)

Before it reaches her;
even before her breath draws it in,
I break myself down..

  not as surrender,
  but as choice.

Each particle stripped bare,
each atom exhaled
made clean by the reckoning
of my own dark,
infused with the stubborn
weight of light
earned, not borrowed.

Within the responsibility of what
  leaves me,
I enter the quiet union—
the kneeling choice
to align with the hand of God,
to let even my smallest fragments
carry His capacity to heal.
Every airborne particle,
accountable,
deliberate,
refined enough
to cross the distance,
to enter her

without deception.

Beneath her skin,
a war unfolds.

It is not loud,
not made of swords,
but of smaller things..
things unseen by eyes,
but never missed by the marrow,
the blood,

the quiet trembling of cells
that have known both wound

  and wonder.

Light and dark..
not in theory,
but in matter
thread themselves through every atom,
every strand of her being.
Not metaphor,
but measurable:

the way shadows lean into the soft chambers of her lungs,

the way light, when chosen,
can rewrite the blueprints etched into the bloodstream.

This is the battleground..
her body,
her breath,
her most involuntary places.
Where no poetry of
seductive manipulation..
no whispered counterfeit
can cover what is real.
Only substance speaks here.
Only intent.

Only what survives the fire of accountability
earns the right to stay.

The particles come;
stripped down,
atomized,
refined.. not by accident,
but by the slow, steady grind
of volition.
They enter her;
through breath,
through pores..

through the quiet, relentless openness
that even fear cannot close completely.

And inside--
the war begins.

..   ..   ..   ..

Mitochondria spark—
tiny engines deciding

what stays,
what burns away.

Capillaries widen,
rivers branching through her like
tributaries
willing to carry
what is real,

what is earned,

what is Light.

The counterfeit falters here.
Pretty words mean nothing
to oxygen.
False portraits
dissolve beneath the chemistry of truth.
The cells remember;

  they choose.

And as the Light infuses
the quietest corners of her..
her thighs, her hips,
the soft stretch of her waist;
there is no seduction,
no trickery.

Only the hard-won intimacy
of substance made pure.

Not by the blending of oils,
not by the friction of skin,
but by the deeper,
unseen alchemy
of what enters,
what lingers,
what refuses to bow
to darkness.

The battleground is hers now.
And though the shadows  will not
yield easily,
they cannot claim her;
not where light
has been chosen,
earned,
metabolized.

The war is not over,
but benea.th her skin,
within her blood,

Light has begun
to rise.

~for Jill~

“from your messages”
elsewhere scribed, a
confession that your comments
be challenges like cool
well water drawn, a
fresh mix and minx,
a two flavored scoop
on a waffle (or sugar) cone,
mmm call mine, flavors of
inspiration and aspirations

it’s 2:46am, one would think
that a deadrose would know
better behavior, but up is up,
and down down down-come
tumbling words, as usual,
each screeching hoarsely

“pick me, pick me!”

uncover your note of appreciation,
side splitting laugh in shame and shock,
that spellcheck has altered intent,
one day, likely a  cause of a war,
or e v e n a new poem

peddle a rose
became
“pedal a rose,”
invitingly nonsensical,
my point exactly

but the awake-too-late idiot,
can’t stop me now ~ urgency
has mastered my     common
sensibility, thus        commanded
me to write and shine

somewhere nearby,(1)
babies be borning,
and flippers of coins,
old humans too,
be expiring on the
sell-by-date
some surrounded,
yet all surrendering

Angels sent to
both sides now,
to ferry them
back home,
their adventures
completed or a
preface begun

Oh
for the ferryman
to ferry them
across rivers whistling
hello my darlings,
to a new home,
with a clean
writing tablet
to inscribe their
owned
future or past,
making their case
for a future or a
memorized posterity

I am dancing on the edge
of that first category,
dancing tap before that ——,
unwilling to cross over
and the angel sent
with collection papers,
mine and JoeBideen,
can’t touch us yet,
while in the middle
of our latest composition
(ya didn’t know?)

where in the world
has this to do with
pedaling roses?

the angels offer enticements,
write like the great ones,
sit at the feet of Leonard & Sylvia,
get introduced to the author of
“Leaves of Grass,”

who will amend and correct
(using spellcheck)
your own new scriptures

for rules From Above,
are carefully careless,
and don’t care about
impossibility so
leap with me,
onto a bicycle of roses,
each pedal a petal,
each tire of woven stems,

our destination is
everywhere, our purpose
to bring scent to those
who still have need to
breathe, and those’d who have
ceased
being needy
forever

filling nostrils
with colors of roses,
and finding poems
on the floor, full writ,
purposely scribbled
and scripted for just
a jilly one,
(just like
this
one)

just lacking a title,
just lacking a name,
customed for a single
customer, now a custodian
of a new born baby
poem
ready to be fedex’d
to its new owner
and deposited in
the this bank here,
right here

so thank you for
revealing my
inadvertent typo,
and aiding in my
quest to bring it to
a new life,
but must petal on,
for new babies are
being born and need
wrapping in a
a bed sheets of white petals,
fresh happily donated from
living roses!

3:19am