First know this:
In my peoples’ history,
an old evil, revived,
a real pretend
a”new” enemy, but
merely a derivative of a-prior,
old name, same hatred,
irrational and raw,
rising up in every generation,
under cover of a ‘philosophy,’
lies buried a purity of motive,
purity of hate for hate’s sake

<•>

For my people
and their beliefs
Our secret to our
survival is manifest,
you may have heard it called,
A Secret Chord (1)

Tears and Laughter,
Tears Behind Laughter
intertwined, or else,
we would not indeed be  
the long going on tribe
studied by curious
historians & idiots

me?
still crazy, after all these generations

Grandparents & Parents
chased by ‘professionals’
from places well known to you
(hey! we somehow got away
with huge luck, and courageous daring)

Not requiring your sympathy
not asking for a special empathy,
not rejecting your clucks,
but we manage
though tears aplenty
that we mask under a guise
via self-deprecating humor

I would love to tell
the Bible and the liturgy
is full of sly winks,
cutish double entendres,
bartender jokes,
but it ain’t necessarily so
don’t ya know

if the bible had made
gentle laughter at/of/
angelic & human foibles
and maybe
even God laughing at
all too human characteristics

but that’s a very big ask,
not sure He’s up to the task,
making fun of yourself
when you’re the
top of the chain
requires
humanility
which’s not a master’s
first calling
but should have been its
first blessing

so that’s up to us,
we irreverent creatures
of his design,
and why we are the absolute tgw only
species that cries
to express
sadness-
and mockery maker
of ourselves
the oy in
oh vey beings
Still crazy after all these years

kindness is never free!

it has to be learned to be earned,
it is not a natural choice but comes
to live in our genes after observing
it beneficial impacts, it munificence,
a two lane highway, divided by a
dotted line,
so that it can go across  fluidly,
a streaming with no unilateral
direction, reversing course as needed

nope, not free, it comes with callused
hands lifting up a fallen one, even better,
taking unasked another’s elbow for safe
guidance, kindness prevents, making its
value greater than pears and rubies, yes,
it is infectious…

because you cannot receive it,
or returned,
until you’ve taught its
beauteous character,
seeing is believing,
tasting is knowing,
it’s shocking power is astounding,
a special
sounding that requires
not words, but words
and actions, a total package,
for it completes
the human far beyond
mere existence…

some sounds and guttural expressions,
unique property of individual & groups,
no, won’t explicate this  
too much further
but…

anyhoo, in the realm of naked laughter ,
undisguised, unhooded,
a modest-ly hand-covered giggle,
primarly but not exclusively,
the propety of the feminine wile,
so much so, a ‘girlish giggle’ needs no
hyphenation, or hydration,
just  imagining grinning
eyes and lips, crinkling
and the ability to easy while
through one’s
nose breathing

well understood it is the
la feminine,
this witty twitty
in the provence, of women,
particularly the younger at heart
who titter with the glee
of reckless uninhibited unlimited
gig-gig-gigl-ling-ling
(N.B. young st heart is an ageless concept)

the Frenchies in their
Frenchified (1)
(alt.; frenchfried) ways
call a giggle, a puff of laughter, (2)
which sounds so modestly ladylike,
but in the US of A, a girl giggle,
a really good GG,
needs not be so demure,
and can possibly extend into a raucous cackling infectious,
yet discreet
uncontrollable belly slapping laugh,
given the kerrect circumstances

love me them GG’s

~For Pradip~
who reminded me:
We are all God’s Trial & Errors

tender is the tendency,
so finitely human,
infinitely foolish,
to overlook the
obvious,
let us not delve into our
particular peculiar idiosyncratic knots
in our hair and personalities,
all natural,
inherited or ill begotten
in voyages to far away,
like our childhood

Thus,
we are all mistakes of a sort

with natural fault lines,
accumulated dings, scapes, bruises,
furrowed crinkles that took us
years to perfect

We are flawed like diamonds,
valued by these natural flaws
by graders with loups who uncover
our flaunts, our clear air bubbles,
the more flaws the better,
because these attributes make us
most interesting!

you may be blonde,
you may be exotic
perhaps a lovely shade of
iridescence,

but lucky you whose scars speak
out and others wonder why,
they are so interesting

let us design a large animal,
seemingly ungainly, yet keystone to
their environment, so others may
profit thereby,
yet insanely quick on lumbering feet,
no hands, fingers, but a long snakey thinge
that multiple functions  for
breathing, drinking, feeding grabbing, smelling and
trumpeting their presence
to foolish beings in their neighborhood

let’s us not debate
whose design is
an efficacy par excellence

so we be
ungainly, too tall, too
this or that,
even too flawless,
a specialized curse of sorts,
we are the product of
a sophisticated design laboratory
that makes many models,
each variegated, always different

so get down on your knees *******,
and praise the design engineers
who created you to be
full of
& by elephantine trials and elephantine errors,
thereby making
us each,
a special pronoun,
an I
blessed
by definition:
though not in any dictionary:
unique,
flawless!


^you are the most
flawless poem
you have ever written
and will ever ever
write