~

the title comes easy,
the rest,
not so much

love rejected,
chest pains as real
as a heart attack

weeks, months,
time intensifies,
doesn't heal,
I stink of desperation

when my mind

-smells her skin,

- tingles as her hairs on the back of neck tickle me madly,

- steals but one of her images from me

I don't care how I smell,
only dream of,
of the smell of skin,
her skin...

watching the pain dry

you did not mistake -
no word play, not the product
of typo or errant
clenched eyes

labored writ,
the liver is failing,
the interval organs
a joint co-production
contribution,
the words demonized,
but truth cannot be
plausibly denied

all cast members
are rehearsing
preparing the last act,
interrupting with
exceptional,
expectorating refusals,
objections,

too*

this n'that

all their "too's"
are double O'd,
double ****** negatives
an overflow
bloodletting,
excessive overwriting
the playwright words,
maudlin can't be spoke in the present
of his
presence

revolutionary overridden by the
actors,
the words too hard,
to speak sob as long as I am
almost stilled but still
in the room

-wrenching a bemused grin
guiding them & pain to a higher purpose,
admonish them with pleasured pleases

needs saying
as it writ and
carrying  the denouement
to a rightful conclusion
as

(this poem don't matter much
unless you balk with ***** to essay upon,
thyself, thy valentine failures,
children and ex's who have ex'd you out,
sad love songs
one more time,
even joyous ones,
foolishness human,
then this intro source code,
is an unnecessary winter weather advisory)


a phrase, song~played, scratches,
brain self-commands
via electric synapse
To: the current in-resident body
extrude denude private places

riff,
get to thy work,
decompose on them words:
in the private places*

play with the lowly lowest ranking,
private, who by nature, sees
finer the dirtiest,
privy to the privy,
privilege them
to the most personal,
spit/spill/weep/deep
some or none of it all,
cause the scratch is the
poetic salvation to that
*****~itch, write

the best you get,
dispossess the beastie best
in the pvt. places,
ain't much/no difference
tween beastie and all the crapper rest

draw from the private places,
cast up to light,
revelations devaluations sensations
impolite,
well kept secrets

if you can say it good,
then draw it up from the well
where the private places
were|where sent to drown,
and if you can't,
no bother brother,
after this exculpation excavation,
I'll go back with you
to adding a rock to the
bottom of the pile,
the mountain of superficial crap

this is a very important poem to me,
about me, and how Obama slurred my people. and never apologized

<•>

there are mornings when I wake up
in my nativity,
in my born/bred,
these struggling to be happy,
United States,
strangely hebrew-speaking,
Jamaican coffee
morning-thinking,
tallying up
what I am,
who I am,
commanded to be,
on this Earth

the labels that the
outward-looking apply,
the tags,
that you have caused
yourself to be defined,
been staked
to your claim,
in infamy and in fame,
that you have
by action and indeed,

have allow
to be presented
as entries on your
global entry passport,
with visas from the
lows and highs,
places where
your have sinned and saved,
all the acts accumulated,
and those,
in pain,
you have been a witness to

word titles that
tinge and suffuse,
summation of my presentation,
sampler of words
like
father, poet,
American,
even,
a for-real
community organizer,
and of course,
bien sûr,
a
Jew

the quality of all these life's papers,
which I grade myself,
I,
the harshest marker
of all

once a young man,
safely away in college,
under the fresh-air freedom of the
university's in loco parentis,
in the early years
spent quantifying oneself

nearly fifty years ago,
now he,
revealed and recalled
when
his college typed-letter,
lately uncovered amidst his,
recently passed mother's papers

"Don't know what kind of
Jew
I will be, but be assured,
that I will be a
Jew
all my life"

so here I am doing my post-sabbath,
top of the week,
right it down,
qualifying myself,
coffee enraged engaged,
a new Sunday tally

taking all my terms,
reordering,
re-prior-itizing,
what was prior, first,
is no longer

decades decay,
events sway,
simple words change me, stain me

nearing on five decades later,
when this
son of speakers,
son of humanists and 
son of
 writers,
son of proud
Jews
rewrites his list

today I write/substitute,
a new order,
a tag gladly taken,
a marker given,
some what in pride,
some in shame too,
first and foremost,
à la manière d'Lincoln
I am
of, by and for

"a bunch of folks in a deli"

proud member of them
that so identify,
for they are among those
that shall not perish from the Earth

those
happenstance-not,
bunch of folks in a deli,
I claim as
mine own,
as they would
have claimed me

no subtly professed,
a diminishment intended,
and now
an honorific taken,
Medal of Honor provoked and embraced,
proudly inscribed,
visible on my forehead,
in the black ink of mourning,
a Presidential Cain Citation,
a tattoo of letters,
not numbers,
now moves up to
head of the list,
I am
now and forever,
a member of that corps
(appreciate that double entendre)
I am
Je suis
JE JUIF

*"a bunch of folks in a deli"