trigger warning:
Hate long poems?  move on.
Love words?  pleasure your self

<=>

drought and famine of the spirit,
over-staying summer
house guests in an overly sun blanched,
voided, white outed, mental abode.

faculties parched,
overly starched,
compositions lost in transition,
why can't they make it ashore?

It's after 2 AM, and though
ferries have stopped running,
mainland hangover hangerons are
working overtime to prevent
"author"izations, so all I get
when I press send is a whole lot of
"permission to cross," denied!

causes of vexation undisguised,
dual natured and manifold,
luxuriating and drowning in home grown,
city organic insipid,
makes one quick to blame
nobody in particular,
but yourself, repeatedly.

reasons many, the distractions of
rustling contradictions populate,
another life road fork looming,
a track record for choosing badly,
colors the blacktop even blacker and
ramps up desires for a janitorial,
but first do no harm, status quo.

Need a beer.
Need a distraction.
Need a homework assignment,
which I buy at the IGA market:

obey the eleventh commandment
which every writer knows;
you think you're Mr. Bigshot,
so pudding prove it,
write it,
one true sentence,
let it be a constitution for all,
with the lengthy consistency,
of a Hemingwayesque,
one true sentence.

dearth to riches occurs
as fast as a basketball
three second violation,
inspiration dripping like
windshield condensation,
got so many true sentences,
how ya gonna choose,

O sinner man?

sadly you don't hear or feel
my background music,
stringed surf sounds playing
Perlman's Mozart low to
the thunderous, sweltering,
swells of applause of
90+ degree heat
w/o a Crescent Beach breeze
to console the disowned

these superheated thoughts
now focused,
emerges a bill of sight,
lading my heart's many heresies,
staccato thoughts now,
rapid fire rebel,
a pre-discourse insurrection,
voices of words lash out -

pick me - immortalize me,
I wanna be,
a constitution for one,
one true sentence.

The Moment of Ownership.

Hillel did it,
standing on one leg,
a Sanskrit mantra,
not by me,
not for me,
not through me,
even more succinct.

full clarity unobtainable,
begin when fighting thru
the static of each nerve,
knowing that
each thought,
each emotion,
is a constitution
of sorts,
recognizing life is a series of
moments of ownership,
but that are truly ours
only when relinquished.

each one, a true sentence
when writ, spoke,
but only when disabused
of notions of possession
only true, when gifted away.

Lucian Freud painted those whom
he knew best, their portraits,
fully clothed but wholly naked,
a painter of revelation
thru the skin tones of the flesh.

exposeur of skins interior
displayer of old and ungainly,
left us eyesight more true
than an honest mirror,
with poetic brushstrokes overlay,
gained entry to what his
grandfather named id and ego,
artist's superego, his reflections,
a continuous judgment
on a pool of stretched canvas
that makes me despair that:

I will ere succeed
to cross the borderline
that modernity insists upon,
self preservation, neurotic fears,
impositions on my psyche and
that my moments of ownership
will be n'ere be stamped "transferred."

I take back my life,
by giving it away
this alphabetized self portrait,
a wrinkled sketch of me,
my ownings, undertakings
needs taking by you
so I can disown it.

these words are my own,
their conjunction is a
junction to you,
and a constitution for me.

once this expiation
is in your purview by the voted
election of Send,
bonded by a mutual
Moment of Ownership?

so net net,
bottom line,
these are my
one true sentences,
summarized, constitutionalized:
I am yours, for the taking,        
so come by, for and through me,
in many moments of ownership.

p.s. let us shelter together in place, an island growing

There comes the disbelief
and the day
when a daughter comes to tell
the matter

And she knows you can't help
She knows there's no way
to convince
that afternoon to think about it....

No way to stop the fire in the leaves
of the driest April in twenty years
as it blackens the acres
and blurs the eyes
to all but its own emergency

Before it
the hay of last year's weeds
and all those buds that hope conceives

the flight of all that lives...

The plight before...
...The fire-line...

forces every hand
to the pure product of heat and light--
then to ash
and not to ask "This once was living?"

A senior class wrote their friend good-byes
...could not bring herself to...
...bring herself there....

She had to bring the mourning home
to make alive
to raise the sun--

"He slammed the medicine chest
And saw....
walked through the kitchen
opened the frig for the zillionth time...
Then walked a mile
in the woods behind his house."

Warm for April
short-sleeve warm

"...And I keep thinking
how the sun must've felt on his face and arms
He must've been swinging the jug
and--
WHAT WAS HE THINKING?

They found the empty amber
a hundred yards behind....

I keep seein' 'im put the handful to 'is mouth...
...Then the jug...
He must've had to swallow hard
They say you could tell
...where he stumbled...
...by the leaves...
...found 'im    on 'is side    with the jug
...just beyond    'is hand...

Oh Ma!  
I CAN'T!  I CAN'T!"

...So I--
"Maybe he was mouthing the words to a song.
...anyway the birds went on
and he was still warmed by the April sun

when they found him."

Send or Request Money

a Facebook choice (new?) stumbled upon,
what! no more the check is in the mail stall,
which strikes me funny, cause my preference is
to send offerings before being asked,
which is one of those
items that I list on Linkedin resume as a
serious flaw under honorable man,
listed under miscellaneous skills,
next to
often cranky quirky guy who is
collaterally damaged and has been
taken advantaged of

Send or Request Money  a two way duality

prefer send to request
for me it’s more intriguing to be owed

a tool to uncover honor-enabled humans
that I close upon closer to my heart
nearer to thee, my human god’s creation

and that’s why you and them
even me - even god (get in line)
call me
stillcrazyafteralltheseyears

3:15am

<•>

unlike a first kiss, a first love,
the premiere awkward first coupling,
which when one recalls it
appears with ever increasing fuzziness (intentionally?)
or not at all, so much so that making it up based on
fleeting hazed glimpses of unmemorized dreams
just to have an “official entry in the cloudy memory,”
is a semi-necessity for regaling...nobody

but you never forget your virginal
projectile vomiting

there is even an emoji for it,
a hurling curling celebration

like a computer reset,
a confessional admission
that includes your own original
original sin,
a purging so complete,
it is a rebirthing of sorts,
a human do over

(c’mon c’mon get on with this, this
no kiss, a most undeserving bizzaring poem title choice)

each and every time I draw forth
the words on the in sides of me
they are ejected with force comparable,
my body rejecting l'étranger,
who’s now escaping

no first kiss, miss, no laughing at one’s first tumbling fumbling,
there is no smiling recollections sweet,
a cover up for your exciting intimation initiations faint revisions

but your first writing!

given up and out in a ejection burst,
a needle in the arm, gunshot
fluids *******, spit out,
without malice aforethought,
and this your last writing

this one, yes, this one.
comes quick, rough and inelegant,
expulsion combustion leaving you
panting on the cold floor you emptied
but
sorta of whole, a clean sheet, so to speak,
swearing you’ll never do this again,
must be an easier way,
to just slow secrete it holy,
or give up the drug of writing
raven forevermore nevermore

nope-u-dope

the vision of a long ago rabbi,
being burned to death slowly
by the Romans, wrapped in
dampened torah scripture scrolls
to lengthen the burnished burning,
a vision burned into a
very youthful boy’s consciousness,
the holy black ink hand drawn letters flowing
from martyr’s mouth, flying heavenward
this fresh within,
a childhood image primal mind,
is ways present
as each letter typed, formulating mathematically,
based on an artificial intelligence theorem,
that updates itself with every missive,
until the new poem is
projectile released in
a single ***** bursting,
purging of the urging

and guess what,

it just happened again

4/27/18

~for Sky, whose poems endearing found me, in her brazen ways,
which is what poets do~
https://hellopoetry.com/sheepskyny/

her ring sits on the mantlepiece
worn thin on one side
that dull warm yellow
that gold sometimes takes on

i remember it cutting into my hand
as she held it tightly as we shopped
it was bright and shiny then

she used to wear it on her  longest finger
after dad left us, she left it off for awhile
and then wore it on the other hand

it was tight on her workworn hands then
she took it off again before she went into
this last home, but kept it locked in a security draw

now it sits on the mantlepiece, waiting
for me to find a safe place for it
for it is the little bit of my mother's spirit
that will one day be part of my son's  wedding ring,

at the point of entry (explicit)

it does not strike me strange
at the point of entry
when the heightened senses and the dark subconscious merge

when the lust and the sweat intersect
with ego desire and self is everlasting everything
that the ***** words secretion is sticky on my tongue

when I pant poems born in rawness and tears
on this the last day of the year
and eyes closed see visions extraordinaire
and the Maker whispers in both ears see!

it is the see of what is me,
it is the point of entry and departure,
one and the same,
conception an immaculate mess,
the emptying and the fulfilling, when unkempt promises
are born free flowing and semi-truths transform into
actualities unforeseen and my child cells of new poems
are injected, stored, awaiting the birthright
and the death of publication,
my moment of privileged perfection passes
and frowns and smiles are
one and the same, silken thread wove open and shut

the precision precious circumcising of flesh and soul departing

the utter collapse from within, the drowning in the amniotic,
rebirthing rebutting my denying that I have no more to give

I believe I belong to you for it is what the desire firing cylinders
say repeatedly in the union of the up and the down cycle:

come, come inside me,
I am the pleasure
you are the treasure
in one cup measured
conjoined container
when the point of entry is the point of departure
and with eyes closed from satisfaction and prayer
I see everything all at the same time, uttering:

I am undone utterly and the difference between
the end and the beginning can be seen only
at the millisecond long seven decade coming
point of entry

12/31/17 5:38am dawn dying and new day mourning