next to never (a pair of ones)

squeezed between nuh-uh and fugetaboutit,

is that long gone notion in the nation of concepts,

like one true love, the connected lines on each of our

bodies, certifying we are a pair of ones, a strong hand.


there are chores to be done:

reread Guy de Maupassant,

delete two thousand unread emails

cry for my so lost children

let Walt Whitman wash over my body like oil

kick the guy out of bed so he can make us coffee.

a ton of stuff to do, good thing, we got a strong hand,

that pair of ones.

which I am now informed is called a pair of

Aces.

Who Knew?

7:51 Sun Jul 12

~for alison~

sun’s come out, yellow invitations issuing,
let’s walk, asking, my afternoon habitué, you’ll talk,
I’ll listen, maybe a poem, a tune, who knows,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

Nina Simone on the phone, called,
letting you know, she’s feeling good,
subtly pointing out you could too,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

Adele rang up, just in case,
you were undecided, to keep on
chasing pavements, even if,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

Elle King came by, shame she said,
what’s you need getting into is shame
‘n trouble, the kind that makes ya shake,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

Chris Stapleton, didn’t have no idea,
you knew him too, reminding you that
Tennessee Whiskey ain’t the answer neither,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

Amy W. stopped in, in case you needed a ride
in her BMW, just to say hi, you ain’t no p.o.w.,
stop cheating on yourself, it ain’t no good,
what will come of it, surely ain’t exactly clear

my woman, sat down next to me, demanding all
my devices, pad and phone, you’ve got memories,
roots, a home on the ground, no nighttime gypsy you,^
don’t need no sad other women music, surely what comes

of it is exactly clear.




^Alice Merton

strange professions and true confessions from a lockdown town (4/17/20)
————————————————————————————-————-

not a great idea,
in the not-yet-dawn,
to write
a poem entitled
strange professions,
true confessions

dried stains of prior leakings
upon old ‘n yellowed linoleum,
no need for more friends,
for sure, for sure,
that’s the smart play

you see! right there
I’m professing age
old wisdom,
confessing my sorry face is
well acquainted with
floor coverings,
where even the
soles of my shoes
won’t admit they been polluted,

having stepped in rooms
of low and ill repute,
those them there,
right in here
poetry writing sites
where there ain’t no
guideposts, reminding
what’s in the heart
pretend stays in Vegas,
but what the heck,
since I’m here already,
might as well,
ready go and spill,
things you don’t
need to know but...

help the time pass
in this lockdown town,
where total silence is
the loudest sound around

wine, empty beery bottles,
bad rhymes give me up,
just before I start a hey look!
it’s a brand new
sunny rain afternoon

the governor pronounced
we all gotta be masked,
24/7 inside and out,
the women complain that it
musses hair, the men say,
who me? nah, got
nothing to say about that,
We, don’t make no con-cessions...

when you can’t see
my lips moving, or my
one good eye be winking,
means it’s likely that I’m lying

they say, I’m going
stir crazy,
not me says he,
unlike  some guy who
wanted to blow up the
Alice-in Wonderland statue in
Central Park, hell,
u could look it up!

guess I coulda call this
here epistle, official “Lockdown Blues,”
but I jes heard gotta stay inside
till June Seventeen
that’s the good news,
plenty o’time to set
my affairs in order,
burn the poems nobody
needs seeing, those them
there with weirdness galore,
say no more,

you can whine, it’s fine,
no caring, no hearing,
past way the point,
where running or returning
is an option viable for nut jobs

them, with strange professions
and true confessions...

in quarantine locked is the mind
never free,
when the body enslaved

you think,
you are free to dispute
this contention

or so you think...

but when you write of your current condition,
understand you’ve lost in thinking winning
the body|mind a single singularity, so
when you smack your head against the Fifth wall,
desperate to believe, concede to conceive that
no in Hindi, same in any language, caged body
is pleased to misdirect, dress up yes, but my elder
wisdom, has read Monte Cristo, and no matter how
you count, until free in both organs,
you can’t count as far as  1,
the nomenclature of unity.

what you leave when you’ve left (mending the tormenting silence^)
 ———————————————————-—————————-


your words rock me, like an old time preacher,
mending, begetting, tormenting,
fire and brimstone you sinner,
if I don’t quit this life of loving words, saloon music,
guitar picking in low down dives,
liquoring and sinning,
choosing to choose poorly,
never and always thinking about the songs
you’ve left behind unplayed, pained

got the sun and the rain and all afternoon,
to contemplating leavings,
the crumbs you let drop,
the missteps took and missed,
drank too much, hurt too hard,
the silence of my history, it’s renting,
unrelenting, tormenting, lamenting and such,
those loves, labors that don’t amounted much,
a slow rush to fall, to count it all

you say, always time to mend what life
has rent, if you spend the time thinking,
‘bout what you gained, what you lost,
the net of both added and subtracted,
what you got, what you gave,
the sum of your begat,
a life’s story, to tell,
of life’s misgiving, unforced errors, and
crimes committed only you know

not sure what the total bill due gonna be,
combining the costs of the here,
the now, what was and wasn’t,
what was said, not believing but yet singing,
so when the check comes,
the summation of your life’s calculations,
get to add on a tip, a good-as-gold saying
it’s time that can mend, but knowing the true costs of time,
maybe, maybe not...

<§>
                         let  them reap what you have sown,
                    for the great designer will surely inquire
       what everybody knows is the forecast standard to be met,
     it is not what, how much you got, but what you begat, when,
                                              you’ve left

in these days of sheltering on the isle-of-isolactation,
a place amazingly located just ‘bout everywhere,
staying occupado is muy importanto

taught myself Latvian, can identify a thousand Avian,
can vacuum the house in ten minutes flat,
can count my steps mentally walking from the bed
to the kitchen and on the way back again, detour via the den

when I get really bored, sneak away to grab the laundry
from the dryer, I’m on fire, desirous of my sanity, fold them twice,
so they’ll be enough nice to meet her exacting standards,
going directly into her highest level, Type A,  storage drawers

but hit a snag, on certain articles of activewear, not to mention
you know, the unmentionables, which don’t present corners or angles
to lend novice folders directional cues, cannot even determine
which is inside out, or outside out, with too many bedeviling straps

too proud to ask for directions, after all I am a grown man,
checked youtube buddy, they had no clue, unless it was a tutorial
on how to remove them bodices from them body, which I will,
study later...but I winged it except for those couple of items

which I hid under her too many bed pillows!

a thousand days, mornings of mortality debated,
irregular they come, days of stranger awakenings,
my soul kept, yet residuals of torn indecision,
what value, do I bring, purposed me for what?

this letter addressed to the however, the whomever,
who know the asking is greatest yielder, creator of
valuable doubts

them those, that beggar the question,
their unceasing answer repeated, confident and
without shame and remorse, their constancy, granite,
the surety of logical visions sourced from the holy dark,
give yourself away, what you got, give, let them take it away

let them reap what you have sown,
for the great designer will surely inquire
what everybody knows is the forecast standard to be met,
it is not what, how much you got, but what you begat, when, left

gave yourself away till ‘tis nothing right is left, and the emptiness
is greatest fulfillment, the slate shared, is the joint fate best reaped,
your best storehouse spent on the sustenance of others, give, away...

Adult Alternative Poem

not for the young, reserved just for the young, just at heart,
your skin, face, crinkled, for smiling is you resting face positivity,
you daily existence free of punctuation, no separation,
your body tilted, falling forward, only direction the chest understands

your words sewn on tapestry of silence, yet voices never stilled,
fingertips spark on command when touch is earnest, casual, fierce,
Bublé, Sting, Daughtry, Allison and Adele, ****** tears commingling,
read her your love poetry & her chest breathing, your oxygen tube

easy to be an adult when the alternatives are all
proximity discoverable, nearness constant, distance an irrelevancy,
age just another construct and love, an ageless deconstruction+
unfinished reconstruction, adult alternative channel, our only playlist

writing poems of love from the lost and found

you go to the closet in the school office,
for having been realtime been schooled in the mischances
of ill-iteration of life enhancing love stories, teach says:

the only peace now to be find from another lost soul
in the cardboard box of one right glove and one left sock,
ugly scarfs, mismatched two left ventricles, hats with lice,
sneakers good for nothing, but maybe some comfort for the lost,
for in the midst of the other miscellanies tales of lost one’s,
a match, good enough, can be found

makes no sense but perfect in its nonsensicality,
a word perfected script of his life, the chest pains too real,
to the gathering of the found, then lost souls, he retires,
perusal of assorted messes, textiles of the human variety,
a good enough accident will be stumbled on, hope restored

it is December and school is closing for winter vacation,
going home with one hand and one heart unsheathed
is not tenable, parent-able and just impracticable given
the coldness of isolation, a mismatched mitten selectee chosen

the yellow hell-o bus ride home is full of tortious interference,
the mismatching hand covering is an announcement of
‘please ridicule the loser’ that will be great, great fun,
I considering doing the undone, that hiding in the
lost and found for two weeks is mighty tempting and
a realistic possibility

slings and arrows of verbal definition slung and spat,
the general hysteria to his Travel & Entertainment account expensed,
but the gentlest shotgun tap of a hand upon his back, reveals a
folded scrap of a notebook page cornered in a cashmere gloved,
in her hand container, taken and secreted for in private-perusal

an address, an email unspoken written invitation to please contact
if you’re home, not going vacationing anywhere (ha!), me neither,
let’s get together, get married, have three kids, and get the hell
out of this frozen hearted land of misery

so I would like to tell you that is indeedy what happened,
so that is what I’ll tell you in fact, that,
that is exactly
what occurred with two more trips to the L & F
for different colleges, different coasts, different continents,
more lost and founds of accidental lost luggage meetings,
long distance loving worn down, too hard, lost, time eroded

till came the realization that love from
the lost and found
might be a meant to be message,
cause those words always end in...
found

“poet, it’s your day,” she says.

groggily growls the growler,
“what’d ya mean?”

“the sun came up today early,
but partly cloudy interrupt-us has arrived subsequently,
worse, the Great Swami Interpet predicts rain comes
heavy this afternoon on our journey home.”

he reflects upon his craggy, scraggly image that is
reflected upon the cold brewed black coffee.

replies carefully without thinking,
“today I will commence writing under
a new guise, a new name, a different persona!”

“whom shall we be today then?”

“come back to bed revelation poet”


sunrain

~for Cathy Leff, curator~


no bugler blaring ‘pay attention’ to me,
no emergent bad news bearish telephone cell call of an absurd tonal,
no alarm clock retaliating agin a humans daily defying double-slap,
no young children sneaking in, with a guard dog in accompaniment,
   joy-ending a deep parental sleep from the exhaustion they induced

but as if shot, the humans burst into alertness,
from prone to moan, they instantly revert, becoming **** Erectus,
gasping from shock troop dreams, and a chest-pounding message,
a whisper growing, an ever increasing crescendo, an unnatural law,

an unsullied foot-stomping battle cry that self-terrorizes, undeniable:

write me, your poem, write me now!

ah, it must be 5:00 am...

the newbie failure complex(ity)

the poems come torrentially,
hurricane, waterfall & tornado are working adjectives
worthy of the task, yet unequal to the unlimited army
of the written dead of unread poems and poets
that occupy the nether of blog, podcast, and poetry sites,
orphan stars in the un-salvaged junkyard galaxy of verbiage

a faceless wight, once alive, now permanently dead,
we shuffle march, chanting each our own newbie poem,
onward soldiers to ignominy and glory so fleeting,
we are forgot before we are remembered

this is life in poetry,
or better yet,
the worst of it, (sigh)
this is the poetry of lives

all for nought,
nought for all,
at least we pass our prison time
in the company of fellow strugglers