the only definition i know of love is "YOU"
how can i ever change it ??

So you've broken the cycle of addiction
as it's no longer around here today.
You have played a big part in its eviction
and caused it all bravely to go away.

It was good to see its days were all numbered
even though it was around for so long;
you succeeded where the others had blundered
to be standing here with those who are strong.

Keep a clear mind now and be not complacent
to allow it into your life again
for its stronghold may once more be adjacent
in resisting all you'll strive to attain.

But who else here knows how hard it has all been?
You'd only have to look back then to see;
the hopelessness caused before on one's life screen
that captured all those moments which were free.
_______

“and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”  

Walt Whitman

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having recently been on standby for a permanent-entry residency visa
to over & just beyond death’s door, Walt’s prescient prescription strikes my broken breastbone even harder much, than the persistent
periodic pains confirming the breaking and the healing
of this man’s mending of the human centric poetic *****

for this warped heart mine, now rejoicingly rejiggered with some threads and wires to deliver a new but fresh bloodied wisdom,
begs me, eggs me to torrent word streams, but Whitman’s wisdom cautions a new slowness, the wisdom of mortality’s hot breath urges careful consideration of every letter that my second chance, consignment shop flesh, eagerly embraces, to both prescribe and proscribe inside-insights tween the deafening sounds of eyelashes beating synchronized to the revived heart rates rapid renewal and
last second-chances….

torn tween minute torso sensations and the running silence of
a new battery’s internal rapid intervals, the silent timing gaps tween beats leaves-just-enough-space to ask over and over again,
from whence will come my richest fluency? (1)

at 300am, I lay carefully caressing and chewing well each transitory
thought, absent the former energetic ability to just spill,
though highly desired,
now requires, like me,
steady re-piecing together

the steady drumbeat of now-nearer-my-god-than-thee Titanic reflections
demands a slowing rapidity

this I thought before and now ken, even and ever better, that our primary endeavor shall always be the giving, the disbursement of the act of love…for therein lies the healing of each, and wet eyes,
make necessarily concluding this poem about nothing and everything
and I comprehend Walt’s dictum:

my very flesh is a poem,
every sensation a lyric,
every breath taken and returned to the atmosphere
so unconsciously
are my oldest
and newest
3:00 AM poetry companions

My laces are loose
and although it’s comfortable for my toes
It’s been breaking my back