morning contradictories: mourning our poems, falling stars


awaken to a sunshiny Saturday,
the lazys, their coverlet of flowers,
inhibit our movements, now, as it nears
high noon, we have yet from our bed stir

August has be-come, the grass pockets
of gray and green, swaths of sunburn brown,
reveal how far along the North American
summer has poetry passed, irretrievable

reading your messages and notes from
world over, lazy licking you poems so many,
delighting, ponderous and oft heroic, as well,
weeping as too many become fallen stars

each grass blade, from earth born and returned,
the nutrients preserved in our sandy soil, intended
to nurture next summer’s poesy new birthrights,
green+browned, weep+smile, mutual contradictories

these poem best friends, passing by each other at lifecycle’s
multi-paths, metaphors for our too many morning stirrings,
most to be falling like stars that, though in motion, need not
come to rest ever, their movement attracts a one…lasting look

it nears noon, it nears this poem’s timely finishing touch,
straighten its tie, smooth its skirted pleats, a forehead
implant kiss goodbye, sent on its way to find its own weight,
no parent ere admit, it leaves, with tear-burst showers falling…

August 1
2020

noon

life has plenty of bad dreams
realized and foretellable,
predictable, inevitable,
typos that go uncorrected
or cannot be corrected

but from time to time
magic appears in an email header,
mistakes intended
for what would life be without
the occasional,
surprise from him,
a Sirprise apprised....

and her, she, her,
knowing his mind
occupado by life's laundry,
sends him a notice of a
Herprize.
-----------------------------
To:            Him
From­ :      Her
Subject:    Herprize
Please hold the evening of April 25th on your calendar
for a Herprize event.  Tie and jacket will be required (too bad!).

To:            Her
From:       Him
Subject:    Sirprise

Tie and Jacket, no can do, as all my ties were accidentally
thrown out by some crotchety person on New Years Day, 2014.

Please mark the whole day, May 12th,
as busy on your calendar for a Sirprise event.
Casual formal (casual formal?) dress attire, please.
Popcorn and other refreshments will be provided.
Socks and **** stockings optional
but recommended for the evening portion of day's events
-----------------------------
the waitress inquires,
"theater tonight?"
She replies,
"oh yes, indeed,
an 8:00 curtain,"

"great, what show are you seeing?"
"that I cannot say, yet,
for it is a Herprize evening!"

the waitress says nothing,
but her smile indicates understood,
and they stupid grin at each other,
at their crazy ways and that the world
appreciates their typographical lives









.

The first cut, indeed, the deepest, for when they cut the umbilical chord, and a life forever, alone, now forever commenced, another
sea of troubles, a cursed journey begins.

"Judge, O you gods,  how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all"

julius-caesar act-iii-scene-ii

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


that which used to take ten minutes
now takes an hour or
two

something's that used to take an hour or
two,
now take ten minutes, give or
take,
(mostly I do the taking)

(or as the little voice whispers, the mostly
faking)

betcha you'd like to which is what
and what is which being bewitched,

I ain't spilling no beans
cause I value my insanity's privacy,
and I don't got to give that up just yet

but if you want the worst of what little I got left,
unhappily I will approach the old muse
begging me giving me something to use,
bad she turns away bad she say

"You all tricked out,
you wares worn,
ye old styles from yester last month
you been styled by
  H&M;
30 days max,
then
ring in the new, and if all sold,
or none-at-all,
too bad for you

then you gotta decide:

wear a watch
or watch the wearing
with  small
pleasures sighed,
confirming,  night-moves,
gonna
Keep On Keeping On
Living

_____


another mourning morning, usual signs of warning,
wanted to wash away the distress signs of no sleep,
turned on the tap, out came only troubled waters,
my only friend, the voice from the mirror, pretending
to be coming from me, speaking: Oh Lord, Oh Lord!

is there no surcease for me, somewhere, can I find,
little bites, small plates, pieces of peace, the kind
of kindness that eases, repairs the dividers of mind,
the country stone fences that been growing wilder,
when, troubled child of 10, window breaking, beyond
youthful mischievousness, evil streaked, so deemed

Give me a boat, give me a bridge, give me a road, a home,
one of those things poets, songwriters about, wax lyrical,
Oh Lord, give me time, 45 seconds, even two or three,
Being strong, being confident, am I not entitled to that,
a boat, sturdy mast, cause sailing from storm to storm,
just glimpsing dry land, is that too much, a pale beyond?

love, nah, a bridge too far, not even on the menu, not blinded,
I am off key, not well enough, between the peaks between,
I am out of sync, bubbling discombobulated, a **** besided, behind,
lend  me a finger, not even a hand, a kernel, not even a cob,
a string, forget a rope, a washcloth to bathe and dry,
lay me down, lay me down, to live, even just not dying.

no plea here tendered,
long time are we past
the boundary of cooling
cooing brotherly tenderness

reason has been Joseph sold into slavery,
nary a Moses, who talks to God, is answered,
be seen or heard, to reconcile the divisive souls
of our fratricidal words

a morning’s reflection,
soon to be gone, passing,
of two pockmarked differing clouds,
scratching this morning blue drenched sky

a white, rotund cumulus rose,
one gray, rough, tumbled, worn,
ill tempered, of rain possessed,
but both clouds, each purposed

but this Sabbath day,
as this pale land reopens,
to bitter cries, minor rejoicing,
wise counsel, foundering, ignorance prevailing

forbearance, a weighty silence, circumscribed,
daytime highlights, disregarded, heads closed,
nowhere to found, just, a colorless pallor, a rasher
of fratricidal words

<>

“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
Have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”


Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman

                                                      ­      §§§

A night of reckoning, calculations repeated-checked, sums divided,
did I use too many, or not enough, words to be understood, verbiage eloquent,
did daytime reveal my poetic meanings, or double-occlude it’s essence?

I have reckon’d Manhattan Isle, circumnavigated its riverbed boundaries, a younger me, by kayak rounded it, from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Battery, 14,500 acres give or take, a lifeatime to complete a dead reckoning, an unfinished full configuring.

but haven’t reckon’d that Earth and I will be entwined/entombed in each other’s arms, until such time, one of us or both, will be reduced to cosmic dust, our pride, our poems, will be equally unimportant and irrelevant, I reckon.

in retrospective rear view perspective, come to understand that we spend every moment of our lives, reckoning, determine the odds of which fork we will take, laugh out loud, for each moment, a poem  is titled, the resultant, a poem - who needs a muse, you’ve got choices!

So, yes, Walt, the questing  answers you’ve requested:
Aye, yes, yup, but no to pride, for pride and poetry in one sentence is
a death sentence at multiple levels, pride, poetry, ego, suicide,...sins,
so better no proud for it is the entree, the invitation to fall-fail...
                                                   ­      §§§§§


12:03AM  Frieday
May 15th
my deadline missed,
but what is three minutes,
but empty pride...
Manhattan Island

I was never told about the sorrows

Bill of Goods,  after 5 beers confesses
that ‘hopes and prayers’ was his boss’s construct,
making a ***** business, an easier swallow

the born babies soon forget the special instructional
video they watch before departing for the lower earth
that reminds of the bi-polar nature of  being human

the script pre-provided each descendant gets rewrites,
because of choices, false described as free, yours, for
there is nothing free in the decisions, each costly difficult

did you ever wonder where the next line comes from?
create it, you mislead only yourself, because you were
told about the sorrow, but just forgot, too too painful