as our letters age

my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing

practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost

soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that sparked them into action

oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...




Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am

Closing Love Letter Salutations*

~~~

Hugs, kisses, and broken fingers,
Love you now and forever,
Always and truly,
Forever,
I'll love you always,
Longing to see you again,
Thinking of you, unabashedly,
Missing you every moment,
You are My Best,
My heart belongs to you always,
Patiently yours

Patiently, us,
Remembering, us,
Remembering us the way we were,
Written hopefully,
You have all my love,
You know I love you,
Your darling,
Your devoted lover,
Your endless love,
Your eternal,
Your love always,
Your loving,
Yours always

Yours and only yours,
Always...


~~~

http://www.writeexpress.com/letterclosings.html#Love-Letter-Closings

a new born poet-babe was born this day!

more of a surprise to the baby than the
supervising family members in attendance
in the delivery room, they, unafraid of the blood
and amniotic fluid coating the baby’s first
poetic cri de coeur, a screaming wail

for well do they re-envision their own birth

the poet babe cuts their own umbilical chord
with a scissors snipping named and engraved
SEND,
which irony galore, reminds/rhymes with The End,
this misnomer a challenge and soon the babe
cries out in surprise, it is twins, and the second poem
emerging stating in a tone solemnly serious and formal,

”more to follow”

and the room bursts out laughing,
including you!



Saturday Dec. 14th, 2010

"my soul to keep"

this prayer
elegant, simple complexity,
comes me haunting,
every evening,
this notion,
a faint ghosting,
repeatedly reappearing
and nightly leaving,
disappointed,
from between my crumpled, sweaty bedsheets,
departing with a demanding unsatisfied, incessant,
coated with a diabolical, unfeigned challenge  -

write of me,
relentlessly commanding,
right me

only,
no notions,
come realized,
no poem body, resolved solutions,
are easy offered up

your inner voices,
fettered and deterred,
begging you,
screaming,
this one,
defer, defer,
for better days,
for better poets,
who require
no assembly instructions
cannot improve upon it

my distress, sensed;
the lady of  the house,
over the shoulder peering,
sees the moody poem title that
has self-selected to core this poet's core,
for endless torture,
raining down ruinous lamentation

she, ever softly spoken

"good man,
your soul,
your poems -
both mine to take
and
mine to keep

this title,
this poetic obligation
fulfillingly, fittingly,
my responsibility

mine to write
mine to keep
mine to right
mine to mine
for its
bejeweled contemplations

render easily unto me
what I have Caesarean seized,
pried lovingly and forcibly
from thee within

though seemingly rightfully thine,
title has passed,
legally, tenderly,
into your lover's arms

banish poet thine troubled assembled,
ensemble senses,
this particular poem's journey
and the soul that bears it,
released and relieved,
for now,
mine to take,
mine to keep,
and
thy soul,
in mine to dwell,
and
mine to complete"
~

"indeed,"

or,

what she says when she doesn't want to say what she's thinking,
denying me her angered feelings.  

by all your judgmental metrics
the title alone
is a poem,
done

indeed.  

the original
"whatever"

so many stanzas on this,
ramp up my manly ragings -
all begging to say
"I have been released"

but I daren't unleash the hormonal
masculinity
feelings

so, borrow her word
that says nothing while saying anything,
e v e r y t h i n g
you don't want to hear.  

indeed.

nobody knows
the troubles
you've seen

nobody knows them all,
maybe some here/there,
scattered pebbles, strung together in a too tight choker,
as if two hands grasping your  gasping neck,
as if you needed a reminder
of your own hands in slow mo,
cutting off of the oxygen supply,
to merest trickle,
the insufficient
be well

hell
no one knows the precision past,  decision nature
of thine owned Sisyphus boulder,
the one you alone shoulder

so you grin~grimace inside,
when they sincere, but casually bell,
un-beknowning, un-thinking
wishing you one mo' time,
an extra seasonal

be well
~
ah, well intentioned,
but you're getting older,
tireder from the loader,
each time it's tossed your way,
falling to the pitted bowls bottom
all these
be well wishes

it's like a glass of water trying to
fill a well mostly dry,
quench a bonfire of exhaustion,
that only grows stronger,
feeding on its own inexhaustible supply
of good wishes innocently poisoning

I have two* sons.

I hope they

be well