~for Jonathan Larson (2)~
~~~~
where poets dare to tread
knowing the jeopardy to
themselves when their truths
are outed by the light shedding
come the morning’s birthing,
my ending unwritten,
the methodology unknown (1)
<•>
the tabulations final sum
identified by a =  
couplet doublet line
underlining, undermining,
tho the sign indeterminate,
pos or neg,
worse yet maybe,
zero sun-shiny outed,
well,
rue-sighing
must be one of but just
them three tri-bipolar optionalities

the script unwrit
the possibilities vast,
alone nursing home,
an empty dull
barely furnished,
studio apartment
an unnoticed blah, blah blah;
that’s ok

there will be no vast array,
conclave of family & friends,
his stateless status
formed by a choice reenforced by time,
a man chose a solitary tilt,
till it
was a deathly rigid reality factual,
free willed
~~
the irony sweetbitter,:
he who loved love
sometimes writing wrinkles
of only love poetry
but was
stumped
by its consequences continual
&
stumbled
in and out, deep or not at all ,
but only periodic,
alternating decades from
age ninteen

his leavings will be
minimal,
his trail,
dusted under,
and his sense of wonderment
at the atomic elemental
extant and yet undiscovered,
is where will live his
only wisps of his whispers,
heard  ‘pon the backs
of rushing to nowhere
guest gusts of
canyon winds
of his york;
city of naissance

do not protest
nor deviate with debate,
the future unpredictable
and yet curved hewn from,
made from straight block stone
of absolute clarity
of speckled Barre gray granite
~~
mistake this not
for bewailing,
catlike caterwauling,
ever even the bitters,
of short-lived
the in~between now
and resting place finale
indeterminate,
~~
but follow a path of words,
an Appalachian Trial
roving  through forest & civilization,
multiple states,
safe and dangerous
worldly, wormwood wordfuls
all jumble uttered simultaneous

<>
so we dare to ask out loud,
will I die in dignity,
the answer a stale prequel
question obvious answered
in his heritage-styled genes,
with another wink
of a question;

what is dignity?
~~
alone, surrounded by
no one,
matters not,
headstone irrelevant
for this good morning
of cherishing
words and tunes,
adding a line
here and there,
is dignity enough,
and this,
well known to him,
within his collapsing vein's depths,

so the answer
smooth planed and plain:

This,
this is dignity
one more time,
one more winding
spiraling downwards
uplifting
poem

and a
never ending~never the less
&
nevermore
forevermore
satisfactory
answer

Dearest Patty m.,

we admire, admit to raw nailed jealousy
when we read the works superior
with the greatest worn scruffy complementary compliment
a poet
can give to
another scribe

How I wish I had written that,
those very words!

confessing before the world
with our own humility
at the daily dawning of
realization that
morning brings freshness and
insights needy for release and
aborning and the trace of humiliation
that we’ve all  ready
been breached bested
by others,
once again…

BUT
we do not bow!
no courtly arm sweeping,
back bent, at best
a nod of a head
then

privately
we gasp, rent our clothes,
throw the body flat to the floor,

observing seven days of mourning
reserved
for when we morning moan,
daylight groan and loan out our
croissant moon mooing cries to
bemused muses
in the clouds supervising,
as tears of, an admixture of,
an elixir of joy, compassion
and thus refreshed by someone’s
new infant’d christening
we *****. we resurrect, gamble,
throwing ourselves complete like dice,
in to a roll of
stunned stupor of high inspiration
and then make out best work
ever yet

but never do we bow, scrape,
bend the knee, maybe the head,
we mourn our lesser failings
and smile as we flash words
from our eyes,
stored in our mindsets,
our, my best, will
always be yielded up
next
——
addendum
———
seven years ago
in a separate guise,
he ssid it differently
maybe better?
:<•>

epilogue

read my face
incapable of,
deprivation
but how now silent
bow my head to Will
for teaching the way of words
traced upon
a fool or a king's tongue,
two too human,
so that poet may ken
his senses keener,
all for the better,
for the betterment of all

(whimsy - playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor)


——
recent events, minor tumults, additive,
the summing up of wearing,
a slip and fall, financial reverses,
communiques misunderstood,
clanking pipes resounding against
a sonorous soundless soulful sleep, and
the
unrest of disinterest in essaying
thoughts into words into creativity

a far far cry from singing of the whimsy
in life that teases and delights, replaced
by a weariness from the whiners,
who craftily abuse, with deft badly
prosed propaganda propositions,
seeking solace in solitude + add-an-all-inability to forsee the goodness in people,
delimiting desire to inspire, why then
compose when so decidedly decomposing?

lay the ownership of pen-man-ship down
until dealt an inside straight, eyedrops
that open wide, dilate into a wider perspective, a kinder me, and the
patience of a patient awaiting a
healing vaccine against the flu
of whining. so awfully communicable,

will read Whitman, Frost, and those
revolutionary Persians who ken the
revivification of spirit, return from a
there as a refugee
to a refreshed refuge
of here
                            nml

Addendum
———
the chill in the body that’s so
invasive, resisting two sweaters,
a coat named “The De~icer,”
over heavy sweats,
the interior is
frostbitten

The courage to encourage
(‘tis no accident the overlapping
of these two words)
<•>
tilling the fields of beautifully
and freshly seeded words,
gift wrapped in the essays
of the experimenting,
carefully and carelessly toe dipping
in the tooling of shapes and paintings sourced from a mere handful of
twenty six water colors,

in fresh water streaming waterfalls of:
knew
new eyes
new words
newly hewn
combinations

all
upon the early morn bluey sketch,
against a noisy background of a new day’s
first blushing

when the rested brain is so, so
receptive to newness,
itself a word of a
délicieuse lovely phonic
mouth treat

at 6:35an
on an ordinary Thursday

and now an
extraordinary Thursday,
when my inbox of old eyes
is delighted
and crinkly smiling
at the enduring uncovering
of
daring,
earning while yearning,
poets eager to give us freely
the first fruits of
their  hybrid creations

makes an old man
weep new tears,
to accompany
him till the end
of the day,

each tear a diatom of lace upon
an endless river of,
well,
the everything,

a knitting of letters
flaring up with a robust,
Hey!

I am here,
I am aborning

so glad to make your acquaintance
    


                     nml

~my poet friends and friendly poets~

(written in anger, then sorrow,
tinged with regret, but in the end one
has no choice but to forgive and forget)

<•>

the ghood poet knows no boundaries,
lays down tracks of a New England
pond of nirvana,
or across Siberian froze wastelands,
another
salves the wounds of dying soldiers,
and gives away comfort to the dying
with the freeing oxygen of
comforting words

the world of self,
that thing we know best,
thus encouraged by the textbooks,
well,
to have at it, plays whacamole
with your  owned flirtatious emotions,
none too imperious or low down or
garbage dump *****, that yet
cannot be validated by exploratory
over-the-line words pithy

even the florid, tiresome nickel & dime ing
rhyming scheming crutches,
we so oft employ,
yields up stuff that ain’t half bad,
periodically,
though, the blunt of words well crafted
needs
no such delimiting amusing playthings
or imprisoning
I-am-amoebic-pen-tata-meter

take you inspiration from here and there,
the proverbial deep dark of the mind’s recessed corridors of
corrupted consciousness,
or, the
contrail whiffs of the steaming steaming of the contradictions of a
newborn first day’s contrast of-
the wet dew on toes cooling,
while the simultaneous sun warms all
the cheeks,
heats the blood with
a thanks-god-I’m-alive
overwhelmingly overall tickling,

or
not.

write with the tools you have, but keep
them well sharpened, with
insight and revelation,
exploring the rain’s windowed
navigable rivulets,
the musical tempos
of waves and their multi-mystical variations,
and the readers will come like
pilgrims to your  holy land,
wearied and yet so delightedly hopeful,
with tingling contrasting dictions,
to capture and release,
by shattering any
stale notions of adulation
will bring your
audience of holy voyagers and voyeurs
to imbibe so deeply your creativity for the quenching, and the
amen gasp escaping tween
their lips is just a simple holy,
gentling thank you

discard the bad words as ornery and
distracting, veiled in pomposity and
highfaluting, self-saluting, arrogance of
those deeming themselves critical thinkers,
who thrive in the low mud flats of
self-pretension and the reassurance
of a mirror’s reassurance

write straight from the heart,
fill our eyes with the
complexity of the simple
and
grant us the write to share,
in your humanity

craft the work
and
the work
will repay
so stealthily
by secretly
crafting you




                                   nml

early morn (5:00am) scanning, scrolling,
unrehearsed searching and the question
appears in a “loves that got away” column,

(why do all these descriptors start eith S,
I think I know!)

and off on another self-effacing, investigative determination, a mental biopsy of another hopeless cause,
that results in poems too long

though the body and mind are rested,
with six hours of uninterrupted sleep,
and volumes of dreams,
the quest bags a burr in the bed,
(yes, rhymes with head)
but n o t h i n g pops in with a grin,
and a bell ring, stating presumptuously,
why that’s me
and the fault failure fear
in me
engorges

this  really distresses,
with & in a deep sense of awful,
how can I not recall this momentous
illustrative precious precision
proof of why life is worth living,
and worser still,
don’t I get to choose,
isn't this an interrogatory,
suitable for a pre-provided
Multiple Choice Answer?

a pause to collect myself from a
falling into a hole of nefarious negativity spiraling,
suddenly
recalling so many
kind and gentle touching brushes
of your comments re my poetry,
which provoked warm tears

^and one more tine,
poetry has saved
a life^

5:37am Saturday 2-15-25