(~for Stella Marie, a newly arrived poet here at HP"
who asks, "when does a poem truly end?"~)

She's off,
to a fancy, long gown, dinner dance, with her dancing partner,
a relationship that predates my arrival, my tired song reminder,
"but don't forget who's taking you home" has aged out from repetition,
and now she slips in beside me 'round midnight, and more often than not
so smooth, so silently, I wake up to early morn poetry writing time
and there she is, a Britbox ****** mystery dissolving on the tv screen,
earpoded and still miraculously,
deeply asleep

before she departs, poses for a final inspection,
demonstrating my wonderful
ability to adorn her gorgeous jewlery,
and sardonically modest, critique her with, an
"as expected,
you looking gorgeous"
which evokes her soft smile, at my soft edged compliment

but earlier, whine like a grown man on a diet (so pathetic).
there is nothing
sweet to eat for my apres dinner just(ice) dessert,
and leaving me chicken soup salty and
aggravated...she in a neutral tone,
a child practiced tone,
"go check the fresh fruit drawer, there is fresh fruit aplenty,"
and I, mentally comparing my desire for a raisin scone,
or vanilla butterscotch swirl,
to the taste bud reaction unfufilled,
find the clear plastic box of fresh blackberries,
like Leornard's tea,
that comes all  the way from Mexique,
and inelegantly stuff my face...

been writin poetry since early morn, pre~sunrise, through first daylight,
and now eventide, she's off, the apartment gone quiet, as I munch on twelve blackberries I have extracted to ease my sweetness lacking

but blackberries are ****, ******, that won't quell my inner needs,
of course, the notion of twelve blackberries, says, mmmm, could
be a poem in there somewhere, and the muses whisper asides, clues,
hints and apparitions of trite not quite ripe  lines and verses that might
be apropos to a poem so ilked and milked (sorry), AND that word hits me
tween and behind my blue gray eyes,  

T A R T
----------
with its mulivariable shades of meaning,
which amuse. and I love,
but also accuse me of possibly be distracted intowriting
bad poetry,

and wonder how the tongue disassembles our food,
separating their essence into the varieties of taste sensations,
sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory

and reflect how wise these tiny tatse buds know
just how we humans sort people into categories that
mimic  
just how knowing, assess, categorize,
our fellows humans
along the same principles,

how can there not be a supreme intelligence,
that designed our bodies so similarly
and yet so differently,
and efficiently?

something if we thought about more,
might make us less inclined to blow each other up
with such genteel aplomb.

apologize for dragging you through this rambling essay,
but it came about when Stella Marie
asks, "when does a poem truly end?"

it ends here, when you captures the flows of the living currents
we surround ourselves with, reaching out to capture their
flowing parfume essences,
the sweet, the sour, the savory,
and connecting them to a larger envisioning,
which how we operate,
why we do not ignore spectacular sunrises, sunsets,
the "curve of a wrist"
how an ankle turns a leg into a finished sentence,
how tears confess true emotion and clarify,
even though they actually intefere with seeing,
and now its time to depart, end this long rhyme
about longing,
for something sweet
and the short answer is,
jumbling and humbling,
"you just know"
for she's back and read this poem,
and tartly replies directly,
and answers your question

                     nml

for she
<>
"I choose to love you in silence, for in silence I find no rejection.
I choose to love you in loneliness, for in loneliness no one owns you but me.
I choose to adore you from a distance, for distance will shield me from pain.
I chose to kiss you in the wind, for the wind is gentler than my lips.
I choose to hold you in my dreams, for in my dreams you have no end"

Rumi
<>

writ in a time, for when
there is never enough,
and yet,
always, waves of too much,
needy for
filling feeling fulfilling

We must learn,
be self taught to:

"Leave a tender moment alone
You got to leave a tender moment alone
Leave a tender moment alone
Leave a tender moment"

ah the tender time is nonetheless
rightly and wrongly
rightly now,

for I have stumbled,
overheated, sweaty, from the night bed,
at 4.30am into another darkened toom,
and I have smacked~stumbled into
Rumi
and her

our paths continuously intersect,
in the same but
in different cities, continents,
and yet,
diffident, differing,
we silently choose
never to close those lady~last few miles
and tie the knot of
eyes, skin, lips
the instruments
that transmit thousands of
neuronal explosions that
seal the deal

so we write in poetry,
in silence broken by the gentility
of fingertips soundlessly
and yet,
boundlessly rocking,
explosively soundings of
tap tap tapping

my music mocks me,
it is definitively god interfering,
advising, conspiring,
wiring into my brain
better lyrics,
idealized notions,
exactly appropriate
and appreciated

with the lyrics urging me on,
and that we must be
self taught to:

"Leave a tender moment alone
You got to leave a tender moment alone
Leave a tender moment alone
Leave a tender moment"

but my heart trembly refuses,
insightful informing
that now,
now! is
the moment to exchange
vows of words,
though un spoke,
they require
written completion
through
& though
apart, alone,
to finally out loud confess
what has always been known, only to each other,
to be
so real

and yet*,

we will never exchange
these sentiments
in out loud words

but though this be lacking,
it will never
diminish
their  ultimate
intimate
truthfulness

and I ask,
is this a poem?

surely
it is that, and
so much more,
an essay, a letter on
invisible NML stationary,
a heart carving in
an oaken barrelling of
ancient vintagery

and that interloper,
Him again,
eavesdropping
on this private communication,
insists that I draw deep
from her favorite
singer~songwriter,
words that say it better,
that for real seal the deal,
in the saddened perfection
of total, enwrapped,
silence:

"Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence"

and
it is time
to finish this task,
it is exactly one hour,
no time at all,
to complete a love poem that
is/was complete,
even before its
composition
and yet,
is never to be be familiar with
the finality of
completion
<>

postscript:

I taste your private shed tears,
hear the howling sigh,
but most of all,
'tis the explosion of
a deep smiling creasing
your lips,
spreading in all directions
saying and stating:

at last, at last!
a lasting, a confessional to you god,
though,
a through and through
silent
jubilation
                                              ­             nml

April 8, 2025
530am
New  York  City

~ for the poet by the same name,
Melan,
a name derived from the Greek "melas"
meaning "black" or "dark"~
<>
oft have we warned you, be wary,
every phrase, a provication,
a cribbed script from a message,
a poem, even a pen name, says,
marke me man, the notion of the
Melancholoy of Innocence
a burr buried in my head's bed,
a sleep robber, a pseudo~scholar,
so intriguing this grand challenging
notion...
of the purity of melancholoy's essence

my oldest friend from an early age,
before I knew the word to grasp~capture it,
in my youthful tristesse grave,
what rendered my soul so vulnerable
to an emotion that had no direct visible cause,
but powered me with a puzzling
strange insight of keen visibilty,
that filtered a glow about all, about what
my eyes saw, my heart felt...

nearly now, the better part of a century,
I recall the first days of exploration,
of a world, that
dished out equal portions of
ecstasy and misery,
and well taught me the value
of silence
of observation,
and how to record
a memory so that so many, so many decades later,
is crisp with its original fraglity
that overwhelmed way back when
I was but a toddler

a world that was cruel,
a lesson, that came very early,
but made me quiet but not surly,
observant of the human quirks and their potential,
the people surrounding acting in an up dated version
of a Bible Tale..

where guilt and innocence were precise and clear,
and there was no middling muddle,
to confuse, or be abused,
to obfuscate or obscure

lines of demarcation in black clearly drawn,
so it was soon gone, the innocence,
that was gifted to us all at birth,
and though I mourned its loss,
very quick came the silent thought of,
well, that's no surprise!

that melancholy matures, extends and distends,
now and then, even shocks,
by the newness of returning old sadness,
and the ceativity of its constant reintroduction,
accompanied by a startled,
well, that's no surprise!

and here the shocker though,
acts of human kindness are not so far and few between,
just perhaps, less well advertised,
so when spotted. self similar words emerge,
even happy shouted,
well, that's a surprise!

~an artwork beneath our feet, yet invisible to
our eyes, constantly changing ,interlocking
interlinking~

this poem has asked for composition
everytime, I walk upon and past the sculputure
beneath my feet on the Esplanade by The River

(Diatom Lace on the East River - Stacy Levy
www.stacylevy.com › projects › diatom-lace-on-the-east-river)  (1)

but as I daily hurry past (for years) and over this pattern form lifted from the
river's flowing,
a daily delaying,
for the words good enough to honor it, the invisible floating floral tentacles,
attaching each water molecule to the next,
do not arise of sufficient quality of wordsmithy,
the Whitman words do not float up from the waters rushing past,
and come to rest in my multi-tasking poetry conceptuals

many months, even years,
have gone by and after every water walk,
the sculpture stabs me guilty,
of procastination,
and an unwillingness to tackle it,
like the other tough stuff that haunts me

so this morning, when I drown in the file laughingly called
100 & One Drafts
a J'accuse (1) finger stabs my eyes and repeats the caveat of the sage
Hillel the Elder: (1)
If not now, when?

and even as I sit and compose,
the words refuse to surrender unto me
for easy transcription
and the chest tight with guilt, from all the
promises I've made and remain
unkempt & unkept,
that stunt and stun my spirit,
with inconsolable sadness

So
I distract myself,
check the sleeping woman<
take my morning meds,<
reheat my "The Gamblers Mug" (Cezanne)(1) of morning coffee,<
and alas, at last, once more surrender to my worst,
and issue an invitation to >you<
come visit me, come walk with me,
perhaps together, a greater good will emerge,
and we will feed each others tongues
with syllables and sounds,
that will trigger,
go figure!
a suitable poem
worthy of a great art work,
the lace of diatoms
in the water,
that our eyes cannot see,
but our hearts
can feel
and with better words,
be so honored,
by a poem
truly worthy
of this

miraculous
conception

"A yummy granola of uneven stanzas, metaphors and similes, meditations, and confessions."

<>

this is I’m told
the how of how
I script,
I like granola though not
necessarily my premieur choix,
unless I’m breakfast buffet’ing
in Switzerland

and the all white mountains urge me
to climb aboard

I do not quatrain or cinqtrain,
my plan of attack is
****** and parry, defeat the
white enemy of empty,
with love my soul delivers
that which is rapidly transiting,
decomposing in my lobes,
awaiting perhaps reassembly and
reanimating in a new combination

employ the employees of writing
with liberty for all and
allegiance to none,
and the wild child within calls the shot
and asks only one question:
what do I deserve,
more importantly,
what do I know and owe you?

The number of noise complaints in the City of New York exceeded 750,000.
<•>

that
does not
include the
shrieks and screams of the
unfriended,, unloved, overwhelmed sad l~onelys
that
have the courtesy
uncommon
to add
their cries of the heart
that are best stated, sung &
satiated & sated

s i l e n t ly