Feb. 2015

this writ,
content so obvious,
it begs,
why even bother...

Pen Man Ship

this is who you are,
this is your scent, scripted,
the parfume that memory triggers
declarative self-examination passing grades

if pen and paper
are your skin and blood,
then you, man,
ship to shore,
skinned alive,
in poems verbose spill all

ship in ship out,
the glories and the dreads,
expel ink oceans glorious India blue,
rivulets of tributaries,
spillages of what~where,

you are pen
you are man
you are ship

where intersect these routed things,
one is voyage~bound
for parts unknown

the pen be the oar,
and the man, the ship,
and when the sails raised,
the wind never fails,
only there is no
dead reckoning -

for there are no
landmarks observable
when sit~stand
to commence sail~writing

each writ a latitude recorded,
each poem a longitude drawn,
all together, a
body of work,
all together,
your life's coursework
is the captain's log

Pen is the Man is the Ship

in everyday words
he answers
the questions life poses,
in everyday words,
he realizes
the answers he (doesn't) posses,
with each passing poem
the ship, righted,
though the heading
remans unknown

~for Paul & Art~

<>
melancholic, contemplative, introspective,
put on the songwriters of the Sixties,
looking for the comfort of old songs
that I once knew complete, from the days
when I believed, knew my own true self complete,

the tablet lifted, the spirits keening, a forth
will be coming, to soothe and purge, commence to dress my own wounds,
Whitman would be attentive, perhaps
a tad sympathetic, tho my wounds are
entirely self-inflicted

and alone, cry out for an assembly
of words, well chose, smoothly chaotic,
mirroring the lathe of my sharpened
disarrayed confusions, two old troubadours
come to comfort, with sweet harmonies,
and simple, but novel rhymes &
syncopated rhythms that all can
carry, sing along, all of us smiling

with ease, we cross the borders of each
other’s mind, paring snippets into
poetic clasps that keep us well attached,
filing away the roughened edges that
we all in common posses, and like
jigsaw pieces, we finish each other’s sentences, and we emote satisfaction
with smiles, laughs, sighs and sarcastic
groans, our words grasp, connect and

ease is in the air, there but for this grace,
we go together, you and I,
sailing away from
troubled waters

the thought seizes me awake,
after a heart powered hour of sleep,
rise in silent reverie, nary a peep,
though my heart rate breeeches
150 miles per hour, each beat

yesterday wrote of the eloquent
sensibility of simplicity, its natural
native appeal, and when I think of
things that world needs most urgently
which is, for poets a de rigeur activity,
fyi, that more common than uncommon,
sobelieve in my expertise,
we need badly, another Hobbit movie pretty please!

we need rallying after the tallying,
we need fellowship among the species,
a crossover inclusive of the animal kingdom,
require fearless leaders who value selflessness
over personal gain,
less optimism rhetorical,
and some plain honesty to give the world
the equity of equality,
what it wonts,
and not what pro poli’s
tell you think
which slogans sell…well


whent to the corner store,
bot all kinds of fall
colors of berries and tiny flowers,
went all-in unreasonable
on clot colossus seasonal,,
oranges, yellows and quiet quilts of
hardy little greens,
bread, OJ, larger uncaged eggs
a-dozing,
and though my impossible orders all fulfilled, the boss,?her list defeated,
by crossing off
my abbreviated illegibility scribbling,,
it was still insufficient for missing was this:

what the world needs a fresh Hobbit triumphal,
where self~sacrifice always come first, and duty rightly prevails, over evil,
always a close call,
and the chill of fall,
the dint of wint-
er
is warmed away by
love,  justice for all,
besting every close call,
and for a replay of the
World Series where them
Yankee underdogs emerge
victorious and the city lifts
its chin, and says OK to the
new day, week, and that
extra hour of…mmm…
daylight
sleep

call me naive,
it is an honorific
terrific,
great fully
accepted

this trip
homeward bound,
riding the Q (subway) train
from the messy grime of a
never fully repossessed
cesspool misnamed as
Times Square,

to our apartment
near but yet far,
a poem short & sweet was
born complete, on an 8 minute
fast track victory lap to periodic
successful urban planning,

that even and
even though
with and/of
which
no speedy highly
disrespectful witch
on a broomstick,
nor a midnight traffickless
auto trip,
could ever hope
to compete
<>
roses red, violets blue,
all the passengers, revelry tired,
both becostumed & be plained,
Hallowed eve festivities
again, lesser than expected,
life be, eager awaited
legal moment of crazy-
-inness-inward-permissed,
never quiet or as good
as hoped,

we tired riders
all look worn from the
aggregated
infidelities of a
a hoped-for
missing-out happier life

nearing midnight,
the new immigrants,
in subway platform
patrolling,
offer us candy for sale,
their toddler children,
beside them
at this midnight hour,
to drive home
the desperate willingness to

survive in a city oft hostile

no longer eager to be
beacon beckoning
to the world, we rethink
to our minded selves,
our Statue of Liberty
engraved invite:

"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door”
<>
we exit the underground rout(e)
and the walk from subway to front door
is another 8 minute travelogue segment,
we cover the quarter mile on foot,
covering a skimp of distance that
our urban transport  
of many mileage covered
in the same units of minutes
in flyer miles

<>
late at night,
we walk fast, with eyes wide,
our lives to hide,
from the risks of the
unpredictable
when the street parade
of stragglers
gives not the comfort of a
rowdy crowdy,
and the existence of crime
is not
entirely fabricated

<Did>
I offer short and sweet,

Oh well I only misled,
the trip 16 minutes
and the poem
in my head,
complete emerged
with minutiae attending
et. al.,
in far far less mini~minutes,
for it was
a product of
silent back labor,
from first staggering
screaming pain
to
successful unexpected birth
that can take maybe
minutes five,
to mentally survive
plus,
physically complete the birth,
introduce this poem to life.
when the photos of my mined mind
make images from negatives
into words,:

collect, sort and report the
output picturesque
now in colors black & white,
of a trip from a Broadway theater
through to a high rise building
astride the river
which gives me
a theoretical cleaner space to breathe
<>
rather than short and sweet?
I really reseed,
redeed it as/is:
not too long and a tad
bittersweet

a night in the life of
the mixture of successes and
failures of our troubled world
in
living technicolor,
a few seconds of film
of which one could fairly,
and in fairness
bless/write/curse/
each sight
twice,
uttering:

”mine eyes have seen the glories,
as all come to look for America”

~ for the poet Lorca (1)~

<>
we spoiled citizens of
our
United States
have little facetime,
nor hands on familiarity
with fascism
even less with global geography,
and that tiresome subject,
h i s t o r y

but it’s a disease
just like malaria,
that has never
been fully eradicated
(ya didn’t know?)

and yet,
malaria has a treatment,
a cure, even a vaccine,
as does
fascism

something muy valuable,
free for the taking,
but not freely necessarily,
freely given,
a commodity
with its own supply and
demand curve

it is
commonly known,
but not necessarily
commonly available at any pharmacy,
generically labeled
f r e e d o m!

this disease
is however
attractively packaged,
it is not embodied in an
ugly mosquito,
so many eager to embrace
its potential praises,
ignoring the deep sea
trenches of pitfalls
that encase it

for it has the elegance of
simplicity
the simplicity of
eloquence  
whose glittering
is an attracting
disguise of deadly poison,
the infamous elixir of
a “cure-all”