My third attempt to commemorate Joel Frye.

News arrived Mid-May, found me far from home,
found me shock-gasping in a hotel room,
on the wrong coast,
though he sort-of-warned-warned,
about a month earlier, I misunderstood his subsequent
silence, thus it caught me unawares, unprepared,
and strangely grasping for proper comprehension
and the right words, that usually come so quickly,
even too easy~quick, when one’s emotions are
running fast, like a springtime Northwest mountain stream

Imagine a conversation of nine year’s duration,
one of a number forged in the iron-y of poetry,
a most
genteel art.

I found his words above in a comment on a poem (1)
of mine, writ in 2015; the subject, so apropos, to be
ever gentle to thy words.

Our dialogue and mutual admiration lives on and survives,
for bonds forged ex-the world of poetry, but more so,
in real deeds and deals and realized poems come true.

We never met.

Not unusual for an on-line community, where the social, literate
media can foster a closeness surpassing the normative
standard need of the physical,
which nonetheless the absence of that touch is now
deep regretted.


But Joel do not be concerned!

Your words will live with others, as per your desire.

This my promise, this my premise:
A debt of brotherhood that will be,
must be, paid in full.

So let’s begin…shall we…

~~~~

Joel Frye Sep 2015

Friends

Some for a reason,
some for a season; even
lifetimes come and go.
All things are transitory.  Doesn't mean I have to like it.

<>
(1j
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1425812/oh-poet-be-ever-gentle-to-thy-words/

Inspired by Tonya Riddle,
Wife, Mother, Sister,
Nurse, Poet, Gardener,
and a
friend

<>


The littlest things you all say, the lightly remarked,
or weighty beloved ones, 100% guarantee a smile
or a tear, no difference, but all press me to grab
the nearest papyrus, to ink that notion, an
untimely timely near midnight revelation,
requiring a scribing to permanent-seal that moment’s
custom potion, via magnification.

It ain’t easy, kinda of reverse curse from
the many wintry months of the ‘tion’s absence:
motivation, inspiration, perspiration go
on a round-the-world cruise and when
they don’t  invite you along, in-truth,
semi-secretly, poetry is kinda de-relevationed (less urgent)

For I have seen a picture, a memorial garden bounteous,
Jordan’s Garden,
so late night, kind words exchanged in reciprocation,
as we both stagger gently into sleep and a new
twenty-four, and here, and I hear, the realization
thoughts inescapable, demanding: creation, visitation,
& ******, a instantion ripening and

Fruition.

A lovely word this one, for it’s strawberry season
on the north fork of the isle, accompanied by
imported Carolina peaches,
and when the roadside farm stands offer them for
sale, included is a a couple of paper towel slices,
for the fruition juices runneth over
(stain stick not included)

So just before midnight, the electrons and (t)ions inform
that tonight, a calming of words, revelations of affection,
salve the grieving heart that runneth over
which surely was my intention,
as well as a celebration of commemoration, and in
calming you friend, my eyes wet, not realizing, that
I’ve written a smile upon my lips, a precursoration to a
rarity, a well and good night’s sleepy and hallowed
restoration.

7:47 AM Mon Jun 26

You Are the Texture

…………………………

~ for all of you,
you, you poet~



Impasto

“is a technique used in painting,
where paint is laid on an area of
the surface thickly, usually thick
enough that the brush or  painting-
knife strokes are visible.

Paint can also be mixed right on
to the canvas. When dry, impasto
provides texture; the paint appears
as if, to be coming out of the canvas.”


<1:47pm>

Cut & Paste

is a technique used in poetry writing,
we refer back to our visions,
heard words,
the eyeful, the earful, scents,
the reads read,
all in the mind’s palette blended,
thickly, but
when

the merging fused,
every word~in~coloration,
it is unique, reincarnation,
copying impossible.

The imagery, cut and pasted from thy heart and soul,
upon canvas,
your poems~pieces each appear

as you-are-texture,
you becoming out of, you,
the canvas.

<2:04pm>


Postscript*
………………

it is not lost on me that the
scars, our words, herein,
as we note all too frequently,
almost casually,
are, can be, those selfsame
words/painting-knife
employed
for our first and foremost canvas we utilize,

ourselves…
our bodies,
our
very selves
salved

(and I cannot live
from with-out)

<>
a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo

<>

I, too:
          - am an embryonic work in progress,
well into my seventh decade, with no ending in sight


                                I too,    
live in the house of poetry, the address likely differs,
but suspect the innards of the houses differs little,
the decor,  quite similar

         - my house shrewdly requests a rethinking,
                                    noting, it lives my artifice,

with in & with out

Then, we are a We:
                                  
          - my cavities house her, She, Poetry is of Ruth (1) born,

          - Poetry, She, reminds me, ”whither thou goest, I will go”


This duality:
          - where the haunting of words providential,
             emanate, both inhabiting & inhibits my breathing
              She, a fearsome creature, a fearful-something,
for it tears me and shreds tears its demands be wrung
from with in to with out

She, Poetry:
          - leaves me gaping, hollow, fills me with
            depressurizing boreholes exposed to the elements  of
            externalities of an admixed atmospheres, that nature demands             be refilled, fresh in, stale out,
for which the artifice trick is knowing which is which

when Poetry’s  birthing:
          - chest pounds, heart-rate beats heavy metal,
            abdomen contracts, there then, no languid in my language,
            no help untangling the alpha-bet jumbling,
            product of the screams of pushing,
squeezing it forth

you’re hoping to quick-catch newly formed combinations,
for if you fail, a poem
noisily crashes to and through the floorboard cracks,
where poetry’s chaotic glinting etes
maliciously glimmer~winks at me
with a sarcastic thank you

“ah, too bad, another creation stillborn,
gone to rest, biting the nether dust,
without hope of resuscitation…”*

just another unfinished work in progress

periodically
a survivor clean caught, transcribed, edited to be finished,
amniotic fluids cleared,
poem resurrected
blessed with eternal life,
readied to be shared and delivered,
affirmed

and you say to no one and to everyone:

this poem will be our poem,
wither it goes, ascending, descending,
all live in the house of poets,
one house,
many apartments,
each poem a god,
and
my God will be our God,
your God, my God,
in the House of Poetry

<>

you pout and defer, dancing backwards,
claiming, blue is now blackened
from underuse, incapable and incapacitating revival

saying  eyes cannot see, distinctly, neither near or far,
the tremble of love, forgot & distantly absent,
but I know, a heart’s sensory muscles never die,
though weaken they might, underused, un-exercised

denying  that inspiration  
no longer resides with in thy sensitivities,
has fled, undercover of smoking forest fires
all the diurnal hazards that invade, occupying

my internal spaces once filled by poems
you conceived, birthed, in a pleasured haze,
came so fast, you bare recall agony accompanied,
but not the ecstasy of the end resultant!

you know it’s you of whom I write, but,

a note not shaming names, but messages
countless private messages have I sent
begging, beseeching, give me your gifts

once more, you owe me not, though I
oft irritate with my deafening pleas,
yet only denials continue, my pleas ding
but dent not, the tired fear of your exposition

so speak to you plain,
feed my soul selfish
like in years gone past,
there are holes in mine

that require your elixir,
creamy softness that moistens
my face with tears of your words
originating, astound, enfold

not later, not soon, not excusals,
write for me NOW, WRITE FOR YOURSELF,
but leave me not forsaken and thirst un-slackened,

Answer! To whom do you owe your poems?

Stroking


<6:56 Am>

this petite gesture, glorious in effect,
impervious to aging, speaks volumes
of storied nuance and sun powerful to believers,
inherent messages much refined by its singularity

all that can be, will be, transporting the living,
calming effervescence by simplest of motion implanted,
its sensory powers long lingering, instantly, uncovers
the furtive child in us all, tho well we hide it

stroking my woman’s body when errant dreams,
disturb the early morning scheming, returning a placid,
to her steady breathing, exhaling the disturbing,
erasing the fearful that wanders inside our night boundaries

stroking the cheek, of my six year old granddaughter,
pulling back the hair locks that impede her vision,
the whirlwind passes, her body sedates, and her
totality merges into mine, born, borning a Godlike oneness

these fingers air the words that my chest pervade,
there is power galore in their communicative physicality,
but nothing more powerful than skin upon skin, in motion,
continuous, circular soothing the giver and the receiver equally

<7:09 AM>

I am a Taken Poet ~ “The Wreckage of Your Silent Reverie”^

<6:45 AM Sat June 3>

again and again, a peculiar lyric
more than provokes, ******, injects,
no mere head buzzing, sledgehammer
beheaded, no under skin, in my pores,
shedding,reabsorbed, replaying the replay,
until I, will-less, commanded endlessly,
induced, besplay my irritants into my
“take,” for I am an overtaken poet, searching relief

too well, the wreckage refuse of these
silent reveries consume us, and I shriek,
contemplating the years of holey falling,
not hours or days, not weeks or months,
spent in rigorous dreams, facing & escaping,
my guilts, my fork failures, bottling & pouring,
with no relief from screams, head-banging,
nightmare visitations and inarticulate moans

until they form words, projectile ejected,
pollutants upon a clean, white background,
and dispatched to the heavens or nether land,
and to you, here in poem form that brings but a
modicum crumb of relief that empties, buying
time, knowing full well, my cup runneth over and
fresh replacement troops are eager, readily available,
by joining the seesaw border war, splitting my halves

my halves for I am not whole, I am deboned,
and slices fall off of these trough of words,
these statements of fact & fission, uninformed forms,
even worse, formed formlessness reciting repetitive,
inescapable  escapades, dead-ended hell highways,
these poems, all carcasses of me, roadside ****, until,
someone unseen, unknown invisible, removes them
to the largest refuse pile in world, a inutile poem heap

even this epistolary of diary entries offered down for
your bemusement, my expulsionary relief, give but
the briefest analgesic, and a newest version of an oldest
reverie, old friend, comes like the unending beeping,
of a dying battery of a fire alarm, squeaking, unrelenting,
unresponsive to curses or begging till the last ounce
of its energy is consumed, so too I, impatient squeak words,
too many contemptuously familiar yet well hid in new combos,

temporarily pulled from the wreckage of my silent reverie


~~~~~~~~~~~~<7:45 AM>~~~~~~~~~~~~

^ “Oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees
In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Sarah Mclachlan