“They say everything can be replaced,
Yet every distance is not near”

”I shall be released” Bob Dylan

                            ~~~~~~~

this fragrant lyric,
burro-stubborn, hot burr burrows,
into an old man’s deteriorating brain,
one who spends nowadays, mending,
stretching short hours to feel lengthy,
by reviewing the distances he has travelled,
means/meanings to/for unalterable endings

when time hurries
to shrink distances
tween them points,
of incidents logged,
forking roads, always
wrongly chosen,
safety over bravery,
easy pain over hard love,
miscalculating time
and memory,
prioritizing avoidance
of the unknowns ******* up
the risk of the best laid guesses,
those things that come to be
the chiefest fete of contradictory
ironies, the travelogue nearly done,
what never happened
cannot be replaced.

he sings dirges
for the remains of the day
and other things vaguely recalled.

2/2/2022 ~  7/17/2022

~but, yet, another love poem~

In the thousands of years of Earth’s foregoing,
marking the reign of humans, all seeking sapience,
full well knowing, neither first or last am I to mark
this day’s commencement with a need, a desiring,
to notate this not unusual but definitively unique
calendar entrance with a tribute, neither requested,
but freely given to the person who lies beside me.

Did I wake commanded or so compelled to scrabble
a collection of words, sequences, initially disordered,
into a shape, to chisel these sendings of a chest into a
living disbursement, a marbleized breathing creature,
that empties and releases a sensory disposition rambling,
rumbling into a messy, utterance of sentience while they
sleep quiet, pockmarked by dreamed mumblings, dreaming?

No, I did not.

News headlines come demanding see me, insistent that
I am urgency, but one displaced by the next, making them
instantly stale by pealing replacements.

This poem, a self- appointed task is now eased, story spent and spurted into a lifespan of a length unknown and untold.  But, and  yet, here I end, ceased and not resisting, demurring, desisting another stanza, The hour approaches the seventh hour after midnight, rising time.

Go now.

The choring chords of fibrous tasks that stitch existence into
a sustaining impertinent permanence, list-crossing-off, a-nagging.
The itches of living, ask for scratching, 1st cup of coffee making,
but smile bemusedly that this first and freshest to do, newly added,
is done, dispatched with a line-sworded satisfying crossing off.
She sleeps on, while I soon to rise and quiet paddle to the
kitchen where kept the utensils for sustenance,

But, and yet, I am contented, miraculously, simultaneous,
emptied and fulfilled.

4-14-2021
NYC
7:18am

The Confrontation

he is stirred by buzzing thoughts, irritating him to wakefulness;
mobile, random and annoying for they last but a moment and
his sticky flypaper hands cannot capture and eradicate them into
existence fast enough to make them permanent, shareable and eased.

5:54am
Tue., the seventh day of the sixth month of MMXXII

postscript

he desperately fails to recall the world word labyrinth that urged him to rise and capture the wild animals that roared and removed his half-notions from the lifting fog of consciousness. Alas, they are just like specks of new sunlight upon a linen of grassy, newly watered wet greens; here today, instantaneously, gone and gone and gone. Instead,
he writes of their early death and mourns the brevity of their beauty,
and thinks not of the wasted times of the last seventy years.

Have writ of the return to our sheltering place so oft,
sanity suggests move on to a topic lesser revered, yet,
the throb of compulsion is irresistible, immovable, irrefutable!
so the fingertips tango step over a white screen dance floor,
looking, for old steps, new combinations, awaiting reincarnation!

as if self-denial was even possible, sanity and need are irrecusable.

Every exodus requires a commencement miracle, ours annualized,
the small SUV engorged, supplies-swollen, a Chanukah oil miracle,
time & space expand - always enough, calm stating, ¡más! accepting
all offerings and longings, rolling merrily along the worn paths and hamlets of Indian origin, voyagers, port to port, till we are destined,

free forced to isle~ferry, to-exhale relief; Here! an embraceable peace.

Water~bounded, isolated isola, surround~sounded tween two spits of land, two forks, two tines, define/defend its in~between persona,
welcoming but skeptical, welcoming but take note, we all become an islander, even by osmosis, distinctive, in~possession of a collective history of heroes memory, inscribed names, on our ferries, highways, & eyes

we all become sheltered islanders, serving by remembering….

Memorial Day 2022
Shelter Island

~another love poem~

In the thousands of years of Earth’s foregoing,
marking the reign of humans, all seek sapience,
knowing full well, neither first or last am I to mark
this day’s commencement with a need, a desiring,
to notate this not unusual but definitively unique
calendar notation with a tribute, neither requested
but freely given to the person who lies beside me.

Did I wake commanded or so compelled to scrabble
a collection of words, sequences, initially disordered,
into a shape, to chisel these sendings of a chest into a
living disbursement, a statute, a marbleized creature,
that empties and releases a sensory disposition rumbling
into a messy, mediocre utterance of sentience while they
sleep quiet, pockmarked by dreamed mumblings, dreaming?

No, I did not.

News headlines come demanding see me, insistent that
I am urgency, but one displaced by the next, making them
instantly stale by pealing replacements. This poem, a self-
appointed task is now eased, spent and spurted into an
lifespan of a length unknown and untold. Here I end, ceased
and resisting, demurring, desisting another stanza, The hour
approaches the seventh hour before noon, rising time. Go now.

The choring chords of fibrous tasks that stitch existence into
a sustaining impertinent permanence, list-crossing-off, a-nagging.
The itches of living, ask for scratching, 1st cup of coffee making,
but smile bemusedly that this first and freshest to do, newly added,
is done, dispatched with a line-sworded satisfying crossing off.
She sleeps on, while I soon to rise and quiet paddle to the
kitchen where kept the utensils for sustenance,

I am contented, miraculously, simultaneous,
emptied and fulfilled.

4-14-2021
NYC
7:18am

~for Steve and Marshal~

they crouch round,
white wide eyes,
their skin, *****, like
the darkness that
completes their near
invisibility.

new child arrives when
it declares I’m here, not
seeking acclaim, just a
witnessing to its slimy
amniotic messy, amnesiac
birth.

what does it say, what,
does it know? the stilled birth
of permanent incompleteness.
though hardly alone, it has no
siblings, though, it has much,
much company.

these half-writ poems predestined
to never see light of any kind, neither,
sun or moon or bare bulb glare, bred
to never age, never die, their ultimatum,
to be discarded when the bytes, their
geophysical representation is tossed
into the crusher bin, recycled, reformed,
but still always half-breed, half-writs.

nml
Apr 2, 2022
nyc

~for Robert C Howard, inspired by his “From Many, One”

I know nothing of poetry…

or ballet or symphonic works; a ******,
a passerby, a glimpser of other’s artistry,
neither can I add, nor delete, just observe their
intersection, a triplication, and yet, a snowy
Saturday Sabbath is colored now by their story

a  story of many, a symphony playing a concert
of harmony, the notes are grunts and shoutouts,
the high notes of squealing tires screeches, the bass
of growling heaving hearts, engines-beating revving,
music growing louder, to a crescendo of resounding success

sudden silence is the fiercest applause, a reverbing
mark, echoing in a forested heartland, quietly absorbed
into the scarred bark of the witnessing trees, adding a minute moment to their long playing recordings, approving  an
endeavor of many unasked, self-tasked to help, many into one…

a merging of a singular memory

the missing accents (in a poem composed in French)

~for Elisa Maria Agiro~

are neither missed nor lost,
are neither essential nor essences,
for the heart of the poem dazzles!
for the life well dreamed, dazzles!
the simplest truth needs no spices,
life, it is glorious, the glorious spark
of god, living and breathing within us,
no matter the language, no matter
the accent, that is our mission!