a thousand years ago, wrote a poem called
“why I always carry tissues”  -
a labor of love to
mine own toddlers misadventures,
requiring love covered in tissues so soft,
yet an ironclad coating
of natural substantive parenting
useful for tearing eyes, running noses,
and the cuts of living outdoors joyously

children grow older and oft that means,
they seek not your counsel,
and if offered, politely ignored,
for so it goes tween fathers and sons

then one summer days you receive an
observation, a datapoint that irradiates,
a quiet confirmation that not everything
you’ve said and done has gone astray

a young’un of “almost ten,” informs her father,
around the luncheon table of three generations,
that her foot is hurting; the son, now the father,
diagnosis renders, a blister, which will require
a protective custody that will protect the child’s
feet from the ravages of furious Shell Beach fun,
or the rough of a Manhattan sidewalk

I watch with a joy so quiet and so overwhelming,
as the son-father reaches into a cargo pocket,
producing not one but two bandaids, for life
requires backups for there are other babes about,
who at moments notice, produce scrapes and cuts
of ever greater consequence for each year they age

his wife renders me overjoyed, when she dryly
observe how certain children are lucky that
their father always carries bandaids, a new factoid,
for me, an unknown that glistens like a wet shell

now my eyes tearing, for a message in a bandaid,
or a tissue no matter which, is a certified proof,
somehow a message got through the clutter,
marked “well received,” that loving well requires
an oh so very hard attention to details, and that deep pockets
are repositories of good notions, handed down generations

June 24, 2021

Shell Beach

bless the parents

who grow their worry lines,
a slow etching upon their face,
every night, a fractional addition,
what will the future hold for the children,
wandering tween wondering and wonderful

I am among the parental plenitude, who
struck a deal with the authorities of life,
pleading, demanding, coercing, begging,
take my years excess, give it to the children,
and spare them famine, thirst, war, sickness...

give them children, and spare them too the worry,
ban those crinkled lines, provision only smooth faces,
never let them never wonder, the accursed how,
will they be alright, & let them read this poem,
and laughing ask the surrounding atmosphere

whatever made the old man write such nonsense?


April 10th 2021 @5:38 AM

“Ah you hate to see another tired man / Lay down his hand / Like he was giving up the holy game of poker”
Leonard Cohen
<>
“Will I remain within God's house at night as shadows drift through dimming my light?”
written by Weeping Willow, gifted to me, by Edmund Black
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I,
in­stant understanding, perhaps in my experiential possess,
some answerings perhaps...product of late night, many, many
theological arguments over poker games, with coarse men,
tough women, and ethically-challenged Gods, all faithful regular attendees

With a little bit o’ luck from an occasional guardian angel, even
I possess an occasional winning hand.

now we all commence with a passionate uttered blessing,
for the good beer and salty pretzels, giving thanks for having
reached this act-exact moment of being, here and now, in God’s house at night, plus a holy add-on variation, a swear-to-god (we all snicker) promise solemn, no cheating, no absolutely divine peeking/spying in soulful futures, no fun in that, sanctified & sealed with hearty amens and ****** noises offered for emphasis.

hear you scratching you head, wondering what all this to do
with a whispered prayer of soulful, on-shore drilling deep,
product of a drill bit cutting the black quietude of interstellar voids internal, where there is no censorship, lying an impossibility, and the only questions are super hard, so some never return with an answer truthful

so, I remain in God’s House, playing poker, with deities who
jealous guard their moments as human facsimiles...cherishing humans who guard with care, an ability to see that they and gods differ little, when making honest truth a shared primacy

in the intimacy
of an overnight stay
in God’s house at night,
all our coming-led light dims,
when my/their need is greatest!

(written sometime this year, Jan. 2021, Manhattan)



~~~~

10,000 steps to a poem

<~>
walk to save my visions, my subterfuge-self, trying to
encapsulate the moments, seconds of nano-instances of a
tableau of histories, of actions becoming interactions,
a physical mitosis, ground into one human paste of word-cells
by a singular mortar and pestle that more than blends, but condenses

walk in Whitman’s footsteps, prowl old cobbled
streets seeing them anew, listening to the patois
of each skyward pathway, a commingling of
catechisms, Tefilot, Salah, Stuti Karana, into a stampede becoming a tornado funnel of a multivariate alphabets singularity - a prayer|poem returning to birth-mother

rush homeward desperate to retain the holy mess of verbal music,
before aged eyes release the visions, into a heavenly lost but found
depot of single lefty gloves, snatches and refrains, hymnals, phrases,
10,000 preservation band steps keeping but scraps, weeping
for the so much lost, yet blessing-uttering thankful for this one,
to a one


who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to
this moment, to this season.

4/4/21
1:50pm
~writ by night, daylight born~