when the time is best described as
"the morning muddled middle"

for it is the middle of the night,
and yet,
we have crossed over the midnight divide,
the new day is well commenced,  
but the prevailing dark sky says,
not quite yet!

this journey,
from the bed to the head,
is an abbreviated 20 steps,
you fall out of one,
unable to recall,
hours of vivid dreams,
now only scraps of script,
visions, whipped into the void
of the current blanket of a
night cosseting silence

in return for this
adventure travelogue,
you are granted free access to the top of your skull,
where apparently,
a new set, a fresh combo,
has been delivered, not by Amazon
not by messenger, not by the USPS,
but by your own,
fermenting, fermenting, formidable,
yawning
brain cells
and a poem appears,
wholly holy complete
space, typed and neat,
and falls from your lips,
filtered by your eyes
with no hesitation,
"and not a trace of farewell

and this miracle,
is no miracle at all,
for it is routinized,
a daily occurrence,
the mystery of it
long gone,
The How,
dissipated, disappeared,
and delivered unto
You

your obligation, your need,
your urgent pungent
purging,
is strifeless,
and you owe
but you have no idea
to whom or what
to thank for this
bestowing

is this poem a stowaway?
or did it pay for its passage,
in cash, by credit card,
or barter ?

if by barter,
what did I surrender?
what item or thing of great value did I trade
for this permissive missive
that was created
for the soul purpose,
of being shared?

it's birth was painless,
the cutting of the cord,
was never felt!

and within minutes,
it went from birth to babe,
child to adolescent,
young adult to middle aged,
to now,
a senior senile senatorial
presents itself fully formed,
weaned wise and wizened
and served to you
on white porcelain dishes,
with black cutlery

so fresh, so hot, so new,
that you are the first
or perhaps the last,
even the only
to ever taste it…

I ask for your forgiveness,
though invited
on this journey to this meal
and it's many courses
and its mirrored ball of
disco discourses,
it is signaling,
like a wise fool frantically waving,
enough!
telling you that you
have arrived
at an ending,
that we each name,
Our Destination


so be it
so be it
so it be

now a shared property

<>
            

  NML


April 15, 2025

labor commenced
at 2:27 AM
and the poem~baby
with all its limbs, all its senses,
was delivered to you,
its adaptive & adoptive
parents
at 3:22 AM

so good night, good day
and good luck!

(~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

Dear Patty,

I have never met a child or a poem

born to live a free verse life,
willingly submit to patrician
powdered **** cheek horror at
the unconformity of escapading,
river rafting verbal tumulting,
never awoken needy to be yoked
by syllabic laws of brutalists,
jailed by autocratic diktats of meter,
or the iron confines of lines formatted,
imprisoned, once set free, they then opine-id
prithee prithee, prithee please sir
on
my license plating,
can I whine,
write free or die

bind me not by the rigid sharpies
of executed orders, or count the numbered
breaths tween my freedom riders,
escaping with grinning faces
shouting seen-u-around, and
don't forget to say
bye bye
to the tortuous
pretense of them
haiku hi hi hooliganisms,
and the amoebic
pentameter of a
speare chuckere
who was foolishly glad to trade
the kingdom of freedom
for a besaddled horse
led around by
the reign of ruthless rules

is this crystal-a-line clear
my dear?

these are the scientific observerations I’ve
witnessed, recorded, tallied and allowed
to impact my judgement

compiled upon my diurnal voyages in the sea of humanity across the cityscape of my birthplace

this not a disclaimer, for I neither disclaim
or claim anyone, as my own, more a clearing
of the chest, that also clarifies the senses, to better observe, interpret and weigh subject to
human biases and frailties, which makes for
better poetry
<>
A women. a mother, beside her a daughter,
of the horribilis annos age of early teenhood,
her face  a dull rose~pink, obvious tear streaked, but what strutk me odd, the mother
sits at a 90 degree angle, face turned down and away

and I suppress my urge to comfort the youth,
that things will by law custom history and
natural law of the philosophers, perforce
she~teen will survive, even prosper, as I speculate what ailment specific has caused them to sit on this bench, by my river shared, and find no comforting by its majesty, it’s current sweeps away the debris of worried fears, returns wisdom perspective,  and all this will pass by my inpressed guarantee upon the air we both share full of
promise

but i am puzzy by the mother, who drapes
not her arm around, nor speaks as if she knows that volumes, pyramids of words have a pointed top, past which they can go no
further

sympathetic for I have comforted many,
and well cognize the tipping point when
the intersection of frustration, exhaustion,
and love succumb to the knowing point,
that only antibiotic soul salve is time,
and the silences of caring even when
unspoken

but I walk past, for in new york city there are
big boundaries one rarely crosses until and
unless invited


as I travel my well worn path on a sunny chilly October day, when one is capable of
delulding oneself that summer gods and
light
and warmth yet exists,

see many; the handsome and the overwhelmed, who move in vacuum tubes
of isolation, observing the First Rule:

Make No Eye Contact!

a safety device to preserve you in a protective bubble of safety from the uncontrollable,
the risks of possibility, for failure has so
many imagined risks, and it is so much easier to imagine the worst, rather than finding tokens of the best humanity can offer

I know this rule well, for my experimentation
includes my walking with an always smiling
face, that ranges from whimsical to fantastical,
but for the little children who give me an unutterable joy, as they explore the world
with no hesitation and are yet unaware of the First Rule, not due to arrive to another decade

once in awhile other observers, see this well,
handsome,well maned, old man with the
fixed smile from the tiniest corner of the nearest eye, and cannot help, but instinctively
return this breach of the lonely peace the
river ample provides

and you tally this reactionary outcome and
well versed in statistical theorem, can safely
report that the frequency of said occurrences
is .01%, with a degree of confidence after numerous walks, that 99% this the best this occurrence that can be obtained

and you ask if this is a poem?

as you ask so often, when I lead
you down this gated garden path of my
envisioning walks, where I pluck  poems,
good footed or bad, from the steady
breeze that whisks away my tears,
from whatever source they be triggered
sorried dad, or glad, joy or the Oy! of pain,

and apologize to old codgers with too much time on their minds, about its failure to be be brief, but grief is never short or  sweet,
and when I'm on my knees still trying
to understand the ticking mechanism
of the human heart, there just never
seems to be enough letters in the alephbet
to say all that needs saying…
after I-deliver a real cup of
strong, no milk to the barely
roused woman, will dandy don
safari hat, binoculars, freshly scrubbed face, attach that grin to my outerwear, go forth and catch one or two stripers, perhaps a catfish, or
a porgy, a smile and even a poem too…


oh,
and yes,
this too, an only love poem
for us all

~ for spygrandson ~

with deep affection


https://hellopoetry.com/spysgrandson/


<>

I am en~titled
by him,
commissioned by his exacting wording
of this poem’s titular naming,
all my previous attempts are failures,
over designed, too artistic
for his modest self~reckoning &
bearded demeanor,
they demanded
denial with
request for
simplicity of an unflowery
reckoning,
a clean shave,
so to speak…



a potholder of simple design,
a modest picture self-drawn,
but his stories are
sorties tall,
he draws you in, worthy draftsman sketches
of words, tales short, poems complete,
tales so sweet, of characters uniquely complete,
and you think,
can they not be fictional?

and you know they’re no such thing,
ok, maybe,
some taller and a few perhaps dreamed,
the big characters of those
giants of simple men,
whose deeds were not mythical,
ok, almost mythical…

but truth of the humans of the hammered and nailed tough skin,
who built homesteads in the
plain, in mountains, by rivers that snaked,
unmapped,
except on their hearts and feet

the humans,
that made up
the raw & naked bond holders of
these United States:
bonded by character to the soil and
its curvaceous dancing topography
from
& of the center of our country,
but with eyes keen enough
to stretch from
coast to coast,
to see to shining seas

yes, true,
the grandson be he
to/of an almost mythical man,
and so took thus
his penned name,
the grandfather, a real person
of whom stories are yet told,
for no one can be sure
that & of what deeds
this spy did,
on hostile, unfamiliar,
continents,
but the photographic proofs,
I have seen…

His blood thickened by many infusions,
a cross cultural experiment,
happily not unique,
just **** rare

but enough of this;
read him,
let his
tongue take you to
the unfamiliar,
a literary Ansel Adams,
who never saw the plain(s) men & women,
unworthy of being forgotten but
forever being
celebrated


ask him for a potpourri of his short stories
of war, the bonds that men forge in combat,
tween the dead that still live on and
the living,
who have unreadable dead spots within,
they carry their dying glances,
their dying wishes,
and who are honored by him
in his continuing recollections

with walking stick in hand,
even if going outside
to “just” measure the snowy depths,
he leave markers and trailers,
for us to recall how to weep,
from love and pain,
from following generations of his
beautiful blonde
children who are poster models for
the traditional all american imagery,
but thriving within,
with  his
wanderlust, his mixed fiery visions,
and acting, singing out dramas
befitting their inherited
visions…

<>
here
I cease,
here
I weep,
at the impoverished words
scrivened in haste,
through tears of pleasure
intended to give honor
to this man,
who cedes me the pleasure of his existence,
and enhances my world
when he asks me,
unwittingly commissions!
a poem,
about
the human character,
who see himself unusually!
“as a potholder with a simple design”
and as usual,

I fail miserable…
maybe,
nick the outer edge of a bullseye target,
because the important words that he deserves,
I have not yet mentioned:

honor, loving kindness and friend.

perhaps he is correct,
but doesn’t grasp
that without simple men like him
to hold the *** upright and firm,
we all would be lesser or
even lost.


maybe,
now I am one
with
done