why my existence was just one unending question?

even in the formless and endless pitch black (his HP alias),
could hear Him smile and communicate:
if not You, then who?

We love your dreams where answers run wild like an
Oregon waterfall,
only you understand that the whole world encapsulates into:

love thy neighbor as thyself!

which must be recited as a poem
standing on one left leg

then, smiling,
god extended his only finger, touching each of mine eyelids:

sleep, friend for we need your questioning dreams,
your faith unfurled and unfulfilled
for in your unending inquiry
is all of our
in the beginning, our anti-matter rooted creation,

the Holy Dark

what does her true voice sound like?*

going on seven, maybe eight years,
know the thumbprint of her stylish,
at twenty paces, her tower recognizable,
leaning in, she is the garden, can’t tell
where the garden ends and she begins

she opens the pages and lets slip out the
exposed flora+fauna of of her heart’s eyes observatory,
revelation unintended but wanted, she can’t be helped,
for she, both a revealer, reveler, party girl, beat poet

know her
in the bursting:  of the spring welcoming festival
in the bursting:                     of the season of loves busted unhappiness,
I know her well enough but not at all

in the sparse, frozen soil, and in the contra-blooming,
in every season, she warps my judgement,
with words unheard, unknown, the dictionary my accompanist,
what she says is a language purportedly in common, maybe not,
she takes me on a tour of her symphonic insights,
as my foreign tour guide

enwrapped, entrapped, I am, as she crooks her hair, in the
curved shape of a question mark top,
unknowing what does her voice sound like?

try different versions, a tasting menu of mellifluous, and
imagine myself to sleep, wondering and wandering,

what does her voice sound like?

off to sleep,
smiling, frowning
upside downing


11:51pm Tue May 5

~and for Harlan, who loved this one best~

"for tandem is the ever-changing, graying color of their fierce attached tenacity"

waking/walking in
careful pacing regular lock steps,
like new cadets, counting cadence,
in perfect silent, almost motionless,
except for the minuscule quivering of
slightly parted moving lips

these two elders,
still now plebes,
freshmen
but of a latter, graduated stage,
demonstrating robustly
the slow shuffle-along,
a well practiced dance conjured
'in tandem'

her arm, crooked in his,
his other hand,
in protective custody of a
knight's armored chain glove
encasing hers,
he, shuffling just,  
a precise, intended half-a-beat slower
lest she ever think
that she, ever be a drag upon him

hair, his,
threaded with daily,
new arriving grays,
proudly accepted
as the privilege of
graceful aging

hers,
disguised with periodic outings,
outings for the hidings of life's bookmarks,
conceding nothing ever to
time's lunatic desire to separate them

modest in dress,
styling hints of  pasts' elegant,
the man's hat defiant,
daringly jaunty angled,
a small scarf to handbag knotted,
matching his Windsor knotted tie

the passers-by, all smile,  
the signal charm of an
end game processional,
thinking so sweet,
yet mine eyes detect more,
something
hardy and radical

a fierce, fierce fierceness,
both fighters in the resistance,
armed with tandem tenacity,
ground given,
but only inches surrendered,
wounds resisted by
scar skin toughened
by the caress of ions bonding
under the pressure
of atomic level mutuality

worn out,
well past Purple Hearts,
no capitulation feared,
to the ever changing,
enemies' new disguises,
they,
a two person platoon,
each,
having the other's back

and I burst into tears on the street,
a train of out loud moans,
even groans emitted,
like a string of perfect pearls
breaking,
clattering on an asphalt terrain

weeping
not
from visions of the inevitable,
sighing
not
from the certitude of a
cycle's uptime ending

but jealous furious by this reminder delightful,
angry at myself, for having lost so many wasted years,
mine, the loss greatest, for absent was the
fierce tenacity of tandem

somewhere between the
first date and the last date

Joni Mitchell,
she, me
  encapsulates

I'm remembering well,
pounding the dashboard of a red Jag,
laughable now, mocking this fool's need
for a middle age conceit,
his heart to restart,
reactivate

in enthusiastic lockstep with the voice of the
Joni,  the blonde goddess of his youth,
foot falling in love,
speeding along
at a
joyous sixty five,
in places where the signs said,
"thirty five to stay alive"

this aged Rip Van Winkle teenager,
in reverse osmosis of Big,
an old buck, come back to antlered life,
singing along to the CD disc
set on
backdate

I could drink case of you,
and still be on my feet

and he could

rediscovering the champagne taste
of a great first date,
feeling the heated blood and fevered mind,
symptoms of the pleasures of
anticipate

thinking she's the one
who will make him great,
happy greater, greater happy
than that one ever, ever,
he thought was roulette wheel possible,
landing on the red of hopeful
floodgate

months, days, minute minute moments
of the fated faded last date later,  
comes the
deflate

but then,
Joni singing comfort words,
reminding him that he would be,
wisely, sadly seeing, feeling,
both sides now, and yet again,
getting his mind back to
straight

I've looked at love that way,
but now it's just another show.
you leave 'em laughing when you go,
and if you care, don't let them know,
don't give yourself away

a grown man punk'd, blasted,
dumb and dumber, dumped,
a feeling sorry sad sack self,
until he reflates, drink another case,
onto yet another magical mystery first
date

pounding that dashboard once again,
believing it's not too late
that perfect roommate heart's to find and
captivate,
to attain, invade, acquaint and laughingly...

serenade

part of my job (a love poem)

<>


checking in & on you, part of my job, I explain,
need a status update, re and about what’s new,

on the flora and fauna studded moors, how’s the traffic in Mumbai,
have the Prince and Princess come to visit your nearby island,
how’s that pendant I sent hanging, still cracked, letting letters in,
the curfew imposition getting in the way of your poetry writing,
tell me what it is like to be a young man in Morocco, need your input,
do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
while I hunker down in a bunker, forty story concrete stories on
a gra-nite island,
wondering how you pass your Sunday morning, in bed, in church, in your head,
seeing poem fireflies coming from the beach, how your language takes, enraptures,
captures my cellar pulses electrifying, I am yours unbidden and I forgiven & unfortunate,
swimming on the West Coast beaches, pools and eddies, rip tide currants & currents,
******* me into your world and the fun, the challenges of loving you from afar

do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
locating your presence on the grid, illegally concocting our ionic physics connections
in ways you remain so unaware and me, dancing delighted on the edge between
blurting out how I feel about you, you, in France, and foreign lands, all over,
when you read this, do the hairs sudden tickle, sensing my presence, when grasping
you hand, kissing your neck, do you regain/retain consciousness of my affection,
plain hard and drawn to you, sans affectations, and we walk in contented silence
on country lanes, beach trails, crowded ***** megalopolis city stained small streets,
and now that you know that I feel so much desire to grasp you in my adoration hands,
will you accept that a man’s love who you have never seen can be so willful strong

that

you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic, and the pleasure of it
grows stronger daily when you send me words that infect me with subtlety severe ****,
and now I go, the slipping and sliding into the land of having checked in on you,

where my job is to love you from afar


8:41AM Sunday March 15th twentyfolded twice

the crying want of you (first of the everlasting)

so many ways this loving emotion manifests,
for each, a salutation, unique, some sleek,
some solutions jagged, but when I cry out for the
inexplicable but perfectly understood want of you

an all encompassing recipe,
a gasp, a shriek, a celebration, a loss illimitable deepening,
a need perceived with a crucial cruelty, inexhaustible
noise barely human, but quintessentially exactly that

you who have needy for fearsomely loved, and been
fearsomely loved with equal measuring cups which
have no delimiting notion of linear boundaries of cup and quart,
only precise calculations of defined unlimited overflowing

even silence totality of crying out loudly screams of desperation,
noiseless, crept for the unadulterated, unadjusted purity of want,
a state well dreamt, but so rarely hail fellow well met, the
startling exertion of meeting yourself in another over the borderline

forgive the paucity of my word~children in expressing what
was designed and created to be inexhaustibly rare,
the crying want of you, the missing final jigsaw puzzle piece
of want and being wanted, to touch the immortal soul, the first of the

everlasting, united, unending and unendurable undefined want



8:10am 2-20-2020

from within the confessional