all I've ever learned from love

is

in the trying is the finding out
of the
all about,
losing battles to find yourself,
a war-won victor and a long term loser,
making the process new, expensive
the event expertise training
acquired to shoot your foot straight,
laugh about it when you do it again
and again

for the relearning is the crown jew-el,
that jesters rob from their kingly masters,
pride in love is the fall season preceding
Canadian winters, always thinking
you know better, be better at keeping warm,
this time which is the next time

you cannot learn from love,
cause it’s twice, two times,
never the same,
past lessons ain’t no prologue,
the body is maybe in the wafers,
sometimes vanilla,
sometimes chocolate

and the epilogue is
100% of the
poem~songs that I love writing
and hate remembering

she wanted my soul


so I cut off a finger,
noting that this little pinky offering,
came from the same hand,
who, who went to the market
to buy her a love poem
all her own, because,
it was from the self same hand
that wrote:

who, can cut a soul into pieces,
no one!
so one will still ask you,
who!
who will love you
in whole poems,
that are both past and future tensed
composite composted,
from words overly overused,
but still foolishly feeling brand new
when referencing *you,
so you can believe with new fool-thinking,
this is your sole composition

she wanted my heart,
applauded her determination,
gave her one eye to see me instead better,
so the visions she essays,  to write,
like when I sit down to write
of women I’ve loved but!

they do not come from my heart pieces,
but from inside insight from of parts
that are blind to everything
but *raucous untamable invisible desire

she asked me for all the world’s wisdom,
while standing on one legging,
I simply said, here I am,
telling you I’ll love you the way you requested,
if only to be loved in return

so with one eye and one leg,
you will observe, two is not more
than the sum of the parts of one love,
as I count to ten on my nine fingers
fingers that wrote of love not enough,
no matter how many he gave up

she wanted my brainiac left hemisphere,
said, sure,
the left side of me is where the baby poems
are created, and then angel-released when ready,
when needed, now that I
see you’re needy for pieces,
but still mistaken that pieces can be reconstructed into
a whole with spit and spirit
and an overarching imagination -
no!

the whole comes from only a holy place extracted
from the hole-in-one that is my entirety

give me then your utter essence,
the place of you
I, only I know exists, must exist,
but cannot touch to see
where you keep it hidden
from all the women who love you,
better than you even love yourself

if you want that, then collect it,
for it exists and lives on
in every woman that asked for nothing,
but was rewarded with more
than a thousand poems,
stored in stars, for her,
to be creamed and cleansed,
when she plucked them
from the night in the galaxy where exist
love poems, only
to she-one shone-shine

head to toe kissing


I   the mundane

moonlight madnesses, a possessive noun,
commissions gravitational pulls that disobey and obey
laws of interstellar loving. The antique modalities once and forever, forever laying still, stilled in places of antiquities and historical need, are thundershower and hail rudely reawakened, the undertow of
pull and push, the yanking hands  of need for others, for others,
it’s the explosive-knowledge, the opening of the old kitbag of perpetual principles, that crazy head to toe kissing is no less necessary, more so, than the computation of the total breaths mundane, unnoticed even now as I write of them, that we will count from that very first, in deed, they are one and the same, like the same
kisses given from head to toe

II   the profane

at the first, the body insists, I am but a long haul trailer, no taxi me,
cargo and passengers, are my quatrain accompaniments,
traveling companions boon, my own toons, too soon disembarked,
songs of parents and lovers, children and others, your visage passed
without your permission, but with your happy encouragement,
to generations that will see things that futurists dare not
even mention, but the profane urge to warn them all, kisses from head to toe, elevates, and overcomes...so when most of my names dusted with forgetfulness, lost in the waves, my scorching soft lips will be recalled just as an airy flight of light brushing upon a newborn’s eyelids just at the moment of birth.  A rustling more felt than heard, the ****** and bruised carrying body will sensate and instantly forget, but nonetheless transmit genetically, that the profane of birth and life renewing can be only washed away, when past and future, recalled and recreated, kisses from head to toes, dripping with softening saltwater tears, a chemical organic reagent of creation,
inside the histories of head to toe kissing

III  the insane

so when, somewhere, some place, a man’s body prepares  
tous ses adieux, his memory foolishly sane and strong,
his wasted paper bag container ship, rust bucketed,
crinkled and wrinkled, skin folding in on itself, hanging to bones
by stretched sinews and tendons that no longer tend to business,
loosened and gangly, they hang on barely to the bare nakedness of
evolutionary processes, mostly not, offset, by the tenderizing effects of kisses, from invisible attendees,  unconscious they,
willingly and unwillingly, offering farewells in actuality...
head to toes, noses to belly buttons, tatted, tattered, and still tasted by dying cells.  It’s insane to think it’s even possible  one retains each and all, but he does, those few given, those few  millions he gave away for cheap belly laughs and poems, decade upon decade accumulated are the totality of him, all of them free and sealed in kisses from head to toes

my pointer finger
caresses her knuckles,
intervening between her fingers,
soft shell teasing,
sliding off her manicured fingernails,
in order that I return here
to lay down copious notes

I re-land inside the palm of her hand,
warm, a Caribbean beach smooth breezy sensation,
she wraps up my instrument of exploration
with a four finger grip, a signal fire
to escape, travel north up her arm
to the pause point of her bare shoulders,
where her body finally speaks,

why oh why, stop here,
skip, skip to my lou, lips,
my *******, jealous,
the ******* no less, now restless,
the rest of me requires
two hands, if, you can,
still caress with the best,
while typing with the pointy tip of your nose?

don’t kiss and tell,

meaning
do kiss, go crazy, let passion rule, give in, take out,
meaning

kiss but don’t tell

yet,
the real telling is in the kissing
where your heart gives way,
avalanches into frenzied chain of signal fires,
smoked, clouded eyes, with only one exception made;

the shining, sheer veil see-through when
the other is on the room and the  green spring coverlet felled,
all to see the glow, see all the the blush,
the pretense, aversion skins natural makeup, a liberty beacon

laughing, how it cannot be hid for what’s inside
climbs so fast, blushes blue blood redder, the inside reaction reagent,
the weakening composure, the intense beating from heart to head,
the joyous tearing, the silent swearing, the stupid grinning,
the step skipping, the happy dance springing  spontaneous,
no control, might as well just let it go biology in chemistry class

all these tells that you have kissed beyond reason,
these hidden kisses might as well be on
billboards on the highway into town,
a P.A. announcement in high school,
a hearty button attached to your backpack,
the incessant text checking, all dogs nighttime barking all day

go ahead kiss and tell
go ahead tell and kiss harder,
in the kisses, a million tellings
every body part red swelling,
the tearing of every body part,
concentric circles extended from a pebbled heart

~

the wisdom of your eyesight

begins with you legs that turn the body’s odyssey
away, sort of, in the general right direction

but thou stiff neck person, yet still turns away
from what the eyesight will see when the eye shadows lift

thine eyes cast down still seek escape, with last minute haste,
but my pointer finger rests easygoing beneath thy chin

where the finger meets, lifts, thy softened chin tissue,
to look directly at your proffered savior, an electric election circuitry

this head-on-collision of two pair, beat by a full house,
when the combined wisdom of caring lifts two up,
ah, the best writ we ever scripted,
the best hand we ever played

if your eyes should cloud,
upon reading this,
this is too, a kind of wisdom,
wisdomkind


for S.B.