Fifteen years going on sixteen,
well recall many pinprick
moments of our combinatory
existentialism

But an early moment reappeared,
in a period of contemplation as I
this morn, wove my way thru Manhattan
city streets, during my diurnal walk of
composition, a tradition Walt Whitman
passed on to me, in Leaves of Grass, so
over my Manhattan journey~obstacle course,
now a three times weekly endeavor, of
a two and one quarter miles duration,
this came unto me

Very early on, in our ro~dance
we attended some cocktail/
business function, properly attired,
a first for us, and thus a tad exciting,
and in the elevation machine at the
Waldorf Astoria Tower sky bounding,
she stun gunned me with the simplest
of positories…

How shall you introduce me?.

this nimble tounge, so rarely at a loss,
gave an intuitive and simple answer:
You are my girl friend, no pretense,
I proffered and she thoughtfully
replied,

While an absolute truth,
perhaps since I am a Nana,
over twice,
and you, a Grandfather
over thrice,
perhaps something less
juvenile is in order?

Mmm, perhaps you are right, then
let me suggest boldly to name you
as my lover, none other and let
their mouths fall agape so full
of their crackered
canapés?

She paused a moment on our ascent,
replying,

Undoubtedly true and such
a good lover are you, but the touch of ******
in many an impoverished mind, gives it a
tangy hint of the unseemly tho, b u t
if that’s your preference, lover will it be,
but perhaps wordsmith, you keep on trying?

Ah I knew a rejection letter when I got one,
so cruising higher, proffered a ‘my best friend?’
but her glance clearly indicated that suggestion,
wholly unworthy of my skilled verbosity and
more appropriate to a dodgy dog, if such I did
possess

The elevators of NYC, are sure and swift in
elevating its population, and a growling
desperado emotive was taking me hostage,
I had what is now a “3S look,” an abbreviation
for when I wear my Simply Stupefied Smile

Perhaps I may suggest that should the need
arise for you to introduce me in a phrase accurate
and simple, that might suffice?

Smilingly weakly, I, poet, awaited what surely
was to be an obvious solution to my wordy
and worldly failure,

Please introduce me as
Your Biggest Fan
and I shall, dear one,
if asked,
will offer you up as my
Only Love Poet

And to this day, when introduction~making,
I feel the sweet smile of an invisible and
silent kick in my humbled and egotistical
****

All,, everything stretches, even paradise, love affairs,
the poetic intervals lengthen-but but not the interstices,
they do not require filling but the occasional hug, hair~
tousling, the unexpected hand holding to refresh the bonds
that sag with ages, worn to forlorn, by so much to remember…

I promise myself to keep this short, for the spaces themselves,
sag longer, wider, and need not words overbearing, but the
occasional tightening of the screws of connection, the markers
of a precise precious pulling that gravity may wear but never
ever break…

olp

light

<>

~yes, for you~

you never knew that you have burdened me,
informing an old fool that,
you meditating in the morning, after waking up
to a poem in your inbox from a person you’ve
never met, but whom you thank with a kindness
that wets my face, trembling with thankful shivering
from the places
left in me that
crave giving thanks

one day I will come unannounced with tapes
of a hundred romcom movies that have caused
my heart to erupt and always will, for thank god
my old curmudgeon heart is still weak enough
to cry in private
at old movies in
a youthful man~boy way,
now grizzled gray
that yet needs
nay, requires, reminders
that giving thanks
is a variant of giving
love in its very
own way

a craving that satisfies
in its own way
that giving is
gifting love
to yourself
as well

writing love poetry in/on time of hatred

<~>

not for the absence of love, for there is sufficient out and about,
in the eyes of children who cannot hide their glee at your surprises,
tousled morning hair patted down almost into not-a-horror-show,
a shapely body in a black one piece suit, that speaks of hints and
mischievous frolic, a summer night~right of taking, reciprocation,
god’s coffee delivered bedside every morn, with kisses of tenderness

but

these are the days when hatred speaks loudest,
volume of volumes,
and the hypocrisy runs blood red in the streets and we we wonder
has the world learned nothing from the horrific history of the prior
century, the absence of easy solutions for those who reject in the
provident supply of the low humane treatment of a world where the
word
society
is a mirthless grimacing joke

maybe that’s why I I turn on the love songs and music, a soupçon
of cherishing, a wail for its absence and loss,
the thrill unique it provided,
and may yet again, and to just remember, remember, remember!

why we obsess about crazy love in the artistry of our lives

so, I will force myself…to write of tenderness, let sneaky,
much needed,
sentimental in…

oops, looks like I already did…

caught her cleaning the fingerprints off of the mirrored door,
using the ever handy bathrobe sleeve,
fabric of a thousand utilities, this one too,
me wonder, whose prints? mine, kids, hers,
could they not have remained as a history,
highway road marker, “On this site here…”

more fingers, skin-oiled, will return, the chain
unbroken, for mirrors collect memories, faces seen,
matched to prints of hands that traversed this doorway,
on the way to where, it don’t matter, signs of humans
that come and gone…erasure troubles me…not
because cleanliness is next to godliness, cause
god is mighty messy and a few prints ain’t gonna
make a big difference…but

she espies me lazy observing, annoyed, she chastises,
her reproving noises fail to include a thank you for
prints mine, most fresh, carried two mugs of coffee minutes earlier,

part of my daily chore, and a morning
I love you, an essay that is perfect in its abbreviation,
like a short poem sweet, so I hid my head neath the coverlet,
lest she see, me & a well hid grinning smile
sipping coffee even more
contentedly

poetry and love is and always found in the oddest places….

The Smell of Honey,  Coffee and Apples and Messes of Words, but
No Love Poetry

<^>

my poetry suffers from a literately literacy,
the adjectivally of imagery wears away with
time and age eroding the imagination, when one’s
days are numbered, being serious is an natural
unpleasant hazardous haze, never in doubt

The morning meal of cooked oatmeal, steel cut,
laced with wildflower honey, slices of honey crisp
apples and Hawaiian coffee brewed,  
singes the
Tropical Storm Ophelia thrumming humidity
that overhangs the ugly grays of NYC sky-paths,

one tickles me awake with contradictory impulses:
sweet and sour,
a robust stimulative, competing with the smothering of
grayling clouded weather weariness of
48 hours of rainy continuity,
a spirit suffocate

you see!

give you myself, my environment, in précis,
unimaginative exactly as it occurs to me, sensually, yes,
but cannot shake my disappointment that no,
can’t combine visionary notions that spin your swivel
chair around, powered by your exclamations of
ooh, ahh, and little stabs of weeee punctuating
our shared atmosphere
and bring forth
only love poetry

but no mas,
the love poetry doesn’t comes to the fore,
the forehead stuffed with words best listed as
basic, observable, factual,
Miley Cyrus, accuses me of being jaded,
but not with accuracy, more straight jacketed,
way past that half-way point of no return,
turning back is not a listed menu option

love poetry
demands, requires and requests
envisioning, precursor to dreaming,
but I am choking on matters-of-fact,
questions of survivability,
that do not
shed love poetry words,
I
love exclaiming
to any and all within hailing distance,
my loving firmament, but the damp atmosphere
swallows my hopes and sounds, even though
still can smell the lingering nearness odor of honey and apple,
yet, other hints of memory beg to differ,
and I sadly and easy confess,
this is not a lovely poem…
- * -

“Words are beautiful, but emotion is divine” (patty m)

~these are the divine words of a beautiful soul, patty m~


this Missouri grandmother writes and I am willfully, duty-bound,
to comply for she commissions a poem with every insightful pithy and
ever one of her dear hugs, of which these is no limit and each one a treasure of a gratitude that flows contra-directionally, surpassing given-grace and lawful gravity, for all of her words flow simultaneously north and south, heavenwards, and earth planted, east / west, magnetic poles attracting divinity wherever it can be found
and all I can do is proffer

just one more only love poem, which is the blessing and the curse the lord blessed me with, love is  beautiful and it is divinely originated in each of our humble hearts, plucked from trees and fed to us wherever fruit of the fields grows, shaped like sweet and **** berries…not all that is divine, of necessity to be beautiful, words, them too, a mixed blessing, vulnerable and subject by the abuse of human weakness and fragility…but this much I assure myself with confidence,
and you too,
her words, well,

limitless, her every poem is hand woven, unhid, in the fooling
plain earthenware that the potter’s wheel created,
all gifts to each of us;

But my fragility mandates I speak slow and hesitantly of things beautiful that contain the white glow sparkler light of divinity, for I have attracted and deserved many failures, far greater than the rarer success, so my knowledge yet oft suspect, is mostly merely well imagined but know this:
her skill,
her expertise
her intimate comprehension
within the beautiful and divine expressions of her kind appreciation she deigns to share…words like a mighty, beautiful like a powerful Missouri river, driven by all specie of love…but none more powerful, more divine than that of a loving womanly grandmother

this, yes, only a love poem to be sure,
for the beautiful,
The Divine Miss (Patty) M.