all my poems begin with the weather,
overlaid with time and place

comforting certitude,
cocktail of calibration,
calculating precision,
a surety bonding.
a shared time and space
with humanity


all my poems end with
"if only,"
incessant self-queryimg, imbalanced cowardice,
a yellowing shadow of red doubt,
overwhelming black stain of a starless night sky,
an inconsequential infection
coveting my weakfish earthbound innards

tyranny of selfish doubt,
the cowardly safety of 'not me'
the pockmarked constellation of
everything tragic body tattooed,
the Cain mark you hide beneath the torn skin
of being
only human

all my poems end with whether

3 hands


kidding hands,
an autocorrection title,
was supposed to be
kissing hands but either works

man overcome with an elixir of Sunday bed warming/charming/chilling, lukewarm "hot" coffee,
melodious love songs inducing
languorously hand-to-mouth,
five finger fore play love making

a potpourri of knuckle gnawing and gentling kisses
upon a hand borrowed from the a tablet holder,
while she reads the paper bemoaning the sorry state
of the world, the government permissions bad guys...
and weeps for the world we are leaving behind

a mood changer with 100% effectiveness

newspapers- a safe *** condiment

think I'll reheat my coffee

<•>

my hand

she cant sleep knows that I'm up at 2:08am composing.  
and showed her earlier today
the kidding hands poem
just as the lights were going down, downtown on
William's Measure For Measure

so at 2:09am her hand snakes over and wrap itself
around my thumb as if she was weaning an infant from
what infants like doing, or weaning grownup old men like me from doing at 2:09am, what they should be best leaving alone,
like writing poetry or it could just be the woman
pseudo-******* a poets thumb as a way of saying
can't sleep head buzzing and in between I love the
livening lying of living with your hands thumb in me

<•>
the facement of your hands*

dr. mandy is handy with a needling drink of boo boo bo-toxin
that auto corrects the face's reflecting times drawing upon it,
our bodies facement; an effacement I suppose, or maybe a
defacement.  

very little to be done to keep the *hands couture covering
from revealing what devolutionary year it is for you: why I write of the facement of your hands and why I kiss them, your hands,
lovingly, hoping the natural  toxins on my lips can ****** their aging,
and if they can't, then it is a great way of saying
I love you

<•>
  2:53am

Sunday morning lie-in,
she, ny times newspaper reading,
contentedly dress perusing-shopping,
in the bed both, but separated
by the distance of the electronic void

i am raven tapping poe poems on my diminutive IPhone,
twenty four inches distant from her lips

no notice taken of the man so overcome
writing his Sunday morn poems that are
drawn so deep from places
that make him so so so glad
good quality weeping
can be best performed silently

noticing that

- he writes best when writing of others, mostly, you

- he writes when the rented invisibility cloak covers his face
and
the wellspring offers him a choice;
write weep and tear
or
write weep and bawl
or just quit everything

whimsy laughs at his slo 'mo nonsense
his choices
this tough guy supporting a mountain of others,
the inversion of his inverted triangle,
him holding up the world

the worrisome grief that wears him down
best released in tears when writing about
you, go figger

and you notice stupid stuff
like why we use 'and' when it just ain't necesssry
how the core of 'believe' is lie
that ** ** ** rhymes with woe woe woe
and
that 24 inches is quite the distance when you are
** ** ** weeping and she don't notice

and how hard writing

only love poetry can be
even twenty four inches
from your nose

bathtub overflowing, the kitchen sink a-running,
water water everywhere, everybody, getting a wordy
Saturday po-em, ahem, so only, lonely, love poetry,
high pitches, whimpering, like a three year old chillun,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

words uttered somewhere, everywhere, hourly,
maybe even screamed, sung, shouted outed,
with total justification, incredulous incomprehension,
my ticket unpunched, this fate, an indeterminate sentence,
if only I had a penny for every utterance, be a multi-billionaire
and still dissatisfied

the isolation au courant makes it a thousand times worse,
sometimes, I hold my own hand, remembering what is touch,
just not to forget, like a lazy eye, a missing limb needy for
scratching, a sensating, sustaining pleasure that sorely
disappoints, for the brilliance of it, is in its eclectic electric,
and a solitary spark fizzles, swallowed up, into disappointing reveries

my eyes wet themselves when I see letters airbone, floating, reforming,
why not me babe?
if mine eyes cannot catch another’s, no across-the-room thermometer saturating stare of farenheightened heat, what good this vision?
left with a single despicable desperate cri du to my conurbation,
why not me babe?

my banana bread aroma flies out the open window to meet
and be greeted across the street, with applause and affection,
but our nostrils cannot taste, our lips forbidden, in this hell,
why not me babe?

the quietude so great, I hear the rhythmic breathing of one who
could be my chosen, my one and only, my love poem, exhaling too,
why not me babe?

but the see-through curtain prohibits strangers exchanging ****** fluids, glances of possibility, and enraged, unengaged, smash all my mirrors, cause they don’t answer my question,
why not me babe?
it’s a reverberated echoing, a slap across my face, married to my cryout, a singular sensation of exasperated silence

pick up my brass decorative magnifying glass, with twisted ivory handle, examine my hands, my lips, my nose, my credit scores, my personal spaces, my declining weight and bank balance, each excuse, belief,
the white spots decorating my sticking out tongue, thinking there’s another sense I’m forgetting, but all I recall is,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

and that is why only love poetry did not get a love poem today...

<>

“where all my journeys end”
————————————


§§§

she gets
breakfasts in bed,
an all-pandemic menu benefit

I smile,
as I carry delicately
her coffee, berries, & bagel,
a happy house divided,
stroked even sided
1/2 French pear confiture
1/2 NYC  whipped cream cheese

I smile,
as I am now an imagined,
a heroic carry-out guy,
an ear budded delivery man,
whose ears are filled to the brim
with words of an old love song,
“where all my journeys end”^

this poem is hers,
an ending for her
bed breakfasting,
and a commencing,
for her living well

an ending for her bed breakfasting,
and a commencing, for her living well,
a place where,
all my journeys end.

§§§§§

May 8
twenty twenty




^Traci Chapman

Qualities.

Quality.  

The quality of Qualities.

But, man oh man,
Am I qualified?


the movie theater goes dark,
the trailers, the advertisements,
the silencing warnings, the advisements,
the darkening final and lastly,

"be sure to keep an eye on your valuables."

she turns to me and says,

"I've got my eye on you."

I cannot tell you the name of the movie
or what it was about,
as powerful shaky camera dizziness overcame.

But I can tell you about,
the special powers of women.

for it is one reason,
perhaps,

the reason

he writes only love poetry.

“May 15, he [the Governor] announced Monday...that the  lifting of stay at home restrictions will take place in regions which were not badly hit by the new coronavirus, mainly in upstate New York.

The restrictions will not be lifted in New York City.”

<|>

no sight in end,
no vibration of the tine of routine,
soundless, as in endless.

we unmark the calendar,
May 15 requalifed,
just another day, as in,
the search for Clorox wipes and Purell sanitizer,
will continue unceasingly

as in endless, as in
no sound no sight no vibrancy,
plenty wailing silence

we redefine social distancing.

measured not in feet,
but in months,
March, April, May

that have somehow disappeared
from our calendars
permanently.