There is no middle ground
This taking sides again

It's Adam or Eve
She, deceived
He, the willful one

Once naked
Now ashamed
And misconnected

Within an
Inauguration of leaves

Sleeping upon
Thorns and thistles

The genetic defect their own
To carry forth
Children of sin and death

In the shadow
Of something now
Unattainable

It was never
About appetite

It was always
About sovereignty

Van Gogh’s ear sings tales all night
Soulful moaning over mind’s eye sight

Antagonize the heart and turn the eye
A visitor to the heart or passing by

From this spring that we all drink
What whispers all the thoughts we think

Lunatic genius with eyes turned in
Tell me where my mind has been

A freighting tether is shelter and cage
Where the writer’s pen touches page

Ink’s fossil trail bleeding from my pen
A history of where my heart has been

To go and not say in doing so
Beyond this point no words can go

With feet of clay and hand to chalk
I’ve come to hear Van Gogh’s ear talk

Broken flight

They went down somewhere
in the trees

The sky is sad
and full of remorse

But never Calliope

Broadway and 52

God knows
they got to you

She sings songs
of their misfortune

Decidely the muse and
mother of importune

In a sacred garden
where no one treads,
the wildness claims all;
overrun, overgrown
none can observe
nothing is known.

There is no friend here for you
once trust is betrayed
no paradise to be shown
the path is blocked
no way to return to home.

Yet, I---
here I remain, here I become,
for all seasons that come and go;
a living epithet of past Adam and Eve
I am the angel
who holds the withered branch
with a story none shall believe.

Sometimes I think,
Whether Satan is an impostor of God.

-Water


Refreshing when Im thirsty,
Relaxing when Im *****,
How blessed I am to have access to Adams ale,

Far more precious than treasure,
So much better than pleasure,
Without you nourishing me, I'd surely be frail!

<>
“Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
(there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things
at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides
and filter them from your self.”

Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN

                                                      ­§§§

*These admonitions are the ten conditionals
commandments of straight talk,
boy,
you’ve spent a life lessening and lesson-learning
and all laid before you for taking, gaining,
but for what? for naught?

Start this day, having spent my night with you,
possessing less than what is my now
completed,
this,
my unfinished commencement,
provisioned, a simultaneous beginning and finishing,
emptying a void of
fulfilling questioning.

What does this life desire of me,
that it granted and then removed,
the knowledge of perfection?
leaving me striving, writhing,
shivering unceasingly,
in my saddened, bursting, hacking
and hackneyed chest.

I walk the same cobblestone streets,
observing the descendants of your ancestral tugs
portaging, paying homage to East River tides,
carrying those goods,
the origins of all poems,
from where? to where?
unknown,
but always past our conjoined eyes.

And yet do I look, with our merged eyes,
filtered by a century’s discoloration,
forgive me Walt, for now recalling sights
that you first observed,
that I witness first hand,
100 and fifty years later,
sharing a stolen wisdom with you.

Todays new millionth sunrise bids me stand,
observe the river traffic from my kitchen window,
accept that my takings are debts,
a few, even paid back,
yet, most still owed,
for the origins of all my poems,
are oddly and oddity old,
unoriginal, second, third handed
as I look through the eyes of the dead,
and yours too,
this my unoriginal,
original sin....
(pretending  I am a poet)



                                                   §§§§§

6:24AM
Manhattan Island,
By the East River
Thu. May 14, 2020