she smells (nameless and shameless)


a concoction of mixed aromas,
a once in a lifetime scent,
impossible to bottle,
impossible to name,
nameless and shameless

morning coffee, last nights vin rosé,
a come-a-little-closer-tasting for the summer solstice,
the stale of the evening meals of grains and kale,
the sour remains of bedroom sweat,
the displeasing scented sight of
sweat soiled clothes carelessly discarded

the first of the season red spot-stained white peonies
fail to mask the bodies aromatic musks,
which are mostly gender identifiable

my sneakers hail mary, her stockings odorize the atmosphere
most unusually, nylon and lycra are strangely familiar,
prior memorized perhaps, from deep within, a ****** hallelujah,
deep amidst where, the ***** linens are shelved and binned,
before they journey to the Egypt Nile of the basement waters

the burnt crumbs of illegal in-bed brioche toast
amazingly invisible on unclean sheets,
state “breakfast in bed, was yummy in the tummy,
but next time use a big dinner plate,
down here, the burnt of the bread and the burnt
of other things (popcorn pieces)
is just a scratchiest fragrance too far,
needing a sheet wiped clean slate

even the colorless and tasteless water
absorb the ionosphere of smells,
because one does usually speak poetically,
one of us makes a (vice) presidential declaration:

she smells, I man-ually stink, each,
each glower shower nower,
open the window to the spring wet grass aroma fresh cut,
to exhume and then send away
this odor now christened,

nameless and shameless


11:47 28/4/19

it’s a daiquiri colored morn, countlessly
as I, gazing never tiring, of a vista I’ve seen,
awoken to, endlessly changing, voyagers of
birds and boats, the redecorating minimalists,
moving pieces on a latticed shadow lawn

the Sun eastern, asking the trees to turn and bow,
hence the shadows their branches cast are a waffling,
hopscotch pattern irregular, so jumping from/to
yellow-green sunspots, the children are delighted by a
new game, moving to and from and between an ever
changing crazy chessboard of light-patches unsquared

described, written of, yet here I am, once again, a servant
despairing, looking for new combinations of superlatives,
though I never spoke before of it as a vista,
until today, wondering why, perhaps because
it’s here, one lives, one doesn’t conceive of  being
part and parcel of a vista, humans, just visitors,
pawn observers, gallery visitors, art appreciators,
transient hobos after forty years, truthfully claiming
that they’re merely still, passing thru, passing by

9:40 am, respectable hour to meander over
to the throne room, the four Adirondacks, them,
the year round poetry nook authorities, are equal
sunned, shaded, simultaneous, stately shadowing,
observing, advertising as perfect for composing,
willing to make verbal suggestions, rhyming notions,
especially when the poem pays proper obeisance

and so it does, and so it is, as you can clearly read


9:53am Sunday Jun 14
Year of the Pandemic

This morning,
I walked with god and man, and animal

I've come to believe,
no other possibility,
He denies me sleep
as His insurance policy

some One wants to be sure,
someone sees His sunrise poem,
He selected this ancien regi-man
to be His admiring audience,
with deer, squirrels, rabbits, a red fox, an osprey
always complaining, why do they get
the cheap seats

so up at five,
no jive,
gotta get there early,
for a good seat,
on the dock by his name

watch the color blue transgender
from feminine elegy elegant pale
to peacock royal male,
the water,
a contributing editor,
phases in with a steely grin,
with ermine whitecap hints
and an orange marmalade sky homage,
I cannot try to describe

and here is where man comes in...

as the tableau reveals a still life
come to be,
a painting enlivened,
come to me free,
bursting with
effervescence and
animal life tribunes,
paying on...

strange...

my Pandora app
back to back,
plays for me
Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue,
hard upon it comes
Saint-Saëns's
The Carnival of the Animals

and I
enfeebled amateur,
needy for a
word titan Titian,
can think only
this trite thought:

I know not who is the
instrument and who
is the
artist,
but virtuous us,
We, all, now-capital-buddies,
now, all, well-color-capitalized,
god and man and animal,
crooning a chorus of appreciation

let this "accidental" miracle,
this collaboration,
enthuse me,
to live happily
with anticipation
for just one more day...

June 2014

kiss the kids good bye,
send them out on
their own find-a-way paths,
merry or otherwise,
dispatched, once and forever,
stamped, franked, posted,
Gebbie delivered,^
the poems born, borne
   are gone

never look back,
once writ and gifted,
they are an only child,
not truly orphaned
   but without parentage

miss'ed every now and then,
see them as a drive-by victims,
hit and run casualties of passing poets,
who notifiy that they saw
"so and so"
and just wanted to
let me know,
   they're ok

but never look back,
they have been disowned,
each,
a natural birth poem,
must learn
the hard way,
to stand on its own,
tested by the cruelest proctor,
   hoary time

this is the way,
the only way,
birth mother and no more,
and this why,
some know me as,
  the poet of the way...

this is my way -
my poems are my
dispatched issue,
sent out themselves alone,
to experience
cell division,
mitosis and meiosis
spawning new poetic tissue,
find their own way of sharing
  their ancestral DNA

~for VB~

<>

“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?”

Song of Myself (1892 version) BY WALT WHITMAN

                                                §§§

­there is special delight for the city dweller,
when the first clean flushing of brightest spring green
disrupts the unending graying city ribs of worn concrete,
the alternating lifelessness of blasé brick, pretending
off-beige, ***** pale blue, a sooty furnace red,
well done,  a good pretense that they are, of color.

I am among thousands whose as a child my breath
gave way, taken by gasp, when first made
entrance to the green diamond sparkle oasis of
Yankee Stadium, hid by the urban dreariness of The Bronx,
near sixty years vision sustained with perfect clarity on
retina-implanted, a shock, an earthly con-trast.

today, an old-timer, a first timer, I’m gifted Whitman’s Song of Myself,
from a friend and poet, who lives hardy by a Port,
another islander like myself, surrounded by wet roads and
pathways to the Northern Pacific, amongst timberlands of
forested and natured grass, a differing kind of stadium,
both of us silently saying, thanks Lord, for lending us yours.

even temporarily, this day, your emeralding grass handkerchief,
equates our dispositions, so differently identical,
your name, our initials, in opposing corners, embroidered,
your grass tapestry upon this troubled earth, a scented, joint, poetic
remembrance, that though it’s but words that bind us, we! we know!
the songs we sing of ourselves, we sing in synchrony harmony.

                                                   §§§§§


Wed. May 13, 2020
Manhattan Island,
by the East River

The Cost

“5 minutes to write, 5 minutes to edit and 10 more to cease weeping,”
when the inquiry arrives, how long/where from it comes,
gave this answer

more or less the response accurate
more or less the weeping really never ceases

I will return to it again, **** poem
random when, unreasoned why, wherefore
a stumble, a message, months from now, tomorrow,
even decades and I’ll remember the precise circumstances

for each poem has a Cost, that excises a piece of you, a new cut,
freshly salted, an antibiotic of loving may remove the
redness, but not the white line, so what you call a scar, I,
I call it an etched memory preserved

the sum of all These Costs, all these memories,
cumulative, additive, addictive - someone says:

stop being so sensitive, leave the telling to others,
or keep them in plastic bags, dated, retrievable,
in case an antiretroviral antidote is ever needed,
a fresh injection when you think you could even
cease to care

The Cost is always capitalized, for the Cost is called human capital,
the invisible financing that permits our existence till all spent,
when we’ve run out of drawer space, zipper bags,
breaths to be taken away and glass jars to store them,
if the mind says no more! then it will be ok,
for you are all spent

The Cost so great! this a double entendre,
for they are the stuff of me, whatever greatnesses
I ever possessed within them kept and believed,
happily paid for past and present, for the future,
will happily pay for it right now, again and again,
for the Costs are who I am, till, such time that
Costless arrives, eyes closed, nothing left to post,
to recall, no coin to give, my purposed all paid,

as if all paid could ever cause my weeping to cease


Mon May 4
10:48 am

them old songs

each vialed, labeled, racked,
date ordered, mood markered,
a playlist sortable by gradated
feelings, dated by color vividness,
associated memories of happy vs. lost,
hellish costs, my accumulated gained earnings
well spent, all gone them seeking many happy returns

the assorted “I love you’s” ranked by
intensity and sane, reversed by pain,
records flip sided with memories,
tunes remastered, past remembrances
only fade, time can’t be denied,
at least them old songs
help some but help

not me