#whereshelter poems on Hello Poetry

Where Shelter 1d

Thursday

Thursday

week has slo~mo’ed, edged on, visitors gone,
two and half rain days, but a mere coincidence (?),
it’s appearance, their concomitant dis-appearance,
inclemency has kept us closeted and cozily, but not a-lonely,
for the world’s tumult~tilting-plane distracting enough,
its axis! seems more than a few degrees a-kilter,
(lively, lovely word, rarely used), and since when have I awoken with
mine eyes have seen the dripping rhymes, for my germanic-jewish
is pretty prosaic, my musings confined to a middle-of -the-night “thingie,” but here and hear I am jingling away in anticipation of a rain-all-day situation, and frankly, a tad less political west wing,
King Lear worthy drama, polarizing, thee-ate-her, might incentivize an exciting trip to the emerald isle’s solitary gas station and IGA supermarket (weekend supplies for the newest arriving morrow-guest-mongers,) for sure-as-right-as-rain-it-will-be-ceasing,
they will be soon enough be landing by F-Day (3) ferry, on the morrow, with their own Shakespearean screenplay, and many compliments on the verdancy (a previous never employed actor’s verbosity) of our tree encased, oak surrounded, tiny cottage hideaway, where we are all the world’s a stage, and we, the designated locked down, can be all ~ heavenly host, wait staff, sommeliers, and most importantly, their captive audience members…for their small life’s litle newest pieces, require us to be fully updated…

enough folderol! first glance reveals wet everything, windows moisture painted; and a halfway penetrable fog means incautious
summer drivers will be out mise en vigueur, french for ‘in force’, testing their luck upon our ****, curvaceous, ample bosomed hilllock roads, (stop), excited by their chance to prove their stupid mettle…and their auto’s european superior brakes & suspension…

so the six am borderline of unofficial time division has passed and it is still Thursday, still wet, fog-ever-so-light touch lifting, and the challenges of writing a good piece of poem, yet sizzling in the mind’s frying pan, is still a long haul walk down the creaky corridor to the
just-kitchen ing ya, and the bed’s seductive dulcets.
singing why not “Stay (just a little bit longer”) (1)…

thus throughly convinced, bury dreams of Javanese Enlightenment within the seducing drowsed plumpness of my pillow
unti they arrive in force, but that is a different story already written…(2)

<>

Stay… ah, just a little bit longer
(Please) please, please, please, please
Tell me that you're going to
… Now your daddy don't mind
And your mommy don't mind
If we have another dance, yeah
Just one more, one more time
… Oh, won't you stay, just a little bit longer
Please let me hear
You say that you will, say you will
… Won't you place your sweet lips to mine
Won't you say you love me all the time
… oh, yeah, just a little bit longer
(Please) please, please, please, please
Tell me you're going to
… Come on, come on, come on (stay), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Come on, come on, come on (stay), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Come on, come on, come on (stay), ooh, la-de-da
Come on, come on, come on (stay), my, my, my, my

(1)Stay
Song by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs

(2) https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4732644/they-come-by-dawns-early-light/

(3) an appellation of historic inspiration combining F riday and F luck

#thursday #stay #longer #javanese #thingie #whereshelter #nml

Where Shelter May 19

Banishment and Return to the Lovely Isle (2024)

about
a year ago the doctors ordered me to return,
put down the tablet, cease driving, stay seated,
you a skinny hair from dying, the drop dead
unkindly kind, come back to the city, there’s
an operating table Resy~reserved just for you,
the menu we will decide, two or three courses,
but for
the summering on your sheltering isle, where the
lapping waves sounds of the sound, the greenery
calming befuddles your senses is ended, the congress
of animals too have ordered your dispatch back to
the hubbub of pizza parlors, nail salons & bodegas,
and
we will slice and dice, drawn up plans to redirect
the arteries and veins that you’ve spent good money,
lazy years clogging & *******, sending you back after
you’re in fighting trim, and and recommence dialogus
with
the sun, sky, animals, the water and the waves, and
write of peace of mind, knowing that your body, too,
is
at peace, but not at rest, and let the writing begin
again, with a refreshed perspective, and re-greet
old friends, Hafiz and Whitman, who were left
behind in a hasty departure, your retreat is ended
and now, a new re-treating of the soul, to match a
newly refreshed body

postscript:
where is shelter? why, within and without…both needed,
in happy juxtaposition…

but to those who a. companied me on this journey, I give my “undying”love thanks and to all a good night and a god bless…

#whereshelter #banishment #return #2024

Where Shelter May 4

We (a)live in our minds…

Inevitable, that the circle be completed,
celebrating our seasonal return to the
sheltering abode by river, bearing winded
surround sounds to our isle of near-perfection,
where slivered tongued foamy waves deposit
new & used poems on beach, emptied from
now repurposed sea shells and hardened
conchae's, evidence that the truest inhabitants
never leave, always return, with their markers

Inevitable, that I write this in premature
anticipation, amidst the towers of babble,
& honking taxis, imitating Canadian geese,
who await our presence to refute any paper,
that we fool human claimants, before Nature
pretense of ownership, are not mere renters, albeit
but for a few centuries, which by larger definition,
is an interim short term lease, writ in invisible ink, that tho it
yellowing disappears, the orange summer heat magic revives

Inevitable, that decades of worshiping this
place, now mindbound, as temple, shrine, to
a place extant in our minds, wherever we be,
as land that owns us; here, we have buried
super~hero figurines, sanded, polished memories
of loved ones, parents, friends, adventures, times,
confusing generations, for the children of earlier
children, whose children, now too scream with glee
& courageous abandon, familiar+identical to forbears

Inevitable, that we live here, though life demands
our presence elsewhere, in our minds,* for each
year burnishes our genes with sun rays, while sand
smoothes our roughened skin, and we are only refresher
modifications of our earlier selves, when we first were
lost, and stumbled upon this grail, with shovels and
red plastic pails, with which we commenced erecting
foundations, homes, gardens and vines, and images
that are always at home in our minds, living on,

in real time…

May 3 2034

#whereshelter #alive #in #minds #nml

Where Shelter Jan 3

“a good create” (for Daisy, a true companion)

(for Daisy, a true companion to poet rr)

in the city,
we fight daily the toughest of hombres,
brown, grayed, mottled city pigeons,
who fear no human predator,
in the fight
for the crumbs and crusts of
inspiration
however, they may come our way

get a message, a post,
with the words
“a good create”

the words form a chord,
in my throat, taut, visible, tense
even knowing it’s likely a typo,
probably meant “creature,.”

but the phrase strikes me
as one too little spoke
in our diurnal drudgery
numbing~dumbing struggle,
but, I take them as (a) writ,
for the crumb of challenge
proffered

if we cannot justify our existence,
daily with a new create,
then incumbent upon us
to cherish, double and thrice,
the good and wonderful
creates,
the surround us

been decades since my body
was warmed by the shape of an animal’s
curves fitted into mine,
our sleep rhythm intertwined,
nay,
one
<>
so once again,
I mourn a living poem
who crossed my path
in photo, in words,
but never,
not in,
living color

but the sighs of loss,
real

so as is my wont,
inquire within,
where shelter?

in the love
we create
tween us and our
creatures.

#whereshelter #daisy #true #companion #to #r

Where Shelter Dec 2023

In God’s No~Fly Zone

In God’s No~Fly Zone

blessedly, so many of you are
unaware of the full color spectra
that be can seen only when an
age of experience has been reached,

reached, not attained, for the no~fly
zone is no place to be, without any
redeeming colorations, it is dark hued
twilight that inhibits vision clarity,
a precursor warning of the hungry
darkness that offers to swallow one
into shades of sad remorse, and other
miseries

How came I to earn this distinction,
was not by acting out, rather by inaction,
the failure to pick the  correct fork in a
life of sentence diagramming, sentence
in the prison sense, all my sentences,
broken down,  no connection sensible
to the next phrase, next phase,  so I
sit beneath my vine and fig tree, unable
to fly, unable to tear shed,
grounded, pounded in my head

#in #gods #nofly #zone #whereshelter

Where Shelter Sep 2023

Black Tambourine & Rebuttal

Black Tambourine by Rick Richardson

Death is a dark knife
that cuts the light
through the window.
A black car in the night.
A burning cigarette
bursting on the highway.
A fire going out.
A gypsy with whiskey
breath shaking
a black tambourine.

~~~~~

Black Tambourine Rebuttal by NM Lipstadt

Death is a lit light,
sundering the slowing,
defeating the resistance,
accepting with gratitude the surrendering of labored breathing,
tallying as complete the summation of
all the trials of errors
these accumulations,
accompanied
fittingly,
by an 1812 overture music spectacular,
with fireworks and cannons
pronouncing
victory, at long last!

a V-D Day,
over the onerous blackness
of too many soleless nights,
instead it offers a comforter
of Where Shelter?
Here!

in our starry be-Knighted,
our jointed crowning neath tapestry blanket of transport to
our immortality sheltering.

do not doubt its
peculiar nourishing
is
bountiful certainty

#black #tambourine #rebuttal #whereshelter

Where Shelter Sep 2023

EnTitled: Middlesteps: “Startling the Fearful”

“A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful
Is this a test? It has to be, otherwise I can't go on.
Haven't written a word in three and a half years.
Time to take the broom out to this shallow grave”
Middlesteps

~~~~(|)~~~~

For
deep is the fear, coated in thickening veneer
of might-be-bravery,
the weight, Oh, the weight!
of that writing utensil that both
bears and bares all,
an uncomfortable unconscious,
uncontrollable surrender
that sweeps down upon us,
when first we seek the unwieldy unwinding
of our proactive fist of a first step,
the unclenching, the open face palm,
seeing our lifeline’s revelation, the shame,
the lines we thought that faded away,
upended, open ended, that the worst
un-finishing, but here I am, my taking, the
baby steps of Middlesteps,
only looking
back to forwards for permission,

a new looking inward
forward!

we confesses, beg for our own forgiveness
for ourselves, the years of summary silence ,
at last!
unveiled and unbound, this first step stinks of
tremors, poems never writ up, but on our mouths
and fingertips yet memorized as IF they were bespoke

this return,
“startling the fearful,”
a provocation to the mirrored images
caked on my disheartened body,
goes lightly noticed, but not by me!

daily, I ask the bay and the sky, the animals,
the query lives in almost each of my scripts,

Where is Shelter?

today the answer is not an apparition,
but the question is rephrased,
not where! but when
the answer is now apparent,
for the seed planted, this is for you,
watering the seed, feeding the shoot,
that I know too well,
for asked and I answer,

everyday…

Middlesteps 3h
Helper
I worry, i have not time to give up praying,
But i gather dust as i wait.

This old heart yearns for
Glory
Stretches and strains, gasping for breath,
But it's
Growing.

My pain, shining in the darkness,
Glowing;
I feel it
Flowing;
Bristling in my veins,
Exploding;
Whistling in me, crazed,
Contorting.
But i keep
Exploring.

Calling out Your Name,
I'm going.
It's driving me insane,
But it's
Showing.
My wings are
Bowing.

Pick me up by the tips of
My fingers;
Lift me up to Your
Chambers;
Settle me in front of Your
Dinners;
Take me from this hall of
Mirrors;
As my heart
Shivers;
It cries
Rivers.

Nothing will stop me as You pull me away,
Rise above me in Your endless Grace,
But i'm
Brittle;
I need Your
Shelter;
Be my
Helper.

#whereshelter #middlesteps

Where Shelter Aug 2023

“To dream by the oak and awake by the sea“

<>

”To dream by the oak and awake by the sea
when August has ripened and turned Jubilee
you must enter dominion of summer's delight
and live in the rapture of candescent light

Oh to live and to love one must first learn to kiss,
the kinetics of summer, with eternal bliss.”

~from vienna bombardieri’s poem, “Kinetics Of Summer~
(with her kind permission)

<>

First verse pinpoints accurate, this,
my spot!
by oak and sea,
my precise longitude and latitude, where my summertime
eyes open to receive the gift of morning’s light, observing
the conjunction of land, hard by the sea, the land-ed avian gentry
and sea~sailor birds interacting, sharing the uprising currents,
for sport and observation, travel and pleasured sailing,
these “Masters of the Sky can fly for hours (or days), while barely flapping,” and this verse stuns, and
my shock,

at these, her words
my breathing is gasped and grasped
by oak and sea, for so it be,
this is where
my morning’s operatic scrum, ballet and dance hall hullabaloo,
my diurnal natural choreography is performed,
while slow sipping my very heated first coffee

it was here
that I learned to love more easily,
for the kinetics of summers trio of sun, sky, and moderate breezes,
lulled the turbulence of my disheartened lives into an easier
order, the world~surround, a living, breathing exercise that
warmed the spirit, cooled the soul, and spoke without uttering
a single word,
here dear person, is the where and the when,
the comfort of the natural-blanket
that enwraps, covers, cherishes the atmosphere entire,
containing the healing elixirs and protective ointments,
that remove the
plaque of life’s accumulated injuries, slights and scar tissue

simply put,
here I breath freely,
here I see with clarity
here the infusions of
living in nature, prolongs,
restore, remind, enliven
and enhances,
the intermixture of
body and soul

here in actual deed,
the kiss of summer bliss
upon
my tiring cell’s walls,
are resurrected even unto the nuclei,
by the warm breath of sun life and sun light,
and the breezes of salty sweet caramel air
and under their loving, combined-dominion
am I
resurrected and will yet sense,
one more Jubilee again
as I lay dreaming
by the oak and the sea…

great appreciation to Vienna B. for the beautiful poem she wrote,
and thanks for the inspiration!
Always be dreaming!
W.S.

#whereshelter #vienna #bombardieri #oak #sea

Where Shelter Jul 2023

Where In Deed is Shelter?

Where Is Shelter?

depends on the location of the storm…

so oft have I queried the gods and you?

Where is Shelter?

to which, my response, while surrounded so well (!)
within
my moated island circumferences redoubt,
always was a simple:

“Here, Here is shelter!

But so human, thus so prone to delimited vision,
always, we scan the skies outward, fearful of
the hurricane and storm that approach,
from without, appearing, and the brewing
sky’s danger is visceral~visible to the naked eyes,
when,
it is disguised within the chambers of the
body, festering, until it is pestering, and
shelter, sadly, is not injectable, transferable,
easy remedial, and the hunkering down
with four walls not the solution, for the walls
themselves are damaged by decades of
waves of innocuous gently lapping that still
erode igneous granite(1) and fissure the self,
this secretive, enemy insidious…

so it comes to be, that my own daggers have
pivoted, the pointy dangers pointed outwards,
well entrenched in their own defenses, now targeting
the whole of me, my outer walls breached, and
fired upon by cannons of cells, a treacherous
attack, bombardement par l'artillerie et les drones,
of the Fifth Column (2)…

so once more, say no more, but ask the brief of demand,

Where is Shelter?

the answer is as of yet to be decided,
but the forces
arrayed for and against
are equally determined!

W.S.

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3094276/the-unthinkable-is-our-specialty/

(1)
Granite is hard enough to resist abrasion, strong enough to bear significant weight, inert enough to resist weathering,

(2)
Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, espionage, and/or terrorism executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force

#whereshelter

Where Shelter Jul 2023

The Mendacity of Beauty, Marvels of the Mundane

The Mendacity of Beauty, Marvels of the Mundane

<1/1/2023 10:38 PM>

commissioned by Pradip^
<>

A special carnet permits the day,
though day itself unremarkable,
permissioning of a thousand,
even, tens of ten thousand
grasping new love poems

all mundane, all marvelous

an aborning of odes re the
vastness of sea, sandy sky,
multifarious penumbras of hewn hues,
vibrantly diverse, still, requiring the
expanse and pretense of “new”
adjectives and metaphoric
in combos recalculating

precisely, it’s the enormity,

of the difficulty of verbal capture
upon tablet of these natural treasures,
once, more, yet again, but in somehow in a new-never
quite-before conceptional~postulation-realization

I sojourn amidst both man made and natural beauty,
provoking, invoking, a steady stream of potable knowledgeables, performing as a hand-written-thank-you-note for the grace, the imagination of their mishmash existences addressed only to

“whom it may truly concern…”

I’m eager to confess that the poetry inherent in the
mundane, requiring not-so-easy mining, a sales taxing
innovation to capture the subtlety of less visible flecks of gold, that present a rarer challenge to the poet’s senses where glory abides in pyrite pebbles strewn and trod upon by most indifferently,

ah, write of the marvel of the mundane,
**** dare you!

<>

^Pradip: “writing of the mundane is mandatory for me…”
Aug 12 2022

#pradip #whereshelter #mundane #marvel