#potw
someday it will be willed (have I told you lately that I love you?)
that the poetry ceases,
no more birthdays notated
calendar closed, the xxx’s axed,
kitchen junk drawer, a consignment store,
no longer needed, the futility of saving
knickknacks, maximized, the no lasting
value proposition, realized, eulogized.
pictures of beautiful automobiles,
decorated with beautiful women,
will forever be last year’s models,
one calendar too far, not long enough
no more of
have I told you lately that I love you?
wrote you plenty love poems so, hereafter,
you won’t be bereft, left farklempt,
arranged one-a-day, on a timed delay,
so many more that will appear in your
inbox until you too, no longer choose open it.
no more “sirprising” I love you statements,
taped to the milk carton, it was so willed,
the daily counting, record keeping, who first,
how many, secretly added to a grocery list,
in stuff that was so beloved, exasperating,
making you just right amount of crazy, smiling....
someday it will be willed, so,
here’s the first of many more....
Jul 18, 2020
Jul 18, 2020 at 4:19 PM UTC
reasons not to read my poetry:
1. it does not use cutesy rhymes
2. it usually has more than four lines
3. doesn’t employ emojis, whistles, chimes
4. non-words in poetry, a serious punishable crime
5. ok ok ok! cause you insist, occasionally sometimes
6. it trying hard not to be depressed, (bad ok, not sad!!)
7. usually not trite, though ‘fess, it is a never ending fight
8. oh dear, daisies so simple, mine, complicated, ‘jes a tad
9. requires periodic use of a dictionary, for words of 8 letters +++
10. adjectives usually sensible, opposed to “croissant clouds”
11. free men write free verse, no need, don’t use f*k, sht
12. a poems shape is circumstantial, not circumferential
13. it’s a lot of work to get it shape shifted kerectly
14. go new, go bold, use heart + **** together
15. never recip nice comments, never fail
16. to send **** to ********* arrocan’ts
17. this is getting boring, nap time near
18. yada yada, you finish this!
Jun 27, 2020
Jun 27, 2020 at 12:20 PM UTC
Sent for our amusement, pleasuring admiration,
our funny bones, and galore (glory) of creation,
Texas squirrels are nuts, like crazy,chasing each other ,
up trees, across the wide expanse of the backyard,
where’s the Davy Crockett sharpshooters when
you really need them? (1)
now that baby rabbit, fearless or stupid, insists on
running on our deck, looking for applause for his skinny
legs hopping neath the chaise lounges, at any ole time,
guess this ain’t the love poem you were expecting,
then again you’d be wrong again and agin, but the
grandkids going, going, gone and applause muted
anyway, one of these days gonna stop and chat with
these two species, what they’re thinking about, the
human menagerie, its depleted numbers, wherefore
and why, did the reduction of the human stockyard,
emboldened them to occupy territory they’d otherwise
shy away, hear what they say, gonna make a good poem
p.s. the avians yap and caw 24 hrs a day, presumptuous beasties noisy
_____________________________________________________________
(1) “In fact there wouldn't be a Texas if it weren't for squirrel stew. Don't condemn the idea of stewing your squirrel problems away. That's right! Davy Crockett and his Tennessee sharpshooters wouldn't have reached puberty if it were not for squirrel stew. Besides, what do you think they ate on the long trip from Tennessee to the Alamo? Enchiladas? Nope! You guessed it--squirrel stew.”
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/recipes/squirrel.html
Jun 17, 2020
Jun 17, 2020 at 8:48 AM UTC
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
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 10:25 AM UTC
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
Jun 17, 2020
Jun 17, 2020 at 8:45 AM UTC
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
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 6:56 AM UTC
*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
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 10:57 PM UTC
she writes me from Paris
wanting a command,
exactement comme moi
all her own.
to scribe.
in “a style with strength”
exactement comme moi
exactly like me
where the ideas percolate
for the precise gestation period
and the birth-born poems a-coming
without and within silent no belabored pain,
making the child appear as if it was only waiting
already, on its own good time. for saying thank you
for your patient waiting and who is really in
command?
when the overwhelming light orders “write”
I am gone from yesterday and the safe of picayune
does that sound like I am in
command?
you wish to command?
join the navy, the army,
become a paratrooper,
command in poetry is illusory,
for it comes from the bell tower rage of madness
of what my ancestors planted and bequeathed genetically,
and I have wasted the better half of a century appealing for
relief and making it clear who commands and who is the
“poetoftheway” slave
rejoindre la marine, l'armée,
devenir un parachutiste,
commande en poésie est illusoire,
car il vient du clocher de la rage de la folie
de ce que mes ancêtres ont planté et légué génétiquement,
et j'ai gaspillé la meilleure moitié d'un siècle attrayant pour
soulagement et en précisant qui commande et qui est le
“Poetoftheway" esclave
exactement comme moi
exactly like me?
exactly.
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 5:56 PM UTC
Clueless, Restless, but then the Moon Speaks!
can you see clouds at night, askes the moon,
my train, my assemblage of word worshippers,
who ask me by the thousand for clearer answers,
“one if by day, two if by night” is my evere’d reply,
bereft of confidences, steps unsteadied, full of distemper,
shaky uncertain, so answer all, once more, but only with
difficulty am I understood, for the simplicity so so great!
*the moon comes to you nightly, never! never are you ignored,
your lost alone words always well heard, we are two together,
we are all* two, if by night, my lune bright, ours, your answer!
Together Nightly, Are We Not Poets of the Way?
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 9:43 AM UTC
**~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
May 13, 2020
May 13, 2020 at 5:16 PM UTC
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
May 5, 2020
May 5, 2020 at 3:11 PM UTC
<>
~ “Above everything else, guard your heart; for it is the source of life's consequences.”~
Proverbs 4:23)
these days, good advice overnight trebles in value,
no one I’m sure has consulted Proverbs today,
not me, not you, not anybody, but these words
came to we, the confined, lonely hearted prisoners, we who
are needy to reflect, we raggedy people in solitary.
tonight, some of us will recall an exodus to free,
an escape from slavery, how we put at risk
our bodies in a sea, a desert, more crazy, in an
invisible deity, when that was a heretical concept, we who
are needy to reflect, we raggedy people in solitary.
Above everything else, guard your heart;
for it is the source of life's consequences,
the ***** above/beyond mouths, eyes, even lungs,
it’s what purposed we fragile, petal edging humans who
are needy to reflect, we raggedy people in solitary.
Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 9:10 AM UTC
this old poet, one of the first, to see your wave,
when he was playing knick-knack paddy whack on his shoe,
the old poet then played two, and said,
yes, I will follow you
Please
imaging-imaging that old poet with a glanceable cursory,
a small smile whispered, with entourage of a nod and a wink,
stands, knowing he is in the delivery room, a witness,
to first steps of a babe starting a new life
marvelous miracle by touching a button, a new line written,
not crossed but connecting by pressing "Follow"
with a finger from a hand, a human fringe,
attached to a breathing mind and a thinking heart,
the first to follow you, a ceremonial gesture of
innovation magic incantation, a new moon blessing,
a living person believing, remembering, the longest ago,
his first own graceful acknowledgement and eyes speak,
yes, I will follow you
the new poet, astonished at this induction to the smallest
Hall of Fame that they alone own the only key, study that
number, that number 1, the first to follow, kinda looking over
their shoulder to make sure the old poet still there on the morrow,
sure enough there are now two, safe in the back pocket,
a tabulation of humans who speak volumes of trust, saying,
yes, I will follow you
the old poet, imaging-imaging the babe, dancing round
the room, invigorated, challenged and the faucets pouring,
can't write it down as fast as the trains arriving disgorging,
words unique in new combinations and the rush of blood
from heart to head to those newly literary fingers bleeding
happy creatures of creation as if they are Noah
setting sail to save us with verbs and adjectives
two by two all for now species unheard of
the old poet wants to send cautionary notes, the path strewn
with frustrations of no inspiration ditches and inescapable cliches
that sound fresh but just aren't, the disappearing satisfaction,
the inability to get it just perfect, and so many obstacles
to be prophesied,
but he does not, these things must be self taught,
today let it suffice the initiation, the first crowning of
**yes, I will follow you
for this the way of the poet
10/16/17 5:09pm**
Oct 16, 2017
Oct 16, 2017 at 5:22 PM UTC
will my roots wither if I pull away?
this, incessant self-querying,
the heart pain tug that tugs on a
clockwork-random schedule,
should I pull it up by the roots,
that, the deepest cut of all.
when you obsess, perplexed about responsibility,
about escape, from what you’ve planted,
which came up with thorns unexpected.
the sweat, from the care and feeding,
rankles and saddens, for this
investments sour taste makes you question
your common-sensical nonsensical,
that intersection where the heart and the brain clash fearsome.
this is oft, too oft, how life sinks it teeth
into you, and extracting those thorns,
leaving teeth marks
hurting long long time after
those withered roots get tugged, pulled,
like a pain in the heart that was exorcised,
but couldn’t never be fully excised
9/12/19
Sep 12, 2019
Sep 12, 2019 at 4:35 PM UTC