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“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
Have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”


Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman

                                                      ­      §§§

A night of reckoning, calculations repeated-checked, sums divided,
did I use too many, or not enough, words to be understood, verbiage eloquent,
did daytime reveal my poetic meanings, or double-occlude it’s essence?

I have reckon’d Manhattan Isle, circumnavigated its riverbed boundaries, a younger me, by kayak rounded it, from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Battery, 14,500 acres give or take, a lifeatime to complete a dead reckoning, an unfinished full configuring.

but haven’t reckon’d that Earth and I will be entwined/entombed in each other’s arms, until such time, one of us or both, will be reduced to cosmic dust, our pride, our poems, will be equally unimportant and irrelevant, I reckon.

in retrospective rear view perspective, come to understand that we spend every moment of our lives, reckoning, determine the odds of which fork we will take, laugh out loud, for each moment, a poem  is titled, the resultant, a poem - who needs a muse, you’ve got choices!

So, yes, Walt, the questing  answers you’ve requested:
Aye, yes, yup, but no to pride, for pride and poetry in one sentence is
a death sentence at multiple levels, pride, poetry, ego, suicide,...sins,
so better no proud for it is the entree, the invitation to fall-fail...
                                                   ­      §§§§§


12:03AM  Frieday
May 15th
my deadline missed,
but what is three minutes,
but empty pride...
Manhattan Island

when you’ve written too many poems
vaguest of recollections of the prior,
having not seen many for years,
till someone drops one on my path in a
wave-by-remember-me, did I write this?

all I know, all I’ve learned from this long gig,
the best poems from my fingertips that came
tap tap tapping, were the ones, the provocations,
driven by loving the poetry of others, or those
all about others.

my eager meager ain’t much to write home about,
but when your stuff is a trigger, gotta figure,
there’s a bottle in the ocean that just hit me
on the head, messaging me go forward,
pay thanks to those who evoke, yeah, provoke,
new spillages of inspiring gratitude for
relocating my New Moon Melange^

yep that’s it.


so is there
such a thing?
as re-remembering,
just knowing
my name is hard
(you understand),
the inspiration
oft forgot,
so I write it all
up and down,
insurance so to speak,
for re-remembering
when you stumble
on it, wont’t fumble.


yep that’s it.

Preamble: Compare and Contrast

compare and contrast,
the teacher asks us to
do this,
on a mid-term
exam and I am
                                  struck-up by a resonance combo, a commandment
                                  compare and contrast, somewhere an ineffable has
                                  ordered me to love poetry, in all/only honesty,
                                  in that uncertain way. without surcease.
                                    

                 ­                    functional verbs that a button pushed,
                                            a non-rhyme that sang out somehow
                                                “this is the writing life, this way, yours.”
                                    live and last.
  
with that single directive,
compare and contrast.
without surcease,
                   and your poem then,        has no The End.

My Name is Shepard: When King David was very old, he could not keep warm


                                        *****­*
ancient kings grow aged, time offeres no exemptions,
hard life body, worn from glory, battle hoary, many women,
his story was not an allegory, it was allegorical story retold,
a poet loved the lord, sunk to sin, pride, yet, always asking why,
for all kings have boundaries, limits, even offenses unforgivable.

his psalms depleted, his eyes rapid failing, and the warmth
gone missing was not from his body, that but a side casualty,
his eyes were to mountains cast, wondering whence will come.
a warmth needed live forever, knowing full well no such power
exists except his Lord’s lasting embrace, their joint, last verse.

                                              <>

My name is David, born a shepard boy, dying a king, a human saved
by the hand of the Lord from the paw of the lion and jaws of the bear,
gave courageous trust to slay a Philistine giant, the greatest gift?

To pen powerful words that long outlived my actions and misdeeds,
a gift transferred to you and you, a certain knowledge that truthful
writs, will be your everlasting scrip and scripture, a name well recalled, poems of praise, songs of lament and sorrow, lyrics of wisdom, even those of mistakes, errors of sin, asking for wisdom for the greatest bravery, to ask, and greater still, to give forgiveness.

the warmth I seek will arrive at last, as the watchmen recite my poems by candlelight to me, as I ascend to meet my maker, the candle giving both heat and light for this is the dual nature of human life, this balance striven to leave our ledger level, letting our history be an honest reflection of we we were, who we hoped to be, and the record giving the warmth of our human truths long lasting.

                                            

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


that which used to take ten minutes
now takes an hour or
two

something's that used to take an hour or
two,
now take ten minutes, give or
take,
(mostly I do the taking)

(or as the little voice whispers, the mostly
faking)

betcha you'd like to which is what
and what is which being bewitched,

I ain't spilling no beans
cause I value my insanity's privacy,
and I don't got to give that up just yet

but if you want the worst of what little I got left,
unhappily I will approach the old muse
begging me giving me something to use,
bad she turns away bad she say

"You all tricked out,
you wares worn,
ye old styles from yester last month
you been styled by
  H&M;
30 days max,
then
ring in the new, and if all sold,
or none-at-all,
too bad for you

then you gotta decide:

wear a watch
or watch the wearing
with  small
pleasures sighed,
confirming,  night-moves,
gonna
Keep On Keeping On
Living