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everyone has gone back to suburbia,
city streets are dangerous, if you look
at someone cross eyed, it earns you death.

don’t celebrate this madness,
mourn it in black, it has a taken
a pandemic to school me again.

this a broadcast, shout out, email me
if you know how I’m feeling and can
share what other mutualities crisscross.

Do you like Jazz? Me neither.
Flouncy bouncy dresses? Nah!
Sweats? Unnecessary, I can sweat
just by concentrating.

You like me, own soulful bluesy singers,
femme fatales, who coax and croon,
wet the spun threads of subtle emotive,
who live by light of candles votive,
I live in black, day and nighttime,
write in midnight blue, a woman who!
takes no b.s. and doesn’t ever take no
for an answer...
People say they don’t understand [my songs], but I never believe that.
It’s like understanding an embrace…
”Leonard Cohen

<>for cj<>

perhaps, there is someone in this world, who does not
understand an embrace; something physical no doubt.

perhaps, you thought that first kiss was the portal to
shedding the inhibitors, lobes stings, first arousal aroma.

but you’ve been practicing embracing from toddler age,
but someday, it traverses from hugs to all-encompassing,

the sensory adaptors, go wild from shock; and you think
to yourself, dear god, you’ve been holding back on me!

   <>

two hands,
smooth the shoulders, slide down, elbows grasp,
you’ve been taken unawares, while fully aware you’ve been,
taken, taken, and need to take, more and back, take again,
and you can’t decide between reciprocation or incantation
breaking separation, if only to start over from the last lingering...

touching vibration and every sense erupting, and you think
I’ve never been fully  embraced, and now I understand the
music and muscle of your poetry, and will add my verses,
lay on my stanzas,
ocean crossings, seafaring voyages, exploring hands on hips,
then encapsulating another’s face, stroke, not squeezing

arms come to rest on a pacific neck, the hairs tensile teasing,
and you can’t believe this newly formed addiction and why
everyone simply doesn’t go about constant craving embracing,
racingoverloading uncomprehending, it’s fulsome fulfilling, quenching
a new thirst, a new taste, extending your ******* reach everywhere

you clear the catch, the cache, and your voice now begs, announces,
commands, whispers, screams, so many things that all emerge as
simply a guttural exclamation raw and needy, again, again, again,
you say it as if that was your vocabulary entire, a one word language
because it is, it is, the language of insatiable, the speech of
only love poetry*
embracing.
  Aug 2020 no truth login
Where Shelter
<•>



for all the Ella's of the world,
who wonder
"what the seagulls talk about all day long. while looking up at the gentle sky mixed with blue and purple, their white feathers glisten from the fiery sun."


<•>


one day when you arrive,
visiting, at my isle,
of Where Shelter,
(with signed parental permission slip),
resting upon weathered worn, Adirondack non-slip covered thrones,
in the official Poetry Nook,
a seashell throw from bay and dock, where the seagulls
thrive and dive, in between pooping, pollinating, and
rest up after day trip visiting the town dump

then,
together we will write a poem about
what the seagulls talk about all day long

having employed them long time as co-conspirators,
editors and a test audience (assayers of my essays),
sadly must report they
occupy themselves in mostly matters culinary,
local gossip of my neighbors and other avian interlopers
(geese and osprey)

hoping this doesn't disappoint,
but know this,
it was the sand, the breeze, the trees,
the moon and setting sun, the waving waters,
animals of all kinds,
that together, taking years,
taught me to write like this:

<•>

the sun 7 o'clock afternoon sky low,
warmths the world, as did its morning glory reciprocal,
a dozen hours earlier,
both a low heat,
a sky stove top
'keep warm' setting,
a desirable global warming temperature

recall that promise not to burden you
with a hundredth scribing of his
lottery luck, this poetry nook and the
idyll of its surround,
but!
its childlike insistence,
while stomping on the greenest sea grass
of this portly world, insistent,

"write of me, attention must be paid!"

the lightest breeze of excellent sufficiency
asks the trees to shake
their compatriot leaves
as if to applaud,
one more time, a lord of the ring serenade,
an evenstar song of
the solstice of perfection

a cloudless night but for
an occasional wispy white blemish,
hinting that the orb's final bow tonight will be
a forever remembered,
standing ovation performance

in an hour, to the dock we'll go,
joining  the congregant gulls
in appreciating the edging lower of
an immaculate inception
of a dying day's deceptive departure conception

my troubles, those that
furrow and till the brow,
105 miles away, as the crow flies,
for now,
suppressed into non-existence,
as we drink to la vie en rose,
our wine glasses, ****** the salmon pink
of suns rays rippling, tippling and reflecting
upon humans, who too reflect,
upon their good fortune,
this single and singular
peeking at the peaking of their perfection,
each wishing this be
their journeys end, their final solstice

to walk into a funnel upon the water,
into the sun and the
horizon in attendance faithful,,
alighting upon the wings of the most glorious of  inviting,
dying rays of setting,
answering the question, at long last,
a finale,

here,
here is shelter!
  ^

<•>

so be quietly patient and never
write in regret,
for you are but sixteen years old,
and could teach to this old grandpa,
(who, by the by, has an Ella-all-his-own that is
of your proximate age,)

how to write
with the simple grace,
and the fresh wisdom,
of being
sixteen years young again
^https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2044967/the-solstice-of-their-perfection/
<•>

https://hellopoetry.com/ellapopov/

f r e e l y.
all alone on the evening beach. able to take in the moment alone.
slowly falling back into the sand. as if I'm trying to sink and hide into it. grabbing the sand in my hands and counting each grain because I have all the time in the world.
  letting the ocean crash unto the shore, slipping me it's deepest secret. making me laugh as the Novembers chilling air plays with my hair, trying to convince me it's secrets are much more scandalous than the waters.
  wondering what the seagulls talk about all day long. while looking up at the gentle sky mixed with blue and purple, their white feathers glisten from the fiery sun.
  I stand back to run freely, away from my daring problems. as I run, the wind whips my face, blowing my hair back. making me feel the need to let my arms back.
morning contradictories: mourning our poems, falling stars


awaken to a sunshiny Saturday,
the lazys, their coverlet of flowers,
inhibit our movements, now, as it nears
high noon, we have yet from our bed stir

August has be-come, the grass pockets
of gray and green, swaths of sunburn brown,
reveal how far along the North American
summer has poetry passed, irretrievable

reading your messages and notes from
world over, lazy licking you poems so many,
delighting, ponderous and oft heroic, as well,
weeping as too many become fallen stars

each grass blade, from earth born and returned,
the nutrients preserved in our sandy soil, intended
to nurture next summer’s poesy new birthrights,
green+browned, weep+smile, mutual contradictories

these poem best friends, passing by each other at lifecycle’s
multi-paths, metaphors for our too many morning stirrings,
most to be falling like stars that, though in motion, need not
come to rest ever, their movement attracts a one…lasting look

it nears noon, it nears this poem’s timely finishing touch,
straighten its tie, smooth its skirted pleats, a forehead
implant kiss goodbye, sent on its way to find its own weight,
no parent ere admit, it leaves, with tear-burst showers falling…

August 1
2020

noon
when the bridge becomes a pier (Connectivity Poor!)


when:
extended arm, but finds no counterpart, empty air friction,
the bridge becomes a pier, ocean refuses to red sea split, yield,
road divides, dead-ended headed, no turnaround, only STOP! signs

when broken ends are splintered, jagged, glue won’t work, no fix,
two too twisted arms cannot hold on, too tense, too tight,  
being over-alone, solitude passed, secrets go untold

tongue buds are busted broke, vicissitudes of pandemic,
voices, once golden, now just rusted, red flecked word droppings,
only one message from above: Connectivity Poor, Try Life Again, Later!
                                                   <>
?What good is to be a King
when you cannot lead,
what good is to be a shepard
when the flock dying,
what good are David’s psalms
when God is not listening
?
as our letters age

my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing

practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost

soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that sparked them into action

oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...




Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am
you will be invited.
  Jul 2020 no truth login
False Poets
Mirrorball - “the fabrication of our performance”

a life long struggle to accept who I am,
of course, lose, and lose again, and
the fabrication of our performance now
inherent in every excuse and mirrorball
revolving asking, no, laughing, at our
vanity, as we endeavor, enabled by the
paucity of ego, the neediness of weakness’s
to catch, keep, hold each single flickering
light spot in our open, slick palms forever

we fabricate our performance of daily living,
modifying our measurements to match output,
only a human cannot wake only to fall within
each daily tabulation without thinking, once:

I am a hero, worthy of acknowledgement, just
look at my hands! see how many spots of
light I can claim as mine! the mirrorball turns
and turns paying no mind to the worshipers
below, until some sorrowful fool confesses,
fools fail, fools fail, turning the dervish off,
the white flag of ego darkened, once more...


we are all false poets, false prophets, occasionally confessing



7:34 AM
Sat Jul 18
The Year of the Virus, Corona
thank you MG for the commission
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