High on candy-land
Miss Sugar-lips plays all day.
Forked road like her tongue.

Umbridging the gap,
and the platitudes of word-******
     as well as the Encyclopedic pimps of posh
spiced with lingual ice...
          Because I am a simpleton
with a thirst for the Beloved
             Her discriptives, meanings,
                      Am I / I am / scholarly lacking
    Juxtaposing my script to refer
to references Grecian or urn, an
                     enflagrante artisan
                            spurts with superlatives,
personified iambics of rhetoric, the lines
       limned with deep shagrin

              because my verbs are linear
even when my chicken scratch
                          struck midnight a match stick
flame to illuminate
         my poetic fluffer's formulae,
              schisms from my own mind's magician hat...

Not to be-little or slight those hands walking
        that yellow the pages
                     slothly seeking rote,
              for meandering bibliographies,
librarian's histology / fingers for Captain
Cook or Hook / exploration's verbose
           exploitation if at most
                   connecting dots’ treasured maps
purposeful / placement / the imagery
                         in the textiles
              of poetry's destined enlightenments

       cloak & dagger or a Throw
                        a goose-down warmth
of Love / to blanket the night away
                           just as would a mother's tucking in
                from the day's overwhelming
lack of reverances, referenced,
             oh how to closely listen   / hear
                        beyond the history
beyond the moments end
              comparing and sharing
     our joys power of now . . .
keep it simple

because I am a simpleton with a thirst
                         with a thirst for the Beloved,
        the Truth of an endowed Tao /
Promise of Us. . .
(All gaps and platitudes)

Expressing
loose-jointed

grace

this silver spring
flips

over itself
like the first steps

of a newborn
much

like our marriage
when it was freshly

minted
that same

clumsy progress
slow and steady

down
one stair at a time

Whit Howland © 2020