for vicki who loves this poem for the best reason ever: just does...
<•>
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance that  is the only concert
the imbalance that is the the only constant

how do I know this?

what are my credentials?

you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know, recall of these matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner;
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient

then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move off

  begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked.
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
---

Please,
Do not carve wounds upon your skin,
Do not let your blood spill thin.
Instead,
Carve pain in words upon the sheet.
Pour your sorrow out in ink.

Waves caress my feet,
ever so gently,
wind murmurs words of love
to me,
the sun kisses my soul
so warmly.

Within this ocean of affection,
my thoughts tremble,
but my heart yearns
to drown deep,
lost in the ebb.

~for old poets every where

I'm a short burst deep sleeper,
the woman is a restless wild eyed story telling schemer~dreamer, who drives at night
in fourth gear,
shaking the bed,
with dreams gone wild,
crazed & crazy intermixed stories unhinged but always
real life related

most by morn forgotten,
'cept for the truly bizarre,
where scraps of unbridled unbelievable
remain for head shaking disbelieving

i sleep in clumps,
four hour sessions and thus oft
bear witness to her
charcoal activated dream states,
where physical reality intersperses,
i n t e r m i n g l e s
with her dream life,

when she wrestles with an
unreal
dreamed restlessness;
my fingers find an exposed
body part, arm, shoulder, tummy,
and steady massage a message
from my fingertips to her
brain,

mantra: it's ok, it's alright,
and return her to the safety
of a deeper sleeper,
so the brain can do its work,
washing away the unrefined,
needy for distilling,
overnight cleansing,
of unwanted memories
which generally works

in the thorny morny morning
she gets a questionnaire
and 9/10,
has no recollection collection,
my magic prophylactic
fingertips, each tipped with
a inked smiley face,
look up at me,
know-it-alls,
smirking contentedly,
"our work is done here!"

Nay, May 25
2025
writ by starlight