the transitional day


august August practicing her Academy Award speech,
“Best Month of the Summer, 2020,” between you ‘n me,
there wasn’t much in the way of competition, nonetheless,
careful chosen backdrop, sound effects, mood music -
The Zombies playing “Time of the Season,” inter-inter,
mixing in cool weather, blue skies, intermittent cumulative
cumulus, pushed around by a whitecapping 16 MPH wind

the transitional effects, the leaves dropping fast, **** pointy
s.o.b., pointy acorns, under bare feet means a lot of cursing,
nobody likes change and kissing sweet summer goodbye for a
chilly tonguing neath a smirking smile, for the fates, having
a mischievous hot streak going, promising fall_ing fireworks,
(insert hacking, can’t breathe noises, gunshots and last rites)

try to wrap my arms around the summering highlights, never,
to let go, but you can’t successful hold onto, grasp aholt of
sunlight, traveling clouds, tanning oil, when the breeze is already
autumn weight tweed sturdy strong, and your new bathing suit
(so flattering, so long!) got no unsightly pockets (uncool) and
they got motion, and you have no traction and they just ‘adieu’ you

transition from chilled to trepidated, worries change seasonal colors,
green trees gone, green money worries replacements, and brown is
generally an ugly color, what life leaves behind, brown things,when
things die. Even bay waters have got the fall blues, no more robust
blue eyed girls to decorate white beaches, shades of grays tryout to
be the signature of coloration of symbolic, leave-less, denuded trees

frankly,  I’m in a lousy mood and wait and weight mix, a new coffee flavor from Dunkin’ Depressed, gonna be a big seller if there’s any left, don’t wonder why, ain’t gonna be much around, since I’m gonna drown this magnifique summer body in a tub of coffee that came all the way from June and July, it turned bitter soured, ain’t gonna think twice ‘bout it, heck, after this, may not even think of ‘bout it at all, ain’t nothing to, for, or say...’cept

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“When a man loves a season
Spend his very last dime
Trying to hold on to what he needs
He'd give up all his comforts
And sleep out in the rain
If Mother Nature said that's the way
It ought to be.”


apologies to the songwriters of
“When a Man Loves a Woman”

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.