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Aug 2020 · 403
turning words into wine
poet-on-the-roof Aug 2020
no can do the turning of water, the greatest magician’s trick ever, but
turning words into wine, that I can do,
ready your life, go get a wine glass,
sit down, this is heady stuff, be prepared!

you’re thinking, shoot, I can do that too,
no, you just think you can, for if you could,
you would be drunk already, making typos
all over your shirt, thinking’ bout your next

verse, a great love affair, the one you never
should let get away, the wrong choices that
fed on each other, living with a hateful woman
for the better part of your whole life, the children
who don’t even call to wish you happy birthday

and you would be drunk already just like me,
writing poems like this, a poet sitting on the roof,
and you would have written this whiney poem,
not me, pretending wine can wash your conscience clean

<>

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream


Losing My Religion
Song by R.E.M.
Jul 2020 · 376
My Heart is Drenched in Why
poet-on-the-roof Jul 2020
My Heart is Drenched in Why’s

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

climb to my listening post,
poet-on-the-roof, willing every step,
climb way up to the top of the stairs,
entrance marked POETRY, courtesy
of the bldg. super, an olden friend,
a concerned citizen, humorist, human,
somedays nurse to his corona haloed tenants.

the view of the ******, not laudatory, visible in a 360  degree perspective is of city grunched, scrunched,  covered in
in silent spoke poems, overused views, words that don’t change
a thing, for my heart sees only dimly, being that my disheartened
vision is drenched, diminished, disabled by and in why’s.

ask seer~super what rhymes with why, smiling, an instantaneous poetry helper, having created, an officiel expert, as in everything, reply’s  “why, why most famously rhymes with, why, everyone knows is try!

so I try, three times, try, try, try again to puzzle
why, my heart is drenched in magenta,
who has willed this, not I, my distilled voice,
wants, does roof shout, but try as I might,
the reverb of unanswered is the slap of more
drenching, quiet silencing, and the weightiness
of too many weightless words returned stamped
“no forwarding address, and we know not why.”
Jul 2020 · 179
Mozart’s Poetry
poet-on-the-roof Jul 2020
“They are an inexhaustible spring of delight. Their diversity corresponds to our most varied moods, from the state of quiet content in which all we ask of art is entertainment, exquisite rather than deep, the exuberance of animal spirits, the consciousness of physical and moral health, to melancholy, sorrow and even revolt, and to an Olympian serenity breathing the air of the mountain tops. The comparative uniformity which we notice between them at first sight disappears with closer scrutiny. The feeling is never the same from one to the other; each one is characterised by a personality of its own and the variety of their inspiration shows itself ever greater as we travel more deeply into them.”

Cuthbert Girdlestone

Mozart and his Piano Concertos, 1939
https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/may-june-2020/mozarts-infinite-riches/
poet-on-the-roof Jul 2020
“choose your hugs wisely...(the hug has to spark joy.)”


the pandemical advice columns arrive
unceasingly,
mostly repetitive, causing/repairing minor league
glitches,
but stumbled on the advice above, dumbstruck,
flummoxed
and yes, by god, even that poet’s favorite,
gobsmacked,

thinking wow, great advice,

for the entirety of our remaining days!

poetontheroof
Jun 2020 · 166
poet-on-the-roof
poet-on-the-roof Jun 2020
as the
poet on the roof,
‘tis I,
asking you Lord,
would it have soiled
a vast eternal plan,
to throw some seasoned salt,
on mes écrits?

let this soliloquy
make my case,
my summer
soul-on-ice,
hungover from
the sorrowed sobriety
that stayed, retained,
the sense of loss
that are the mainstays
of my isolated days


long after I’ve left,
the black velvet of
my screen, and I,
wonder where poems
come from, ceasing to
wonder, perhaps as simple
as some sweet old critter
being a human whisperer


**** the czar
and
**** me too.

— The End —