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Dear New Poet:

Then I'm your man,
your very own
Northern star,
one leg up of a
3 legged stool,
upon which all,
we, enthroned poets,
the world-over,
do rule

the honor you
bequeath me  
to be,
a first follower,

your very own
first responder,

cannot be
disdained
nor
diminished

this case,
this birth,
novice revival,
heart transplant,
makes it
the greatest
to be the first—

the quencher
of your thirst
so long in the parching,
the throat burnt

by a desert sojourn
of a now ended,
forty years

so come to me!

message me
a message,
find me a find,
your poem so fine,
I here now vow,
our embrace will
ne’er be broken

give me this
honorific!

let us together
be terrific,
raise our glasses,
arms entwined
toasting you  
all that mind and 
breast of yours,
bursting full of 
future~contains,
the full release of, 
bringing longer life
to us both

I am a father.
I am a grandfather.
I am a First Follower.
I am a First Responder,
for all who need a leg up,
so step upon my heart,
the first step upon a ladder
with no top, no end ensighted

my legs are as old as time, but,
measure me not by the rings and 
the metered scales of gray hair aging,
shock of white, a cain mark, wizard-wizened

but by the muscles
of my deep affection,
the solemnity of this,
my irrevocable promise

this,
the blessing
we both earn and make
when you write,
while we wait
in quiet attendance -
for all your good works,
your kept promises

Blessed
are You Lord our God, 
Ruler of the Universe
who has given us life, 
sustained us until now,
allowing
the reader and the writer, to reach,
meet, embrace and
greet this day,
this new born poem,
with hallelujahs
                                         together

East River: The Many Calories in Water and Words**

this weighty obsession, counting the energy
consumed and disbursed,
to be lean but not mean,
traverses into its third year

a late start does not forgive
over Forty years of transgressions, that damage,
sustained and in part irreversible,
yet I awake this Sunday morn,
all quiet on the East Side front, observing the East River flows
on the surface, contented and uncontested,
strongly bound for faraway Oceans unknown, and it tickles my
imagination that the rain from the nearby Adirondack and Catskills mountains might soon be quenching thy flora, fauna and your parched throats, confirming and conforming our connection and threading our interwoven tapestries, our unified aqueduct, carrying
with more than poetic words, but poetic water!

this notion sustains in multiple manners, and I deep drink the calm and the power as if it were,
for it is,
a daily vitamin,
calorie free,
God  delivers

Delivering
us with
its contained and contentented potency,
to all
in equal dosage

and now the script finished,
the water imbibed,
this baptized, scripture loving
mind and body
as/is
wholly holy
refreshed,
as are we,
my friend

8:38AM
April 14, 2024
by the East River

love~worn to the extremity (get a dog)**


rare condition but not so rare,
that a first year intern might guess
the prognosis from visible symptoms,
the alternating listless groans, contextual
unexplained weeping, no singlized source
of pain but short hard stabbings in odd,
multiplex moving theaters of the brain ‘n body

slow onset, then signs manifest in increasing
rapidity, till your buddies attempt to drown
your context in a local pub, but to no avail,
just a guttural persistent wailing failing
where they beside themselves, send you home,
you’re tossed on your bed, to search for no rest,
for this malignancy is cured by lingering time,
and even then, it is a never fully excised tumor,
shedding bad humors, cells to witness to exist,
decades, a precursor to a life long disease, composing
just
one more bad
lost love poem, a
disease cancerous
in its aspect, look for the paling, waning now near
permanent discoloration around the eyes, and surely
you will have ease instantaneously recognizing me

get a dog they said,
so I did, so now, two sad eyed
lowland lady mates, two basset hounds walking each
other on silent daily trip with no destination until
one of them commences the serenade of howling


olp