for Denel Kessler

i am a persistent pain in the ***

too many of you lost at sea
big gray dots marking the disappearance last sighted

some in absentia
hiding real absence,
behind a teacher’s X
as someone calls out present,
for you
so still marked “here”

periodically message them to inquire where and why
they’re  keeping their talent warm & selfishly to themselves

should know better than to send selfish
my “just me, checking in” message every more than twice

cause then they reply

with tales that render me into stupid stillness
that cards can deal such bad hands
when you are already
all in

so-passing along a message from
Madame Kessler via a
persistent dude
to you

she, after enduring 11 weeks of hurricanes, followup floods and
other unnamed unnatural events; sequentially called “Job”
she tells you this:

“Feel free to let others in the circle know I think of them often and appreciate all the hands reaching out. It's just all a little much and I'm hanging in the best I can”

so now posted, duty done, perspective slapped
and we who write of pain and life as if
we knew of what we speak
should start over

6/2/18 1:39pm

<•>
4/10/18 10:55pm ~ 4/22/18 2:02 am

Introduction

a simpler than plain fact,  
deserving reflection beyond the obvious,
containing obverse emotional mine field sonar arrays
floating on an ocean unhidden,
listening for the ocean's bleeping hid-dens,
before surrendering to its ****-sinking power of time/gravity
the better life elsewhere is always someone’s misery

<•>
confetti is just tomorrow’s garbage

someone stood on lower Broadway at 5am
watching the sanitation men sweeping up the aftermath of a super bowl  victor’s celebration, with broom heads borrowed from giants’ moustaches

passage of a single thought,
that the victorious celebrated on the parade should
a posteriori be required to participate
in this flip-side experience as
‘active cleaner uppers,’
re-enacting the famous Persian Sufi adage,

“this is too shall pass”

someone whispers we have blessed lives,
rich in the experiential, free of the dragging boredom
of the daily draining of making it, head well above of the
humanizing periodic regularizing water dunkin’ reminder
of just
or

“we too shall pass”

so even the confetti honorees must have too someone whose
life to aspire, the top of the heap, in chained food chain world

assaying perfection and the luck thereof,
picture perfect lives cannot withstand tsunamis of
waves eroding their shapes, wearing boundaries down,
do not forget the invisible invitation from the riptide
just beneath the calm surgical surficial surfacing disguises

if you face my book, will find in a later chapter prior
the fine sorry lines, the pierced titanium bulletproof vest,
the divorces of mistakes remade, the haunted envisioning,
the obligatory items that keep you awake, those awesome
responsibilities that take many small bites of a soul’s coverlet
that cannot be removed isolated jailed or desperate destroyed

confetti rained interspersed with droplets of sand grains,
this man of constant tomorrows, hopeful Mondays, bad Fridays,
is a man of constant sorrows,
pictures and poems life celebrating a never allowed to forget
lucky runs out like the string from packages saved
when no more packages arrive

when the packages no longer get delivered
oh that started years ago, when came the bile instead
of the blood’s replacement clotting factors

passing is a sometime thing
sometime is a most imprecisely defined terminus
sometime means that today’s confetti is a day away
as resurrected garbage
but nonetheless,
you are forever responsible for the cleanup


a picture worth a thousand words
but in me lives
tens of ten thousands words,
including

“this is too shall pass”

<•>
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2467058/writers-block-kick-the-editor-out-of-the-room/