"insufficiently" poems
what cheek, the audacity to sheer his name from his faceless appearance, well, I know something of names, and mysteriously common and vague,
said as often as ****
does not satisfy this certified member
of the hoi polloi of humens
grace,
with a small g,
not to be confused with those courtiers in human courts
who so address their temporal superiors,
who more often than not,
chop off with their head,
just god
downy not longer
for being insufficiently lying
in their obsequiousness
grace is a virtue par excellence,
multi~facetedly faced,
reflecting well and goodness
on both the speaker and the hearing,
if grace you know not the meaning of,
then research it and let it
reflect back upon your countenance
replace god with grace,
and forgive me this too obvious rhyme,
it will only be better days
for the human race
><><
my name?
hah!
sinner man
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 at 1:38 PM UTC
It was not, by any means, a loss of faith;
Indeed, her devotion was a boundless, unfettered thing
Beyond proscription, beyond rote chant and catechism,
And what she found as a novitiate
Were shuttered gates and gossipy confessionals,
Standoffish priests, pig-eyed and pinch-lipped
Sisters who thought life’s commerce
No more than mechanical prayer and spotless linens,
The whole enterprise
Smacking of the exclusion of Heaven’s bounty.
So she demurred when the time came to take her orders,
And she returned to the world of pavements and lesser pieties,
Free to seek God on park swings and barstools,
In pleasures of the pastoral and the profane,
Though her faith is no Dionysian walkabout,
As she is passionate to the cusp of maniacal
When it comes to the Book of James’ admonition upon works;
She is often found among the sisters she once tiptoed alongside
At food pantries and clothing drives
(She is scrupulous about ministering to only secular needs,
As the Bishop is not happily disposed towards those
Who choose not to take the veil,
And the specter of excommunication is a prospect
Too awful to contemplate)
Afterwards clambering onto some vaguely roadworthy MTA bus
Back to her studio apartment in Green Island,
Where she often walks down to the Erie Canal lock nearby,
Praying for those who have travelled near and upon the water,
Convenience store clerks and ragged Irishmen fleeing famine,
Feral kittens and insufficiently mourned mules.
Nov 16, 2017
Nov 16, 2017 at 10:39 AM UTC
<>
for the early morning teach
<>
she's young, beautiful and thinks her life is cursed,
in the past, subject of some of my poems, her health to nurse,
yet, as is normative, you fall into & out of a well of touch,
until you accidentally once again path cross,
she provides a precision mathematical status update
"i'm fairly certain things are like at least 38% worse."
it is 1:38AM for you,
the not unnoticed ironic minute and hour
when the night ether has prematurely worn off,
rising time close but not nearly close enough,
a dark dose of a sleeping nurse's aide seems inappropriate,
and TV reruns seem like an insult to your brain
instead you turn on some belle string musique,
a Grande Messe des Morts,
a chorus,
singing a high mass for the dead,
while opening all your various email luggage and baggage,
smiling as you read a poetess's message of
laughter behind tears
"i'm fairly certain things are like at least 38% worse."
and Mississippi ******
your uncontrollable mixed drink of her emotional
Grenada grenade cocktail,
flavored with musique, paintings, and words and a nearby beloved's
gentling sleep sounds,
has you writing your own protest poem,
your very own,
oy vey, grande messe,
about lives that were supposed to be
pictures of perfect artistry
and for but a word or two,
instead, a painting of a life that got hung upside down,
and indeed,
leaving a grand mess and no one to help clean up
alternatively weeping, laughing as you are thinking,
smiling recall
Laurel and Hardy's summary definition
of living a life's of ill begotten, misventured adventures:
"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into !"
but 38% worse?
not an even-steven rounded up 40%,
should I write you only 38% of a poem, teach?
or more accurately, more mathematically,
138% of what was writ before?
and you recall your older, prior words
about the love hate affair between
you poet,
and the beauty of written brevity
(her style)
and you give her this then,
this rambling, scrambled, attention paid notification,
word attentiveness, a summary of your readings
of her cheddar sharp and honey mustard sweet retorts of
pained poetry,
it is insufficiently but perfectly sufficient,
a summarizing phrase that opens
and yet
briefly encapsulates all that
you are feeling for her
"thinking of you"
or the 38% larger version thereof -
***"Well, here's another 38% more
nice poetic mess
you've gotten me into!"***
Jul 20, 2016
Jul 20, 2016 at 5:01 PM UTC
love between poets: “who will be between the sheets next week
when I’m gone,” she lets sigh-escape,
as she watches the backyard paradise parading landscape
of animals before the bay, perfect day sure to come,
her new pets obeying the early morn sunrising awakening call
to rise, everyone playing~parading, before her royal summons,
no coincidence, finger-of-god, two by two
this while I’m kissing her neck,
my arm around her *******
and the he-intent on slip sliding down
to the small of her back,
obeying his innate,
worship worshiping and giving up,
all he’s got intense intently contentedly
unfazed, unphased,
non-nonplussed,
he’s been interrogated before,
heart is pure he answers:
next weekend when you are back in situ,
thousands of miles away, airplane housed for hours,
writing poems of love from the lost and found,
recalling this exact moment,
how I worshipped your presence,
and these words:
You will be with me in every breath,
our sheets will radioactively emit
ions and molecules of our scent combined,
and present as present your perfume can be,
elicited, elixir, you and me combinant
she turns from the bay-view,
the animals who now mutually
worship her adoration,
watching, focused on us as observers,
she lifts me up and smiles,
replying*
“oh my lover you’re the cad of cads,
king of the baddest poet-lads,
the gist of what is wrong with the best of men,
her, pressing me hard to her chestnut hair chest,
she, falling down into my eyes
take me back to bed, liar,
let me add to my aroma,
to ensue, to ensure you will miss
the best love
you had partly, insufficiently, and unhinged
completely
I’m your lassie, you my lad,
my king of cads, my lover poet,
thief of my poems and my secret speech spells,
escalating senses of one’s imaginings”*
and,
along came the rest
of what was freely given,
for love between poets
man and
a woman,
is a someone, somewhere,
sometime summertime
thing
*I will still smell you in my
heart, and send to you ballistic missives,
words to explode your tear ducts
when you rest in sheets that met me,
when you’ll know me by my odors,
cry out loud so that you’ll scare our animals,
no matter how many tides wash away our residue,
you will never unknow and be forever unprepared
for my return,*
even though we will be each, a thousand unwritten poems away...
Jul 13, 2019
Jul 13, 2019 at 11:07 AM UTC
Like the chef who hates to eat
The playwright who cannot act,
The clothing designer, a nudist,
The brave hero, so shy, a stammerer,
The musician, a deaf mute,
The architect, who live in a tent,
I am a writer who hates to type, for his fingers disconnect his eyes, his brain his insane
I am the father, who knows not his own children,
I am the man who hates to shave, and shaves twice daily,
The man who knows nothing of nature, but writes
in and of it constantly.
The man beset by endless money worries,
Who gives his capital away to charity in increments of thousands,
I am the man that never passes a street beggar,
Even the obvious frauds,
Without giving them a bill, and a god bless you,
I am the man that would gladly die young whose
Mother lived to ninty eight and gene'd up him good,
I don't know what you want from me.
I write to please. But I seem incapable of
Giving, paving streets with words you what u want to hear.
Moon, June, pill, **** me me me be crap on this
I am the chef who cannot cook
The nudist ashamed of his body
The stammered into silence
The mute who screams inside till deaf with frustration
I writer of thin air, the unfair. I know not what
You want of me.
But I weep with frustration at the paucity of my expression,
Good god my final destination not close enough
In the hands of strangers, rejection
In mine own, verbal strangulation
Even
Whatever
Is
Insufficiently
Disdainful
Painful
I cannot give you enough of/if me to satisfy
What is it you want from me
I will write to displease
Why not do
What I do best
Anyway
Secure that this voice
Is lost among the voices
Answering
whatever
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 1:34 AM UTC
*Bus poems are shorties written on the way home,
riding the M31 thru Manhattan. Often silly, often not...*
There is a contest that does not involve my P.S.F.
(Preferred Sport Franchise) this weekend,
truly don't give a good ****** who wins,
but that is no excuse to deny me my sir sore-losing,
victim status,
so richly deserved.
A triumvirate of doctor, g.f. and medical tests,
have on the field ruled,
once a year, a conjugal visit permitted,
tween my arteries and chicken wings.
there will pigs in blankets demanding attention,
potato knishes, and cole slaw juices, and a
foreign dignitary, Sayyid Cous-Cous,
lining up along side the quarterback who will be
'winging' honey and spicy passes to his favorite receiver,
this couch coach and impartial observer.
This is my Sunday fare.
If insufficiently highbrow,
for all you poetic aesthetes,
have no fear,
this athlete gastronomic,,
victim of his victuals,
will prepare mentally
by hanging with King Lear once more,
sharing a verbal tasting menu,
the day prior,
who once called me,
at a Giant super bowl party,
*“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel ***** one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.”*
― William Shakespeare, King Lear
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
who will read aloud
my poems
when I'm gone?
that old unfriended thot,
a nagging merry query
was for awhile forgot,
put on the back of an upper shelf,
where dust motes and mites
fear to trend
thoughts,
that I thought
I had dispensed with,
letting time
build illusionary wry walls,
fooling World Trade Center tall
morose forlorn,
pensiveness of
red ant armies,
incapable of
black marker redaction,
there is always one
a lingering malingerer
a sole fado singer,
playing woeful jazz in
the Quarter
on an empty emoty street,
dressed and guised
as the soul of a solitary
cancerous cell
"survivor"
cur overlooked,
biding time,
the surgeons gone,
the drugs flushed,
radiation burning
no more
begins then
the unholy
trilogy cycle
worn out, overused...
invasive categorically relentless
maybes,
what ifs,
then
oh goddamnnotagain
because believed, on knee,
I oathed that
loathed, raven nevermore,
ought
that
cracked door would be open
yet like the
New Orleans levee aged locks
hurricane succumbed
overflowed, overcome,
keyholed, infiltrated,
falllen to the enemy,
mes enfilade,
rumps up the black flag of
surrender
brain sneers
periodically,
like every other
minute, ok,
second,
coyly asking
penny for your
worthless thoughts?
just when you believed
"no mas"
was a prayer that had been heard,
teeth kicked in,
body snatching
hordes and boors
bad boys and ******
sitting high in the
saddle again,
grinning torturous
tarty smiles
at who,
at you, fool!
you're as alone in that place
as insufficiently as that
impoverished overused
word can ere convey
the nagging realization
that when asking
no one answers
when your thinkings
perish you
your cutesy sweatshirt reads
last standing poet alive,
stabbed ded by awful-truths,
you failed and
all the black cats,
have fled the neighborhood,
just when need was greatest
who will read aloud
my poems when I'm gone,
has been silently answered
by silent applause,
the last theater goer
shuffles out, and turns
and extends his middle finger
his review leaves a
singular impression,
he looks familiar,
gauntly ghost,
he has accompanied me always
and his finger is his
triumphal parting shot
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 5:25 PM UTC
the white noise is calming due to the interruption of sober silence
depriving senses, seeming like aphasia, looking through peripheral to see
all but what was was straight in the clear, sight insufficiently corrupted
painful holdings and a hand punched into the car door beside me
screaming about the difficulties, a voice that cracked like stained glass
suddenly given a voice, to only express furthermore misapprehension
a voice that spoke words
that could be seen forming in the air above
the words that wrapped around my body and clung like static
pulled me like a rope twisted leash, forming circulating rusted lesions
across a protruding collarbone
stare down deep into the roots of a tender willow tree
look down, and avoid the expression on that face
and the truck that was unnecessarily punished
now pretend you have aphasia, pretend that lesions don't **** slowly
and pray your face doesn't end up like that car door
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 9:06 PM UTC
I’m living insufficiently,
yet I’m loved by One who
knows what I don’t know,
and sees what I don’t see—
my life in context of forever,
today in view of infinity.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 9:35 PM UTC
I like to believe
that nobody understands me
and I'm one of a kind
lost to obscurity
but hinting of mysterious
significance
And I feel sorry for
my uncle's three-legged dog
and the malignancy
of fear in rural America
and the failed successes
of the Bolsheviks
I wonder about the air
in Saõ Paolo in January
and the muskuloskelatal
infirmities that creep in
and make the aged
into churlish curmudgeons
There is no way I could
hunt truffles or find a fresh
Morel in the woods when
I didn't even realize until
my grandmother died that
we own a creek
Uttering vespers in moonlight
yields some sanguine lucidity
like contemplating the nuanced
differences between polenta
and cornmeal mush
It's like I'll never write a poem
in time or finish a marathon
or kiss a stranger deeply
through the crisp ventillation
of nevermore.
We might daydream the bombastic
colors of Cezanne but all
we'll ever be is some nondescript
platinum ischemic flash,
a slimy buffet consisting in
all-is-lost
An apocryphal journey
to the center of the city
faces our insubordination to plastic
with the harshness of a dictionary
in the face of the illiterate
But in the end, apoplectically
forgotten, I come to the
unintelligent conclusion,
mathematically speaking,
that there is nothing singular
nor more available
than the finite banality
of my empty, insufficiently
obscurantist words which
flow and choke and all can know
and see clearly through
though I insist that none
of this pretence is born
of any maleveloence, and I chide
"How very meta of me indeed"
to have thought of another witty
and most cleverest retort
the day after the insult
was first delivered
But I used my last gift card
to purchase this still life
to pierce the hollow
cerulean satisfaction
otherwise known as tears
Barring diastolic ******
I'll stick around to see
how this all turns out
and hope that one day I can stop
being so completely understood
And then I can hide in the lonely
and find refuge in the cave
as a single meaningless scrawl
buried in the last pages
at the end of the world.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 12:36 AM UTC
the flicker of a clipper,
is my calling card,
lighting up,
while i'm falling hard,
impulsively puffing,
passing time,
watching haze clouds,
helps me unwind,
oh ,
& A bottle in hand,
seems to be my latest trend..
an empty bottle,
is my closest friend,
but with each swallow,
i find myself..
feeling more hollow.
3am , & i'm on the floor,
holding on,
but i can't take much more..
these sleepy eyes don't find much rest..
& mother dear, never taught me what's best,
substance abuse was her pride & joy,
functioning insufficiently,
like a broken toy..
now, i'm not trying to play the blame game,
no pity parties here,
i just wish i would have been raised,
out of something other than fear.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 3:50 PM UTC
To hold myself against myself is a habit of dark skin; scratching my olive palms across prickly cement. Take a bow in the mirror and see no reflection. Say you are reflected. Say something else. Say nothing. Those lucky charmed looks have spoiled your dying heart. Your intense desire for the forever lover has been dawdled. There, no one has discharged your respected, insubordination mind - they are too busy ******* the minds of cheap leached lips and tongue. It always was for that one special moment of feeling pleasure. Get used to fox fangs dragging you viciously through skeleton gravel. Get used to the skeleton. Have no fear of being contagious. Have knowing that I am insufficiently sediment. I want felicity again.
Jun 15, 2012
Jun 15, 2012 at 6:28 PM UTC
I.
because I've never loved myself but I'm starting to, with you
II.
because I've never known who I really am and I hated that, hated myself,
there was always a pause, always something held back or misspoken, insufficiently explained
because I was never safe and I was never fully understood, and there was always something lost in translation
III.
but I've always hated that person, who hid his stutter, who spoke slowly so as not to let slip mistakes from his words and thoughts, never mention the things he really cares about because then,
IV.
well he would probably talk to fast and he would probably stutter he'd probably speak so fast and with so much excitement that he'd forget to apologize until he'd remembered no one cared, no one wanted to hear, and he'd slow down and regret so much, hate himself so much for bringing this upon himself
V.
except with you,
I talk about everything, and everything I care about,
and I'm not afraid of talking fast,
or tripping over words,
because I know you won't leave me if I fall, because you've done it so many times
because you just laugh and pick me up again and again and hold my hand and
you laugh like its funny
like its not ridiculous
like you can't even imagine wanting me to stop every time I trip
like you just want me to keep going and you'll help and
I love the person I am when I'm holding your hand
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 5:35 AM UTC
As you give me the push I find the fall not that tragic
For death does not come from a rubber noose two feet longer then the gallows
We built our homes on stilts to the clouds but found ourselves chipping away at the foundation of our dreams.
Till the flooding river of anxiety at our feet swept us far from ourselves
Breathing in the water of hostile thoughts and scared insufficiently.
Rectify ourselves still living upon the tower of silence just for the exhibitionist thrill.
The black knight and the hangsman
Dancing the century old waltz
Is the noose tied around your neck or mine?
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 6:31 PM UTC
It's an eye for an eye
and swap a truth
for a lie,
they either **** you or
we'll let you die.
Kindness,
a mess
in a pickle.
In the end, when unseen
and the fairy King changes
into the wicked old Queen and
all the cards
have been marked,
my ignition
catches the sparks
and I come to life.
Old men.
Generally speaking in private
when old men are dribbling or leaking
I keep to myself,
safer that way when the window's
the only way out.
Poetry bothers me much
more than old chimneys
that smoke
down in Battersea.
Anathema.
I smoke **** in order to be
insufficiently free of
deficiency,
which is in any case
all Greek to me.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 5:17 PM UTC
When Intuition goes to battle with Reason,
these are usually quick skirmishes—
but this one has broken into war.
The campaign unfolds on the soil of abstraction,
reality, spirituality, and poetry.
Intuition begins with overwhelming superiority—
three of the four fields are hers.
But Reason is insatiable:
guarding the kingdom,
minimizing the losses,
holding the troops’ morale.
Its advisor is Faith—
the Eternal Outsider.
Usually Faith stands by Intuition,
but now he has slipped quietly
to the opposite box,
losing his own faith… one could say.
Intuition without Faith is dangerous.
Her box is always draped in dark lace curtains;
only her voice comes through—
no one has ever seen her face,
except Faith,
who would never stoop so low as to speak of it.
Some claim she is not even human,
others say faceless,
and in the inner circles it is whispered
she wears Janus’ face—
(probably only for Faith,
a mocking trick against hypocrisy).
Yet for the audience outside,
listening from afar,
plain common sense whispers only one thing:
she is a shapeshifter.
Heresy.
Maybe that’s why they are so quiet.
Why is Intuition so dangerous
without her two-faced advisor?
One might suppose the real danger
is the opposite:
that religious fervor seeps into her field
and sprouts the weeds of fanaticism.
For Faith hides not only
fat volumes of sermon under his cassock,
but the stone tablets of morality.
He has, they say,
even used them in close combat.
Effective: the laws of physics themselves
lend the swing its momentum;
at the moment of impact
it already speaks the language of Force.
A cudgel in Faith’s hand,
a drumhead tribunal—
the kind that applies laws literally.
When he sits beside Intuition,
his chair glows in full illumination,
stage-lights blazing,
the glare descending like a halo.
From that light,
behind Intuition’s baroque curtains,
she too takes on form—
not just a whisper,
but an active member of the council.
Without him,
Intuition grows overconfident.
If no one sees her,
perhaps she isn’t even there.
Her influence falters.
In her own words:
she has free rein.
In such moments,
Intuition dons the mask of the prophet—
a mask that grants
a dangerous confidence.
“The prophet does not err—
he is only insufficiently zealous.”
And at the final word, help arrives.
It is Obsession.
She lays her hand lightly
on Intuition’s shoulder
and says nothing but:
“You are right.”
Aug 19, 2025
Aug 19, 2025 at 4:09 PM UTC
can't think amidst this
chaotic conglomerate
coined companionship
screaming speakers
weak winstons
sinful sexes
indirect intentions
vicious voices
as if it's insufficiently
pacifistic
in this excessive thinking
my nemesis
feigns friends
concoctions
contradictions
composure
i uphold
to call
when they call upon
myself
sometimes i get caught giggling
by my eyes
in solace
till sagacious flashbacks
attack
i reminisce
in retrospects
those words of his
he chose to omit
their counterparts
which he transmits
with infinite tact
royalty don't smile
signal
leave who you lead
behind
holding their breaths
and possessive
obsessive
over more questions to ask
than answers to grasp
balance is a task
and who
if not you
is talented at
abandoning straight lines
that find themselves at last
lost
alone
in intricately
tangled tracks
- end
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 2:32 PM UTC