quite recently, I received an extraordinary complimentary message to one of my poems, from a comrade in arms, dare I call him friend, that cored, scored me.  I post it below.  Not from braggadocio, or vanity, venal poetry sins.  But, it could not stand orphaned,
unrequited and unreciprocated,
for that would be a sin of even greater magnitude,

ingratitude

<>

this poem begins unique,
am struggling with a problem previously
unknown, never before even
close encountered

how do I commence?

poet wonders repeatedly,
a tune on the not-so-natty brain,
set on the machine's "repeat"setting,
this problematical for de minimus - 25 hour day,
this scribbler, this constant nibbler
on the Graham crackers life bestows,
befuddled muddled
for

this is never an issue,
it's the windup, the shutdown,
knowing when enough is enough,
that is the sorest point of his
elongated, can't shut up skill set

it cannot stand, it cannot just hang,
it needs a rabbinical wise,
responsible responsum,
a simple
thank you
holy, holy, holy
insufficient

these words, an almost wet smackdown,
catch me exposed, crossing Sixth Avenue,
against oncoming traffic (naturally),
while on cell phone bad boy,
doing his three R's,#
reading, writing & errrrr, deleting,
(yeah, yeah, I know, I know)
amidst my multiplicity of incoming artillery shells of
automobiles and messages,
this one,
seizing me up, me like a screeching,
near dying engine, broke from being oil-less,
nearly dropping my two large
20 oz. McDonald's coffees which easy
could flood this four lane
thoroughfare

you want to write like this,
are you mad, man?

all I ever es-say is what I see,
throwing in a rhyme or two,
a pinch of a fancy word to impress the
hoi polloi, and plenty salty sweet
to provocate a sensory ah ha
confusion

sir, why write like me,
when you pen this?

"yet all of this could
just as easily be,
the sum of two,
grateful hearts in equal parts,
the beat of two in rhythm thrum,
march in time upon one drum"^

which pretty much says
what needs saying
all in one perfect stanza humming

but this note, is so far,
way deficient,
a mockery of what the situation requires and is deserving,
so multiple lovely muses redirect me
back to my email,
where I find this waiting,
in repose, this prose,
perfect

A compliment is a complement—
this I know, just as the clock
will always strike midnight
and history repeats. This is how
I can wake up the next morning
and love the world again.^^

blossoming notion, this is but a complement,
where the line dotted allows free passage
from reader to poet, from poet to poet,
permitting the peaking reciprocity of completion,
and this complement
I accept, unashamedly, profoundly
for this is my 1/1,
for to make a whole, we still require
numerator, denominator,
of equal value

on this basis,
and this basis alone,
I accept your words

when prowling scowling late at night,
or early sun rising, old bones enthroned
in my Adirondack dis-comforter,
will come a-sneaking, a-peaking,
nobody-around-real quiet like,
for another look-see at this kookery,
in my solitary poet's by-the-bay nookery,

the thought comes,
maybe it's time to lay that pen down,
the Israelites have crossed that Red Sea,
dry and on their way to a land of promises,
when sure enough my coffee mug
spills onto an ant hill hard by the beach,
and oops, soiling the soil,
the Lesser Antillean inhabitants making an unholy ruckus,
and oops, ther goes another rubber plant, high hopes, poem aborning,^^^

but sir, be advised,
your excess foolishness is warming,
but we cannot without each other,
march to one drum,
our steps surely mismatched,
it is the reciprocity of
complementary numerical worthies that unites the fractions of us
into a singletary winter pea,
a whole of us,
in order to
"let us love the world again"

dedicated to E.B.
a man of faith
~

the-third-of-three-of-thee queries,
ask this poet anything variety pack,
3 permission-granted non-deniable answers,
though somewhat unsurprisingly,
the demands are the common deeper commonality,
yet finds the poet
flat footed, tongue raveled, searching
repeatedly for le mot juste, answers he doesn’t prefer to task,
by asking himself ever
directly

fingers and tips knotted,
their cooperative sensation severed,
unprepared to answer
deferring, with a weakish,
“it’s buried in plain sight in the
thousand + poem answers resting here
for a someday funeral oratory anticipatory”

all the tired, tried and refried and endless recycled responsa tossed into a barrel of formaldehyde;

in dissolution, perhaps the solution?

numerous are my recorded “dialogues,”
verbal battles with spirit authorities,
plenty of cursing and finger pointing
and not of the Sistine Chapel variety;
mutual forgiveness for human and supreme  errors,
not always, hardly ever,
on the tabula rasa menu

but you think
a principle, responsum est constituta
(from the principal, the answer can be derived)
therefore, yes, he must be...

but
the poet replies faith in what,
meaning he has the surety of none

then!
the phone rings and the poem begins:
in a voice of heretofore unknown register,

<•>


“I am the highest authority
none greater

I am but and only the first creator;
my touch operates at the spiderweb level,
the muse of muses,
present in the first grazing garden of lips,
the cacophony clarity of the avians swapping stories
in the early morn,
my worldwide alarm clock,
the wafted word,
breeze born when any poet stumbles on what comes next,
I am scented cherry blossoms, the breath in the iris newly come, and quickly gone,
the spiders web
where there yesterday there was none,
I am the first poem,
and will be the last

the new skin neath the scab,
the cooing of a grandchild that
sun melts hardy men grizzled who think
there is nothing new under the sun

the counter movement of every wave that shushes,
requesting global silence,
even when no human present to applaud

I am the smile upon the surgeon exiting
the operating room,
his right hand of confidence,
the arm draped upon a strangers shoulder
who weeps unabashedly for
undisclosed reasons that do not matter

you ask the poet
is he a man of faith
a bewildering query that obtains
diffident daily responsa, for the very question
is an ever changing variable

easy come and easy go
for what is faith but a traveling circus,
a summer day, forgot as it melds with next,
faith in?
me? hardly...

who could sustain a belief in the invisible hand that is the breeze between blades of grasses where the snowflakes will later accumulate as if nesting

even faith in himself
is a passing cloud,
a short term rental

but in that instance
he is faithful personified
for he “discovered”
the next word to close and complete,
the poem that did not exist prior

thus faith stored and restored
he believes once more if but for
a seconds-long knowing a defining of
faith

  thus he is neither solved or dissolved;
yet, is resolved to keep getting
closer to that completion
that affords him, or any poet,
to own the faith that affords belief