She sent it to me as a text message, that is an image of a quote in situ, a piece of interpretation in a gallery. Saturday morning and I was driving home from a week in a remote cottage on a mountain. I had stopped to take one last look at the sea, where I usually take one last look, and the phone bleeped. A text message, but no text.  Just a photo of some words. It made me smile, the impossibility of it. Epic poems and tapestry weaving. Of course there are connections, in that for centuries the epic subject has so often been the stuff of the tapestry weaver’s art. I say this glibly, but cannot name a particular tapestry where this might be so. Those vast Arthurian pieces by William Morris to pictures by Burne-Jones have an epic quality both in scale and in subject, but, to my shame, I can’t put a name to one.

These days the tapestry can be epic once more - in size and intention - thanks to the successful, moneyed contemporary artist and those communities of weavers at West Dean and at Edinburgh’s Dovecot. Think of Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstowe Tapestry, a vast 3 x 15 metres executed by Ghentian weavers, a veritable apocalyptic vision where ‘Everyman, spat out at birth in a pool of blood, is doomed and predestined to spend his life navigating a chaotic yet banal landscape of brands and consumerism’.  Gosh! Doesn’t that sound epic!

I was at the Dovecot a little while ago, but the public gallery was closed. The weavers were too busy finishing Victoria Crowe’s Large Tree Group to cope with visitors. You see, I do know a little about this world even though my tapestry weaving is the sum total of three weekends tuition, even though I have a very large loom once owned by Marta Rogoyska. It languishes next door in the room that was going to be where I was to weave, where I was going to become someone other than I am. This is what I feel - just sometimes - when I’m at my floor loom, if only for those brief spells when life languishes sufficiently for me be slow and calm enough to pick up the shuttles and find the right coloured yarns. But I digress. In fact putting together tapestry and epic poetry is a digression from the intention of the quote on the image from that text - (it was from a letter to Janey written in Iceland). Her husband, William Morris, reckoned one could (indeed should) be able to compose an epic poem and weave a tapestry.  

This notion, this idea that such a thing as being actively poetic and throwing a pick or two should go hand in hand, and, in Morris’ words, be a required skill (or ‘he’d better shut up’), seemed (and still does a day later) an absurdity. Would such a man (must be a man I suppose) ‘never do any good at all’ because he can’t weave and compose epic poetry simultaneously?  Clearly so.  But then Morris wove his tapestries very early in the morning - often on a loom in his bedroom. Janey, I imagine, as with ladies of her day - she wasn’t one, being a stableman’s daughter, but she became one reading fluently in French and Italian and playing Beethoven on the piano- she had her own bedroom.

Do you know there are nights when I wish for my own room, even when sleeping with the one I love, as so often I wake in the night, and I lie there afraid (because I love her dearly and care for her precious rest) to disturb her sleep with reading or making notes, both of which I do when I’m alone.
Yet how very seductive is the idea of joining my loved one in her own space, amongst her fallen clothes, her books and treasures, her archives and precious things, those many letters folded into her bedside bookcase, and the little black books full of tender poems and attempts at sketches her admirer has bequeathed her when distant and apart. Equally seductive is the possibility of the knock on the bedroom / workroom door, and there she’ll be there like the woman in Michael Donaghy’s poem, a poem I find every time I search for it in his Collected Works one of the most arousing and ravishing pieces of verse I know: it makes me smile and imagine.  . .  Her personal vanishing point, she said, came when she leant against his study door all warm and wet and whispered 'Paolo’. Only she’ll say something in a barely audible voice like ‘Can I disturb you?’ and with her sparkling smile come in, and bring with her two cats and the hint of a naked breast nestling in the gap of the fold of her yellow Chinese gown she holds close to herself - so when she kneels on my single bed this gown opens and her beauty falls before her, and I am wholly, utterly lost that such loveliness is and can be so . . .

When I see a beautiful house, as I did last Thursday, far in the distance by an estuary-side, sheltering beneath wooded hills, and moor and rock-coloured mountains, with its long veranda, painted white, I imagine. I imagine our imaginary home where, when our many children are not staying in the summer months and work is impossible, we will live our ‘together yet apart’ lives. And there will be the joy of work. I will be like Ben Nicholson in that Italian villa his father-in-law bought, and have my workroom / bedroom facing a stark hillside with nothing but a carpenter’s table to lay out my scores. Whilst she, like Winifred, will work at a tidy table in her bedroom, a vase of spring flowers against the window with the estuary and the mountains beyond. Yes, her bedroom, not his, though their bed, their wonderful wooden 19C Swiss bed of oak, occupies this room and yes, in his room there is just a single affair, but robust, that he would sleep on when lunch had been late and friends had called, or they had been out calling and he wanted to give her the premise of having to go back to work – to be alone - when in fact he was going to sleep and dream, but she? She would work into the warm afternoons with the barest breeze tickling her bare feet, her body moving with the remembrance of his caresses as she woke him that morning from his deep, dark slumber. ‘Your brown eyes’, he would whisper, ‘your dear brown eyes the colour of an autumn leaf damp with dew’. And she would surround him with kisses and touch of her firm, long body and (before she cut her plaits) let her course long hair flow back and forward across his chest. And she did this because she knew he would later need the loneliness of his own space, need to put her aside, whereas she loved the scent of him in the room in which she worked, with his discarded clothes, the neck-tie on the door hanger he only reluctantly wore.

Back to epic poetry and its possibility. Even on its own, as a single, focused activity it seems to me, unadventurous poet that I am, an impossibility. But then, had I lived in the 1860s, it would probably not have seemed so difficult. There was no Radio 4 blathering on, no bleeb of arriving texts on the mobile. There were servants to see to supper, a nanny to keep the children at bay. At Kelmscott there was glorious Gloucestershire silence - only the roll and squeak of the wagon in the road and the rooks roosting. So, in the early mornings Morris could kneel at his vertical loom and, with a Burne-Jones cartoon to follow set behind the warp. With his yarns ready to hand, it would be like a modern child’s painting by numbers, his mind would be free to explore the fairy domain, the Icelandic sagas, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Kalevara from Finland, and write (in his head) an epic poem. These were often elaborations and retellings in his epic verse style of Norse and Icelandic sagas with titles like Sigurd the Volsung. Paul Thompson once said of Morris  ‘his method was to think out a poem in his head while he was busy at some other work.  He would sit at an easel, charcoal or brush in hand, working away at a design while he muttered to himself, 'bumble-beeing' as his family called it; then, when he thought he had got the lines, he would get up from the easel, prowl round the room still muttering, returning occasionally to add a touch to the design; then suddenly he would dash to the table and write out twenty or so lines.  As his pen slowed down, he would be looking around, and in a moment would be at work on another design.  Later, Morris would look at what he had written, and if he did not like it he would put it aside and try again.  But this way of working meant that he never submitted a draft to the painful evaluation which poetry requires’.

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,

And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle down the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,

Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.

Oh dear. And to think he sustained such poetry for another 340 lines, and that’s just book 1 of 4. So what dear reader, dear sender of that text image encouraging me to weave and write, just what would epic poetry be now? Where must one go for inspiration? Somewhere in the realms of sci-fi, something after Star-Wars or Ninja Warriors. It could be post-apocalyptic, a tale of mutants and a world damaged by chemicals or economic melt-down. Maybe a rich adventure of travel on a distant planet (with Sigourney Weaver of course), featuring brave deeds and the selfless heroism of saving companions from deadly encounters with amazing animals, monsters even. Or is ‘epic’ something else, something altogether beyond the Pixar Studios or James Cameron’s imagination? Is the  ‘epic’ now the province of AI boldly generating the computer game in 4D?  

And the epic poem? People once bought and read such published romances as they now buy and engage with on-line games. This is where the epic now belongs. On the tablet, PlayStation3, the X-Box. But, but . . . Poetry is so alive and well as a performance phenomenon, and with that oh so vigorous and relentless beat. Hell, look who won the T.S.Eliot prize this year! Story-telling lives and there are tales to be told, even if they are set in housing estates and not the ice caves of the frozen planet Golp. Just think of children’s literature, so rich and often so wild. This is word invention that revisits unashamedly those myths and sagas Morris loved, but in a different guise, with different names, in worlds that still bring together the incredible geographies of mountains and deserts and wilderness places, with fortresses and walled cities, and the startling, still unknown, yet to be discovered ocean depths.

                                    And so let my tale begin . . . My epic poem.

                                                 THE SEAGASP OF ENNLI.
       A TALE IN VERSE OF EARTHQUAKE, ISLAND FASTNESS, MALEVOLENT SPIRITS,
                                                AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE.

There’s a film by John Schlesinger called the Go-Between in which the main character, a boy on the cusp of adolescence staying with a school friend on his family’s Norfolk estate, discovers how passion and *** become intertwined with love and desire. As an elderly man he revisits the location of this discovery and the woman, who we learn changed his emotional world forever. At the start of the film we see him on a day of grey cloud and wild wind walking towards the estate cottage where this woman now lives. He glimpses her face at a window – and the film flashes back fifty years to a summer before the First War.
 
It’s a little like that for me. Only, I’m sitting at a desk early on a spring morning about to step back nearly forty years.*
 
It was a two-hour trip from Boston to Booth Bay. We’d flown from New York on the shuttle and met Larry’s dad at St Vincent’s. We waited in his office as he put away the week with his secretary. He’d been in theatre all afternoon. He kept up a two-sided conversation.
 
‘You boys have a good week? Did you get to hear Barenboim at the Tully? I heard him as 14-year old play in Paris. He played the Tempest -  Mary, let’s fit Mrs K in for Tuesday at 5.0 - I was learning that very Beethoven sonata right then. I couldn’t believe it - that one so young could sound –there’s that myocardial infarction to review early Wednesday. I want Jim and Susan there please -  and look so  . . . old, not just mature, but old. And now – Gloria and I went to his last Carnegie – he just looks so **** young.’
 
Down in the basement garage Larry took his dad’s keys and we roared out on to Storow drive heading for the Massachusetts Turnpike. I slept. Too many early mornings copying my teacher’s latest – a concerto for two pianos – all those notes to be placed under the fingers. There was even a third piano in the orchestra. Larry and his Dad talked incessantly. I woke as Dr Benson said ‘The sea at last’. And there we were, the sea a glazed blue shimmering in the July distance. It might be lobster on the beach tonight, Gloria’s clam chowder, the coldest apple juice I’d ever tasted (never tasted apple juice until I came to Maine), settling down to a pile of art books in my bedroom, listening to the bell buoy rocking too and fro in the bay, the beach just below the house, a house over 150 years old, very old they said, in the family all that time.
 
It was a house full that weekend,  4th of July weekend and there would be fireworks over Booth Bay and lots of what Gloria called necessary visiting. I was in love with Gloria from the moment she shook my hand after that first concert when my little cummings setting got a mention in the NYT. It was called forever is now and God knows where it is – scored for tenor and small ensemble (there was certainly a vibraphone and a double bass – I was in love from afar with a bassist at J.). Oh, this being in love at seventeen. It was so difficult not to be. No English reserve here. People talked to you, were interested in you and what you thought, had heard, had read. You only had to say you’d been looking at a book of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and you’d be whisked off to some uptown gallery to see his early watercolours. And on the way you’d hear a life story or some intimate details of friend’s affair, or a great slice of family history. Lots of eye contact. Just keep the talk going. But Gloria, well, we would meet in the hallway and she’d grasp my hand and say – ‘You know, Larry says that you work too hard. I want you to do nothing this weekend except get some sun and swim. We can go to Johnson’s for tennis you know. I haven’t forgotten you beat me last time we played!’ I suppose she was mid-thirties, a shirt, shorts and sandals woman, not Larry’s mother but Dr Benson’s third. This was all very new to me.
 
Tim was Larry’s elder brother, an intern at Felix-Med in NYC. He had a new girl with him that weekend. Anne-Marie was tall, bespectacled, and supposed to be ferociously clever. Gloria said ‘She models herself on Susan Sontag’. I remember asking who Sontag was and was told she was a feminist writer into politics. I wondered if Anne-Marie was a feminist into politics. She certainly did not dress like anyone else I’d seen as part of the Benson circle. It was July yet she wore a long-sleeved shift buttoned up to the collar and a long linen skirt down to her ankles. She was pretty but shapeless, a long straight person with long straight hair, a clip on one side she fiddled with endlessly, purposefully sometimes. She ignored me but for an introductory ‘Good evening’, when everyone else said ‘Hi’.
 
The next day it was hot. I was about the house very early. The apple juice in the refrigerator came into its own at 6.0 am. The bay was in mist. It was so still the bell buoy stirred only occasionally. I sat on the step with this icy glass of fragrant apple watching the pearls of condensation form and dissolve. I walked the shore, discovering years later that Rachel Carson had walked these paths, combed these beaches. I remember being shocked then at the concern about the environment surfacing in the late sixties. This was a huge country: so much space. The Maine woods – when I first drove up to Quebec – seemed to go on forever.
 
It was later in the day, after tennis, after trying to lie on the beach, I sought my room and took out my latest score, or what little of it there currently was. It was a piano piece, a still piece, the kind of piece I haven’t written in years, but possibly should. Now it’s all movement and complication. Then, I used to write exactly what I heard, and I’d heard Feldman’s ‘still pieces’ in his Greenwich loft with the white Rauschenbergs on the wall. I had admired his writing desk and thought one day I’ll have a desk like that in an apartment like this with very large empty paintings on the wall. But, I went elsewhere . . .
 
I lay on the bed and listened to the buoy out in the bay. I thought of a book of my childhood, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome. There’s a drawing of a Beach End Buoy in that book, and as the buoy I was listening to was too far out to see (sea?) I imagined it as the one Ransome drew from Lowestoft harbour. I dozed I suppose, to be woken suddenly by voices in the room next door. It was Tim and Anne-Marie. I had thought the house empty but for me. They were in Tim’s room next door. There was movement, whispering, almost speech, more movement.
 
I was curious suddenly. Anne-Marie was an enigma. Tim was a nice guy. Quiet, dedicated (Larry had said), worked hard, read a lot, came to Larry’s concerts, played the cello when he could, Bach was always on his record player. He and Anne-Marie seemed so close, just a wooden wall away. I stood by this wall to listen.
 
‘Why are we whispering’, said Anne-Marie firmly, ‘For goodness sake no one’s here. Look, you’re a doctor, you know what to do surely.’
 
‘Not yet.’
 
‘But people call you Doctor, I’ve heard them.’
 
‘Oh sure. But I’m not, I’m just a lousy intern.’
 
‘A lousy intern who doesn’t want to make love to me.’
 
Then, there was rustling, some heavy movement and Tim saying ‘Oh Anne, you mustn’t. You don’t need to do this.’
 
‘Yes I do. You’re hard and I’m wet between my legs. I want you all over me and inside me.  I wanted you last night so badly I lay on my bed quite naked and masturbated hoping you come to me. But you didn’t. I looked in on you and you were just fast asleep.’
 
‘You forget I did a 22-hour call on Thursday’.
 
“And the rest. Don’t you want me? Maybe your brother or that nice English boy next door?’
 
‘Is he next door? ‘
 
‘If he is, I don’t care. He looks at me you know. He can’t work me out. I’ve been ignoring him. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s got beautiful eyes and lovely hands’.
 
There was almost silence for what seemed a long time. I could hear my own breathing and became very aware of my own body. I was shaking and suddenly cold. I could hear more breathing next door. There was a shaft of intense white sunlight burning across my bed. I imagined Anne-Marie sitting cross-legged on the floor next door, her hand cupping her right breast fingers touching the ******, waiting. There was a rustle of movement. And the door next door slammed.
 
Thirty seconds later Tim was striding across the garden and on to the beach and into the sea . . .
 
There was probably a naked young woman sitting on the floor next door I thought. Reading perhaps. I stayed quite still imagining she would get up, open her door and peek into my room. So I moved away from the wall and sat on the bed trying hard to look like a composer working on a score. And she did . . . but she had clothes on, though not her glasses or her hair clip, and she wore a bright smile – lovely teeth I recall.
 
‘Good afternoon’, she said. ‘You heard all that I suppose.’
 
I smiled my nicest English smile and said nothing.
 
‘Tell me about your girlfriend in England.’
 
She sat on the bed, cross-legged. I was suddenly overcome by her scent, something complex and earthy.
 
‘My girlfriend in England is called Anne’.
 
‘Really! Is she pretty? ‘
 
I didn’t answer, but looked at my hands, and her feet, her uncovered calves and knees. I could see the shape of her slight ******* beneath her shirt, now partly unbuttoned. I felt very uncomfortable.
 
‘Tell me. Have you been with this Anne in England?’
 
‘No.’ I said, ‘I ‘d like to, but she’s very shy.’
 
‘OK. I’m an Anne who’s not shy.’
 
‘I’ve yet to meet a shy American.’
 
‘They exist. I could find you a nice shy girl you could get to know.’
 
‘I’d quite like to know you, but you’re a good bit older than me.’
 
‘Oh that doesn’t matter. You’re quite a mature guy I think. I’d go out with you.’
 
‘Oh I doubt that.’
 
‘Would you go out with me?’
 
‘You’re interesting.  Gloria says you’re a bit like Susan Sontag. Yes, I would.’
 
‘Wow! did she really? Ok then, that’s a deal. You better read some Simone de Beauvoir pretty quick,’  and she bounced off the bed.
 
After supper  - lobster on the beach - Gloria cornered me and said. ‘I gather you heard all this afternoon.’
 
I remembered mumbling a ‘yes’.
 
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘Anne-Marie told me all. Girls do this you know – talk about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. What could you do? I would have done the same. Tim’s not ready for an Anne-Marie just yet, and I’m not sure you are either. Not my business of course, but gentle advice from one who’s been there. ‘
 
‘Been where?’
 
‘Been with someone older and supposedly wiser. And remembering that wondering-what-to-do-about-those-feelings-around-*** and all that. There’s a right time and you’ll know it when it comes. ‘
 
She kissed me very lightly on my right ear, then got up and walked across the beach back to the house.

Weather Advisory: A long one*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be not fooled,
by the evening-tide,
be not deceived
by the quietude,
tis not a reprieve
of day before dark.

Be guarded,
for the easy transformation,
a tranquil shedding
of the day's husk,
into the faded light of dusk,
just one of nature's machinations
to delay the inevitable.

Evening-tide,
a colored compilation
of a few mischievous hours,
when sunlight is invaded by
streaks of pink, azure and gold,    
just before the
palette is plunged
into a stainless steel can
of gothic black,
skyied glory rendered into
common house paint.

Evening-tide,
an alleged easy calm
surfeits some souls,
supposed easy passage from  
the day's contusions to
a relaxation from humankind's regulations and rules,
but not for me.

Evening-tide,
when appetites unsated, simmer,
the in between hours when
humans transform themselves,
from day laborers to creatures
desiring, aroused, hungry  
for night time pleasures,
searching with false courage for
boundary lines to sever.

Evening-tide,
it was at evening-tide that
David espied, desired and
stole Bathsheba for his own,
with a King's arrogance
rent a kingdom,
murdered for profit,
birthed an Heir,
a prince, who wrote,
by evening-tide:

I have seen all the works
that are done under the sun; and,
behold, all is vanity
and vexation of spirit.

Evening-tide,
fear closes my throat,
confusion reappears,
a low grade flu infects
deemed persistent, incurable,
revisits, medicine resistant,
my insights, my speech,
to blind and bind  

Am I Gloucester,
blinded, but faculties
possessing vision,
the future to clarify?

No, no, it is to a king,
Lear,
to whom I am
son and cousin,
kith and kin

Sunset visions of
ultimate demise
ours eyes behold,
but plainly put,
at Evening-tide,
our dementia -
a precursor,
a periodic but hostile guest
in the hostel of our memories,
cracks and fractures us,
spirit first, body second.  

We are bound helpless
by a knotted tongue,
slow dying malingerer,
inside a head of ill repute,
unable to locate our knowing,
and every word selected,
a battle galactic, oft lost

Evening-tide,
I am cold,
and the issued command
is bring an umbrella
to warm and cover.  
What an old fool am I,
tis not blanket or a
Bathsheba I seek,
but at Evening-tide,
Babel's nefarious treasury of words
unlocked, for tis closed,                    
the gatekeepers,
drunk and absent,
drunk on absinthe,
and creme de mentia
and I have no key

Evening-tide, prithee,
I beg of thee,
consideration please,
check this hideous amusement,
that makes this
King's speech confused,
odor of smokeless cordite ignited
where the synapses have burnt,
injured, beyond repair
injured, by mine own aging.  

Reverse the diagnosis
of the panel of wordsmiths:
Alas, weep and be comforted...

Evening-tide,
a reverie of colored tears,
downward sloping,
arrive to tingle my tongue,
warming comfort for an *****
willing but unable,
a wounded soldier,
a veteran of poetry,
now prone and pained
beyond repair,
beyond healing,
immunized to the
heat and solder,
drugs and salves,
that heretofore
might have closed
the cracks of rack and ruin

Evening-tide,
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and
all the king's men couldn't
put Humpty together again^

Evening-tide,
my hair, the color of old age.
Irony, my skin yet smooth,
unwrinkled, not in need of the
toxins that are employed
to fill crevasses on
the outer banks of age of comedy

Alas, the toxins natural from within
have seeped from their
latent resting place and have
contaminated the groundwater
that lubricated my mind,  
from siege engines poured,
a contamination of
mine own making.  
After a life long battle,
my Jericho walls have fallen.

Lear and I faint recall the love
of our beloved Cordelia,
but try as we might
her name escapes our grasp,
******* by bite of aging's asp.

We grow drunk by night
on a drink not of choice,
unhappy fury,
the residue within
the imprisoned poison
of our polluted tears,
that come only after our
misspoken and misshapen
guttural croaks
of our Eveningtide prayers
are both
unintelligible and unrequited

A funeral for a Great King
Mourning
Ageing
Descendants carve their paths
Glory
Heorot
A Demonic mood-killer
Lonely
Grendel
A hero answers the call
Distant
Majestic
A vow of aid
Impressive
Doubtful
Claims become realized
Death
Celebration
Danger revisits
Vengeance
Maternal
A journey to the marsh
Darkness
Fiends
An underwater duel
Headless
Reward
The hero departs
Sadness
Homecoming
A joyous return
Stories
Changes
A death in the family
Sadness
Inheritance
50 years prospers the Hero-King
Greatness
Theft
A beast is awoken
Ancient
Furious
The people suffer
Dust
Ashes
An old king rebels
Victory
Grief
A funeral for a Great King

written two years ago and a bit, but suits still....

Weather Advisory: A long poem pouring ahead

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be not fooled,
by the evening-tide,
be not deceived
by the quietude,
tis not a reprieve
of day before dark.

Be guarded,
for the easy transformation,
a tranquil shedding
of the day's husk,
into the faded light of dusk,
just one of nature's machinations
to delay the inevitable.

Evening-tide,
a colored compilation
of a few mischievous hours,
when sunlight is invaded by
streaks of pink, azure and gold,    
just before the
palette is plunged
into a stainless steel can
of gothic black,
skyied glory rendered into
common house paint.

Evening-tide,
an alleged easy calm
surfeits some souls,
supposed easy passage from  
the day's contusions to
a relaxation from humankind's regulations and rules,
but not for me.

Evening-tide,
when appetites unsated, simmer,
the in between hours when
humans transform themselves,
from day laborers to creatures
desiring, aroused, hungry  
for night time pleasures,
searching with false courage for
boundary lines to sever.

Evening-tide,
it was at evening-tide that
David espied, desired and
stole Bathsheba for his own,
with a King's arrogance
rent a kingdom,
murdered for profit,
birthed an Heir,
a prince, who wrote,
by evening-tide:

I have seen all the works
that are done under the sun; and,
behold, all is vanity
and vexation of spirit.

Evening-tide,
fear closes my throat,
confusion reappears,
a low grade flu infects
deemed persistent, incurable,
revisits, medicine resistant,
my insights, my speech,
to blind and bind  

Am I Gloucester,
blinded, but faculties
possessing vision,
the future to clarify?

No, no, it is to a king,
Lear,
to whom I am
son and cousin,
kith and kin

Sunset visions of
ultimate demise
ours eyes behold,
but plainly put,
at Evening-tide,
our dementia -
a precursor,
a periodic but hostile guest
in the hostel of our memories,
cracks and fractures us,
spirit first, body second.  

We are bound helpless
by a knotted tongue,
slow dying malingerer,
inside a head of ill repute,
unable to locate our knowing,
and every word selected,
a battle galactic, oft lost

Evening-tide,
I am cold,
and the issued command
is bring an umbrella
to warm and cover.  
What an old fool am I,
tis not blanket or a
Bathsheba I seek,
but at Evening-tide,
Babel's nefarious treasury of words
unlocked, for tis closed,                    
the gatekeepers,
drunk and absent,
drunk on absinthe,
and creme de mentia
and I have no key

Evening-tide, prithee,
I beg of thee,
consideration please,
check this hideous amusement,
that makes this
King's speech confused,
odor of smokeless cordite ignited
where the synapses have burnt,
injured, beyond repair
injured, by mine own aging.  

Reverse the diagnosis
of the panel of wordsmiths:
Alas, weep and be comforted...

Evening-tide,
a reverie of colored tears,
downward sloping,
arrive to tingle my tongue,
warming comfort for an *****
willing but unable,
a wounded soldier,
a veteran of poetry,
now prone and pained
beyond repair,
beyond healing,
immunized to the
heat and solder,
drugs and salves,
that heretofore
might have closed
the cracks of rack and ruin

Evening-tide,
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and
all the king's men couldn't
put Humpty together again^

Evening-tide,
my hair, the color of old age.
Irony, my skin yet smooth,
unwrinkled, not in need of the
toxins that are employed
to fill crevasses on
the outer banks of age of comedy

Alas, the toxins natural from within
have seeped from their
latent resting place and have
contaminated the groundwater
that lubricated my mind,  
from siege engines poured,
a contamination of
mine own making.  
After a life long battle,
my Jericho walls have fallen.

Lear and I faint recall the love
of our beloved Cordelia,
but try as we might
her name escapes our grasp,
******* by bite of aging's asp.

We grow drunk by night
on a drink not of choice,
unhappy fury,
the residue within
the imprisoned poison
of our polluted tears,
that come only after our
misspoken and misshapen
guttural croaks
of our Eveningtide prayers
are both
unintelligible and unrequited

Alone within my emotional wilderness

A reverie along memory lane when, this lviii sea sunned
row man (stills paddles in oarlocks and serenely quizzically,
lackadaisically, and harmoniously drifts) along the slip
stream of time. Awash on his figurative manual navigated
opportunistic prideful quintessential schooner reflects,
regales, and revisits ebbing lapsed instances (fast receding
into the past time, when psychological instability grounded
fragile my self esteem (generated venting, steaming, and
piping hot brickbats). As a newly minted harrumphing,
grubbing, and floundering dada enmeshment (analogous
to a fish caught in a net, hence quickly ricocheting, rabidly
splashing, and sloppily thrashing) predicated my foray
into das fatherhood. Aye experienced nearest approximation
Bing battered, rammed, and torpedoed from glomming
(par for the course riot ting heaps) necessarily imposed
adult responsibility. Such metaphorical motoring across
avast Battle Creek with no landfall in sight, this then nada
so Grand Turk (key in the straw) Otto man continually
snapped, cracked and popped. This human ping-pong
fitbit part player papa felt akin to subjection re: thralldom).
At this juncture in me cross currents of existence I can
harken back to those most exhausting, fatiguing, and
grueling endeavors. Hindsight offers this aging baby
boomer the luxury to cast astern. Retrospective leisurely
trawls along the shoals throes of fatherhood allow,
enable and provide and opportunity to scrutinize per
chance, where arises this on account of the empty nest
syndrome. Ordinarily the wife (i.e. missus to appear
more formal), would caw out my name nonstop….
”Matt”…”Matt”…”Matt”…, but she opted to organize
the cluster of assorted household items at the apart
ment (located in Crum Lynne – Ridley Township),
we hope to move within a fortnight. Thy spouse
volunteered her own mini reprieve by setting order
to the miscellaneous fixings gradually amassed,
appropriated, and gifted thru out the twenty plus
years of marriage, which hodgepodge of personal
possessions downsized whence circumstance dictates
evaluating goods having keepsake meaning versus
anomaly of belongings to be unloaded, repurposed
for someone else, or ordained as unworthy to schlep.
Alone asper like a very brief sabbatical from marriage
finds stillness amidst the white noise of the whirring
fan. Thus, I sit here ruminating how to dredge up
some idea for a poem,  (non) fiction or essay. This
husband became acclimated, conditioned, and em
bossed with a mate a tete for two plus decades,
whereby both thee dos delightful daughters on
Track 742 heading west. Honest to dog, I miss
the role of fatherhood when either off spring
(with an age difference of approximately twenty
five plus months) romped, scampered, and trotted
as toddlers, and upon childhood, thy little girls
found exultant excitement dashing higgledy-
piggledy, hither and yon, to and fro across the
playground as most glorious human indulgence.
Despite the plaintive wail vis a vis Juliet saying
goodnight to Romeo (…parting is such sweet
sorrow) haint pleasurable atoll. Hitherto un
known that during the most vexing, trying,
and quaking bouts when both kin of thy ****
fought like angry cats would there transpire
the occasion of sincere tearfulness ululating
vain warbling. Now a pang of nostalgia arises
when I drive past their happy go lucky stomp
ping turf, or reflect on answering the trumpet
call to chauffer one or thee other to amusement
park, play date, mall, favorite toy store such as
Fivebelow, birthday party, et cetera. Even
certain tunes recalled to mind and/or heard
being broadcast across the audio logical spec
trum a cause for moistened tear ducts. Wince
with sadness also mixed with sigh lent bundled
expostulations of joy. Both progeny metamorphosed
into able bodied, minded and spirited lasses,
whose attainment far exceeded any projections
internally forecast. Initial onset of parent role
found me all thumbs. Prior to begetting two
darling dames, this chap spent disproportionate
number of hours sequestered within some hide
away, which frequently happened to be the
designated bedroom at 324 Level Road, College
Ville, Pennsylvania, 19010. Never did thee major
rit tee days of mine life point to babysitting or
working with that chronological demographics
comprising the adoring blessed innocence,
murmuring newborn obliviousness, that bespoke
penultimate unsullied, utmost virtue necessitating
interaction with tender infants beckoning being
cradled, endearingly fondled, demonstrably easing
fondness gripping heartstrings issue jetblue kinks.
Aye felt pitched headlong into this foreign territory,
and initially experienced utmost awkwardness when
attending, pampering and pulling (albeit gently)
upsy daisy, the nascent hint of autonomy. Remembrance
and recollection of élan, joie de vivire, and yea those
ear splitting threshold of pain screaming tantrums
all boxed into tidy wholesome Zen announcing
nuggets of greater meaningfulness and absolute
value. The above long winded reverie intended and
meant tubby a semi biography, but leave hit up to
his hie n hiss, he went way overboard, and will give
a one line summarization to describe his i.e. yours truly
life sentence fate decreed. He (this Anglophile chipper
chap lived under duress of extreme anxiety, obsessive/
compulsive behavior, panic attacks and essentially
schizoid personality disorder for the greater part
of his life and hard times, which raw bits would
warrant fleshing out to extrapolate how these psychic
pitfalls represented critical factors at various and
sundry turning points in his life.

The ones we hurt the most
And the ones who hurt us the most
Are ours
Parts of us

Our beloved boomerang admirers
And they’re the ones who love us more than anything

Yugoslavian aggressively panhandling for depositions from unrelated denizens of the gin joint

A panoramic view of a wire tapped room with a lunatic with latent panic that is undisturbed

Hoarded handouts
Admissions
Acceptance
Embarking on a new flight of stairs

Pitter patter of foreign fitted shoes

Coming across label makers
“Jew”
“******”
“******”

Steer clear

Then those who memorize banned books and recite them
Who question the validity and relevance of tradition and old fashion ways

Finding things in common
Tastes in music
Fondness in wine
Alike minds that crave astonishing world widening writing
And thought provoking art

A libation to the collision of the alive and living

A somewhat scary visionary who breaks the black and white patterns of a wheel of fortune and misfortune with a lance of optimistic disregard

Stealing kisses and sipping on top shelf liquor

Smoking mystic cigarettes from Indian mountains

Idioms and vernacular

Dedicated guardian angels who hang their heads and rest their faces in their palms in puzzled disappointment

New visions
In music
In literature
In technology

But actually in
Self-expression
Communication
And progression

Stab a knife into the stuffy conservative dollar sign chasing guard

And let the prisoners of self-doubting overlooked misunderstanding go free

The complex complications of cement commitment

Walking out on an infant
Walking away in an instant
Instantaneous fear
Spontaneous combustion

A noose
Legendary
No
Not yet

Sing it to me
Play t

Lay morality to sleep
And raise yourself up
And proclaim a new way today

A jumbled viewpoint
That is brilliant and completely sound

Have a sip

Your hatred, look deep
****** it and rip it out
Then let it go

Busting up regulations and requirements

Creating an image that cannot be simulated
That is originated from the imitation out of respect from the innovative minds

Slow it down
Go
The lust
The envy
Two ingredients for a new story
All that’s left is the spilled blood and you’re done

Drift and go on a dimly lit trek into the subconscious and give birth to underived works

The world may burn, melt, freeze and shine

Surrender, transform, standstill then ascend

The ones in need fall into our laps along with the decision we all must make
To help them
Or pass them by

Click clack goes my keyboard
Revisits to the times before

With the aid of chemicals and inspiration
Mixed with ******* and crazed obsession

The feeling of being replaced
Like lying in bed on a cold night
Without a blanket that has some place better to be

My dear naval, nautical nincompoop
I miss you, you’re fighting pirates
Soon terrorists

You know it’s useless
You don’t want to be part of this nonsensical unholy fuckfest of political unrest

You’re a poet, you don’t write
Your life is your poetry
It’s beautiful, you want to live
Not just exist

Be wary, I have foreseen the pandemonium festering in your heart
You are lucky in your naïve exile in paradise
You’ve been hurt
Looking for love
Live, lend
And all the above

Fool proof plans
And ideal daylight

The suicide of the farmer’s daughter
California sushi roll
Burning embers
Red hot coals

Best of luck to you

No elegy
A eulogy
See it to the end

Distract them
Steal the vital piece
Then proceed to take what you came for

It’s okay
Forget what you’ve been spoon-fed your whole life
The greatest caper committed

Jam the doors
Skeleton keys
Skull and cross bones on the bottles
Take whatever you can carry

No man left behind

Leaving a not, imprints
For them to see
And know why we did
What we have done

Phony fame
Upper hand
Inclined
Shame

There is a time and a place for treason
When all is ugly and bigoted

For you will only be this young at this very second and never again

Shoot from the hip
Fly high on the seat of your pants

Grungy soap dish
Domestic disagreements
Empty reflections
Rapping at the window

Go away
Please
For your sake and mine
It’s insane

I expunge your from my life
Not in hate
But in agony
We both know it’s for the best

Don’t be spiteful
I hate being used
Just a tool to b left behind

Extraordinary shallow callousness

Let’s take a walk around the universe

I see two lovers showing their vulnerabilities to each other
I see a man and a man making love so pure
I see my friend traveling the world
I see an amateur addict about to take their first step into a lifelong dependency  
I hear the screams of those about to be murdered
Does that quench your thirst for reality?

Aiding and abetting
Guilty by association
Confession of guilt
Squandering money on bail

**** that
There’s a rat
*** wrap
****** wrap
Saving you from yourself
Following, no matter where you go
Always

       -Tommy Johnson

Others fail you
But you must never fail yourself

Drop
Down
Drown
Die

So many futile attempts
****** submissions
Preponderant talent

And that’s about it

They scatter themselves freely to the breeze
Shaking their heads, rocking with the beat
seeds creep under the roots of nearby trees
tucking themselves into cool soil out of the heat.
The white against the green and orange with blue
I'd never tire of this, even if I was to be asked again
Marigolds and daisies - what a very splendid view
My childhood revisits making the endless daisy chain.
Marigolds remind me of the sunsets we used to see
Oranges splashed over and above the sky
with toes dangling in the cool of the sea
watching the world in my oranges and whites go by.

There is a song that skins remember.
A line that resounds in silences.
A form the heart revisits
in fervid recollections.

That you must not speak,
that you must not speak.

Silences can ****.
No need to ask Crusoe.

Stars that explode in suicide:
From aeons of tortuous silences,
from distant companions,
silently cold.

Yes, our silences talk. Sorry, this
was not how it was supposed to be.
Strains of there we go again.

Gulfs of empty spaces between
silent vales, that birth the
mourning winds.

Murmurs leap out like dolphins
out of our silences.

Waiting to hear each other. Past
the dirge at the grave of my errors.

Bent over the painted lines of her road.
Stood a black feathered crow
peeling back a tendon of flesh,
Like a strand of red twizzler candy,
from the tannish white fur
of a dead bunny.

she thought this was cute.

"AWW! THEY'RE KISSING!!"

Her daddy did not correct her.

This memory, he revisits every time she brings a new boy home.
Debates internally,
the tipping scales that balance ignorance and optimism.
If maybe he should have explained the beauty in death, rather than let her beleive her illusions.
The beauty in nature, the circle of life.

Like a cat, she brings home dead animals

Like the owner of a cat,
He is unimpressed.

Maybe if he told her the bunny was dead, she would stop offering herself to the crows.

In his final moments
He clutched his sheet in fear
Staring at the wallpaper
He knows his time is near

The unshaded lightbulb
The dust around the room
Black mould in the windowsill
Adding to the gloom

Loved ones stand around him
For their tearful last goodbyes
Forever shall be without him
But he cannot reason why

His thoughts now are desperate
And nothing shall they gain
But to toy with logic, reason
Might help to ease the pain

The universe for him
Is not beyond the sky
For when his time expires
His universe will die

He recalls a varnished box
And now his fears somehow subside
It was stored in an upstairs cupboard
Where he sometimes used to hide

The distinctive smell of varnish
The rusty broken locks
Tins of enamel paint
Occupy the box

Time seems at a standstill
As he revisits his past
A time once thought forgotten
He prays this time to last

He opens up the fusty box
To take a look inside
His father's name inside the lid
Consumed is he with pride

His loved ones weep with sorrow
As he walks his final mile
His body still and lifeless
He exits with a smile

THE LORD REVISITS US.

God wished to come and visit us
To see His children in their house.
He came to stay just for some time
To show His care for their own home.

By chance, He came to where l pray,
A church l went to on Sunday.
He came in clothes so cheaply sewn
Like those He had previously worn.

He came to church where we were dressed
So richly and had finest scent.
When He came in, the crowd were shocked.
How could that Man come as He looked ?

He looked at them when they paid alms
How they paid them with proudest palms.
He was so sad for what He saw
And calmly as He came He drew.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
____________

She scribbles endlessly,
waiting for her true love to see
the aching in her wanton heart
pen'd in crimson's darkly hue'd soul
inky passages of the past
when the sun still shine'd a'glow
and all was write with the world

As the wind rushes over the moors
she thinks of her Heathcliff'd dreams
reverie of timely love season'd skies
when spring sprung eternally
old man winter was only a notion
frozen in another's memories
til stormy nights overcame the fantasy

Still, she revisits her place in the sun
bleeding out on paper without conscience
a wavering inner voice triumphs demurely
as emotions spill over the tethered wastelands
once a land of wide open lush filled pleasures
this place now only a reminder of tormented defeat
yet, her resolve for passion's affection remains

The criminal always revisits the scene of the crime, as if you were the criminal, and lying to me was the crime. Does that make me the victim? Well then who was the witness? Was she your accomplice? We have left this alone for a year, you moved on, I wasn't expecting to find you back here, where I am stuck on this metaphorical street, waiting, just waiting, for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime, all the while I was waving to passerby's and saying "I'm fine!" Was I lying? Would that be a crime? I'm fine, ******* it, I was doing just fine! Until the criminal decided to return to the scene of the crime, what's even the difference between a wrong and right lie? And what if I were to just say goodbye, to you and her and him, would that be okay? It not like we have much to say, part of the same crime, but on different sides, and what if I can't leave this metaphorical spot on the street? You could promise me to never come back, but we both know that would be a lie- because the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.

Alone the world has alway' been,
In cold the space where planet bend,
Next mars or pluto lit between —
But none would ever bother them.
Then stands alone this human being
And wonder where he'd travel then:

He flies to worlds beyond the stars,
Can mend the dream before his will,
Can think of ogres, wizards all;
Can think a way into a thrill:
But further down he might recall
Where evil hides and watches still.

While mission plans fall on a whim,
And rarely do they e'en come true,
Man revisits one for him —
And hopes that someone listens too:
Like father to us all children
And mother like the earthy moon.

When my old friend
Walks through the door
He's come a long way with me
Constant companion
My fiercest combatant
An old corollary
Of my ****** up existence
I simply take him
Close in my arms
And rest while weeping tales away
Waiting till he wanders off
And someday he'll be back again

I just wish
When my old friend revisits
I'm jolly stocked with hearty ale
And songs to sing of old and new

Vicious cycles round and round
All as yet to be unwound
Dripping venom hatred be
After all just you can see
Pain revisits hurts you rend
Scars away you cannot send
Call my name for savior come
Perhaps you’ll find where you are from
Lost alone you wander far
Fallen angels your way they bar
Trapped of will none but your own
Drained of blood all skin and bone

She scribbles endlessly, ferociously
waiting for her true love to glance
  the aching in her wanton heart
pen'd in crimson's darkly hued soul
   inky passages of the past
when the sun still shine'd a'glow
   and all was write with the world

As the wind rushes over the moors
  she thinks of her Heathcliff'd dreams
reverie of timely love season'd skies
   when spring sprung eternally
old man winter was only a notion
  frozen in another's memories
  til stormy nights overcame the fantasy

Still, she revisits her place in the sun
  bleeding out on paper without conscience
a wavering inner voice triumphs demurely
   as emotions spill over the tethered wastelands
once a land of wide open lush filled pleasures
  this place now only a reminder of tormented defeat
yet, her resolve for passion's affection remains

Comfort is nice but mundane bores
I must explore the wonders of sea
My thoughts take wings, zest soars
I set sail on my journey with glee

A crushing wave, a sudden slip
Yanking my board from under my feet
Hither tither I scramble for a grip
Boy this feels, anything but sweet

Not what I thought - no easy play
Things just aren't going my way
I look for reason, reason flees
Reason tells me meaning you’ll see

Tired of evil, tired of this ploy
I loosen my grip, I free control
In this moment, I now enjoy
The ebb and flow of the larger whole

A storm revisits, I know the drill
I'm tossed again in life's caprice
I align my will with divine will
And now I sail the winds with ease

coming back to you like the rain revisits time and time again
washing over your valleys and mountaintops

little by little your layers disappear
you are left a clean surface
your forgotten shimmering through

and every layer you’ve ever had is shed, a second skin
everything you’ve ever feared spills out from your ears
and every summit you’ve climbed peeks out at your belly
every wound you’ve suffered shimmers from underneath the surface
oceans of tears like puddles filling up your collarbones to the brim

you’re a landscape full of forgotten things

Sense impressions long ago forgot
escape from somewhere deep
in memories vigilant grip
the mystery of a life lived
revisits at a time you least expect.

There she sits
poking holes through daisy stems
feeding the next through to make a chain.
Again and again.
A daisy chain.  It never rained.  It did not need to.
In our hearts it was always summer.  Then.
When we were young and free to roam.  When
we were young.  She still is in her heart.  Her soul
is old,  She is cold. But the memories warm her.
She lies under the daisies and revisits them whenever.
When she can.  While she can.  Trapped in her daisy time.
Not such a crime is it   To be left here.  With her heart.
She sits again and again threading daisies in a chain.
These are lazy days.  Tight nights.  White ways.  Dark fights.
Again and again these are lazy days.

I attach myself to achievements of another
Me in the string of consciousness
But I am a shadow of him
As he was an echo of older versions
Reborn in the morn of refreshed brain chemical
A regeneration and transformation
Working with the passions of past moments
Playing with old phrasing, claiming ownership
But for each verse edited, each syllable reworked
The me of now revisits and demolishes
The me of old, as I have done so many times
Today I am myself, yesterday I was someone else
And tomorrow I will be changed again

Why do people revisit their old wounds ?
Is it an addiction to pain ?
Or unwillingness to let go of misery ?
It is the same reason a bird revisits its broken nest;
To see if it can fix its broken walls or remove the thorns from its floor board .
Perhaps to try something different from last time hoping this time round it will work.
This is the law of life ; learning to leave with pain.
Sometimes when the skeleton gets out of the closet you can't take it back.
The only way to understand pain is to look deep into it without turning back ,to stare Into the dark abyss until you see the light.
Because healing always begins with embracing pain not running away from it.

The mind fills empty potential with ferocious fantastic notions noting naive possibility outside of future's foreboding

But my image is quickly corroding, time's caustic nature instigating my painting's eroding and tainting the dreams I've been toting

My illusive fantasy simply couldn't be, a fairly farce future that reality couldn't see, but I pressed for it so impolitely, now it revisits me nightly

I know it's rightly dangerous thinking of things that might be but they push they're way inside me slightly slipping and sinking into my mind despite me fighting and frightfully trying to hold on tightly,

Now I permanently face the incessant resurrection of my psyche's insurrection to reality's lackluster perception of this painting's perfection

I never should have pursued this crude gesture I painted of her ****, not of her body but of her thoughts, though maybe just as lewd, I expected them to be profound and without interlude but these are facts of existence the universe didn't include

I wrongly thought of her as a partner for gleaning the meaning of particles and their organized convening to allow the formation of conscious beings

But she already found her specific god of speculation, he has an appropriate deprecation of false idolization, I thought it was simply healthy appreciation, sadly after an eternity of intense anticipation I was met with the realization that she couldn't be the deity of my imagination, she couldn't understand my late night cogitation, much less save me from my suicide ideation,

No one could,
No one can,
And it would be selfish for me to wish this loneliness on another soul, for me to expect anyone to fill that role.

his woebegone **** dental daze today May 5th, 2021

No particular rhyme nor reason
garden variety indentured flunky (me)
revisits his salmagundi salad days,
when oral blight smote
left front adult tooth,
which hellacious quandary commenced
when yours truly experienced
broken said central incisor.

Inxs of cold playing air
froze natural pond, where over head
Canadian geese (imitating
black counting crows) did blare
honking the latest goose sip loud and clear
when from behind a (Georgian) bush
(color of smashing pumpkins) did peek a deer

alert to any danger by parking
upright either one or both ear
lest predator doth lurk and induce fear,
while Harris Family and friends
oblivious among themselves
attired in wintry gear
which protection from cold
caused difficulty to hear

necessitating cupped gloved hands
to punctuate every muffled word
to be but barely heard
akin to talking with mouth full of custard
above the quiet riotous mirth
from this then gawky child nerd
precariously maintaining balance
on his skates heed glide like a bird
such attempts made
this boy didst appear quite absurd

ah, if only this mind of mine
did two step quick think
but woe misfortune awaited
across the bumpy natural rink
blithely jettisoning myself hither
and yon like a rolling stone going plink
unaware while in camouflage pose
disguised as one sneaky slippery fink
that snuck up in a blink

that found me squarely
face down shattering left front tooth
immediately discovered via
tongue as private sleuth
finding me in extreme agitated state forsooth
as if on fire from red hot chili peppers
wrought from jagged booth

winning sympathy from parents,
who did level best to tend distraught son
who ushered playback of events
with less disastrous rerun
praying for an angel
to grant reverse outcome brought none
gut wrenching grief
immediately terminated former fun
damage irreversible and
perfect white smile forever broke.

So much of my precious existence since
found me rooted with mouth ajar
as sigh asper the dentin-cementum
so mud dear reader (with dem perfect
enameled pearly whites), aye har bar
envy for those with a complete set

of eight incisors, four cuspids (i.e. canines),
eight bicuspids, and twelve molars
(including four wisdom teeth) tabulating
many hours in the car (engendering
saddle sore bony tuckus)
plus regarding chunk whereat,

pernicious cementum funk
viz distraught psyche,
when muss self as a lil monk
key decades after being examined
by family dentist Doctor Marcus (NOT WELBY),
excellent practitioner (button irate pulp pill

people, especially children) hater –
the grinchy, grouchy, and grumpy,
whose private practice located
in Levittown, Pennsylvania,
and when prepubescent self underwent

pertinent more explicit focused
intense noninvasive procedures
asper subsequent cause of speech impediment
determined why air didst jump

thru nostrils, (speech therapist
at Henry Kline Boyer),
neither thin nor plump informed parents
of Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic –
fifty plus miles one direction),

where chief prosthodontist (the curt
Doctor Mohammad N. Mazaheri, DDS, an Iranian
whose expert reputation,
sans strict manner didst trump
his aura, karma evincing clipped commands
forceful as a vocal whump

before launching into meat and potatoes
of crux comprising real aim
constituting modus operandi
(and cresting away from details indirectly tide
into main intent, nobody aye blame)
for thine dental debacle quandary

(managed by gumpshun,
whereby eons hyperbolically
toted beyond google),
and despite optimistic stance
wool worth anesthetized numb skull claim
nascent malocclusion faintly affecting,

hinting, pointing toward Periodontitis
(despite diligence attending
to oral hygiene frame)
the manifestation
of major looming crisis compromising,
forgoing, instigating, et cetera loss of teeth,

this (after agony in league with separate occasions
twice wearing braces, concomitant extractions
of wisdom and removal of crowdsourcing –
close up toward the front of mouth teeth - game
some microbial bacterial
agent provocateurs didst maim

self-acceptance, and (found thyself
as a boyish twenty something
weathering onset of gum recession,
maxillofacial surgery, impressions,
x rays galore, scaling)

necessitated (score years later) urgent intervention
i.e. treatment plan under auspices
re storied name
University of Pennsylvania
Dental School to mitigate malady

entailed every last tooth plucked with ease
since no other recourse could tame
accompanying jaw bone loss,
which destabilized rootless choppers,
and despite the state of the mind turning to pulp
(this haint no “fiction, nor FAKE)

thus I acknowledge sincere gratitude
vis a vis thru poetic aire
for the entire fleet of dental students,
and staff that didst care,
who assuaged distress,
exceeding the best expertise flair
which eventually warranted

being fitted for dentures here
bringing an exemplary end result
encompassing yours truly writing in his lair
after about a dozen years encompassing
so many wing (bitten) angels far and near
across webbed wide world to help repair

chronic distress minimized now, cuz there
prevailed the most blessed delight
when Medicare picked up the tab
now smile more willingly
with artificial dental wear
donning blitz end until
mine last mortal year.

Forget me I'm only reminiscing
I've heard revisits bestow wisdom, expectation excluded
I saw Teddy left out of our room
He'd comforted me late nights
Barbie was all beauty, make-up and hair perfected
But Teddy, you remember how I clung to him?
I hadn't heard the meaning behind mama's words
You should see me now, pregnant with scars
Dear Innocence
I admit your cocoon's absence is felt
My hands were on my ears in the dark
My knees drawn to my bare chest
Rocking back and forth, back and forth
Mama was lost, her consolation only money
Truthfully
You left without warning
You took me with you
And I'm grateful for that care, that me had been virginally worldly
My dear Innocence
I'm writing to tell you of the changes
My old bed squeals now, as of the rats
Like my oldest pet, troublemaker
He'd been true from the beginning
To your eyes it might sound pungent
Evolving they said was special
I swear I was blindly being extruded
But dear Innocence
A whole in my heart settled
An angry cloud preparing for apocalypse
Your light's leftover not shimmering
All is no longer, no longer
Dearest Innocence
Once upon a time...

He doesn't remember anything.

The dotted boats on the sea,
birds peeking from the bush,
a smiling ******* a valley,
a couple with a baby in the bus..

The places, years, situations
he looks at with a snug vagueness.

But he revisits them calmly
happy in the bliss of not straining
to remember.

The spaceship he boarded with them
is now cosmic dust.

Let them be left in that capsule of time.