This morning, out in lightly falling snow, I heard geese
as flights of them flew overhead. Like a shot
I was ten again, Grammy and I at the lake. I’d sit in the bow
of my canoe, pulled awkwardly ashore, neck craned back to watch the sky.
I was always sad to see them go; their calls so many cold goodbyes.
Ice encrusted water slushed against the dock in slow motion waves.

It was time to seek new horizons, where waves
of Floridian waters would embrace the geese.
My grandmother said that every new adventure started with goodbyes
to one thing or another. If I were ever to have a shot
at following my dreams, there’d be farewells as I reached for the sky.
Instinct would lead me onward to my accomplished bow.

One year Momma and Poppa Goose stayed behind, a nest in the bow
of my boat. The wintery sky turned black with departing waves.
They would call out as the flying ones filled the sky.
Wounded wing grounded Poppa. (Canada geese
mate for life.) Momma would not leave her mate, recently shot
during hunting season. She would not yet say her goodbyes.

This, then, was the winter of no cold goodbyes.
Before school, pony tailed hair with ribboned bow,
blowing in the stiff breeze, I’d take a shot
at keeping ice from the edge of the lake, waves
arrowing out as they swam. The geese,
with an itch in their wings, anxious for a return to their sky.

That summer Poppa introduced his flock to the sky,
practiced formational takeoffs leading to goodbyes.
Clouds overhead gathered gray with unfallen snow as the geese
took flight. My two watching for a moment, dipping heads in an elegant bow,
before joining in the aerial ballet of strong winged waves.
Grammy’s strong hand gripped my shoulder, then-- the parting shot.

Grammy joined the geese beyond the horizon. No miracle shot
or endless love could keep her with me. Heaven was in the sky.
I knew she was watching although there’d been no time for final waves.
Her new adventure started without time for goodbyes.
Outside, snow blanketed as I cried myself to sleep. Her final bow
had been silent, but she’d been telling me, as had the geese.

Overhead the geese are shaftless arrows shot
from an instinctual bow piercing the morning sky
with their raucous goodbyes. Time waves.

The TSA won't let me fly
It seems when airplane-jailed,
My muse sneaks aboard
Without paying for a seat.

Another airplane poem like 30B,
From a long ago flight,
Found dusty, in the poetry sewing box


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

with every breathe he tithes
a packet of whispered wishes,
a blended osmosis of
past and future scenes,
reviewed, previewed,
moments in time,
actual and dreamed

some received,
airborne plucked,
in his chest stored,
prepared for future
takeoffs and landings,
for ultimate insertion
in both
your recesses
and
your abscesses

some native,
combobulated, containerized
packets of seconds,
of joyous moments,
bytes of historical
hugs n' kisses,
as a child
to a child
from a child

those are vanilla frosted,
residual payments for the
good done and given,  
forwarded with all clear signals,
to his loved ones,
now resent, to you,
fellow travelers and sojourners,
intersectors of our peculiar
coded dots and dashes

thirty five thousand feet high,
composure lost,
he swoons as
Bocelli's voce del silenzio
releases tears so sweet,
which are by nature,
gravitated and transformed
into snowflakes to decorate
the Sierra Nevada's
breasted peaks and valleys,
over which his physical notion
is at rest, yet in motion,
within a Delta flying ship

Yet his fevered chest
beats rough,
for every flight seems
a time warp interlude,
a forced reflecting rhyme,
not of his choosing,
a lawful, thoughtful, imprisonment

having donated to you
his best, the remainders,
the man tallies, recalls:

ancient slights, scaled heights,
requiems for his forefathers
scored by cantorial choirs,
liberation struggle weariness,
offers taken and refused,
aces in the hole that proved
insufficient to save his soul.

goal line stands made,
onslaughts refused,
true lies and false truths,
moist lips and monster tears,
occasional A's and calcu-hell-us,
hand me downs received,
help me ups got n' given,
buildings pricked by airplanes,
death wishes granted
and nothing thereby gained,
children, found and lost,
mine, yours, ours...

The sums, always the sums!

engine noises and pilfered winds
are dulled and semi-silenced,
yet the silvered chamber prison
resonates from end to end
as each ledgered memory,
each packet of the
hidden whispered poems
he does NOT choose to send,
dents the man,
leaving claw marks,
screaming pay attention to me,
as if they were the priorities
of a six year old child,
refusing to be ignored

he does,
attention, he does pay,  
allowing rocking guitar heroes
to overtake weeping violinists,
just as newer transgressions
surfeit even his
most really *****,
ancient sins

No matter how he counts,
unable to master the additions,
no matter how many times
counts are initiated,
taken and retaken,
the tally's net net is
concluded, numbered
"forsaken"

his life's W-2 is black n' blue,
deductions falsely enumerate
and thereby underestimate
dues he has paid summarily,
earnings, distorted,
taxes paid never enough,
to satisfy the justice scales,
so wearily he
cries and enunciates,

The sums, always the sums!

THEN COMES HIS SHOUT OUT,
at his most vulnerable,
when a thin veneer of alumina
separates him,
from a fall inglorious
to an end most gorious,
a rapping beat moderne
insists that he go all out,
disallowing no
airy fairy poetry
to disguise that:

If the integers are false,
the entries of a life lived,
are sucker lies
black eyed flies
toxic shockers
that bust open
stinko lockers
where the B.S.
mocking stories
are kept

don't look close
at his documents
they ain't exactly
heaven sent
and the government men
be back on his track
their aviator shades
protect them from
burning light of the
man's furnace
where he burns their liens,
and the agent's ear pieces
drown out his screams of

The sums, always the sums!

God bless you,
keep and recall those packets of
whispered wishes, good tithes,
that the man bequeaths,
gift baskets of
expresso essentials
with God's love delivered

Tho his words,
amateurish and unvarnished,
silly and pompous,
nonetheless, they are the
return on his investments,
his yearnings for your happiness
are the savings accumulated,
though meager jewels are they,
they are ad valorem,
mixed into his confused murmurings

here then,
are his summings up,
what he wills you,,
the tally finale
the best wisdom is
found on coffee cups
at 2:47am.

Dance
Love
Sing
Live

to which he respectfully amends with a
Write.
(See banner photo)

“When people move-when they travel-they look at where 
they come from,
not where they’re going.” -Martin Amis, *Time’s Arrow

*

Let us now take this chance

to praise those dancing demons 
of ambition,
whose feigned clairvoyance 
of fortune
and exactitudes of fame

burn as the smell of smokey fallow 
to the new-retired mare.



Travel, and all its takeoffs,

all its energies in skidding towards

an unopposed truth, makes its mince

by outlining all we ever look for

but leaving the chalkdust prints

of what we fail, at first, to find.



Yes, spaces contrary to the familiar exist
Carnivore cities of grind and result

cascaded above the floodwalls that save

the vagrant’s midnight search.

Coastal clearings of pacific civs,

best kept secrets where trees are still planted

and further kinds of nowhere that you never expected

to simmer with all the prospects of bored and implacable youths

who pine to efface the status quo, which ,after all, is quite the average,

is quite like “HOME”



Though I suppose, we eventually find

whatever space can be considered our own

when everyone grows up and stops

pretending they read Burroughs,
have a lot more going on, or are a lot less busy
than they make out over infrequent coffee meetings
(where it is also admitted

that they brew their own hot beverages,
or tell their own jokes)

Somewhere in the near-space continuum where Travel has

become for us what essentially differentiates
the commonplace in nature from 
that most human of neuroses,

the acceptance of a willing to improve the conditional.



And so to Ambition, and its fiery fops who make us refute

steadiness, accountability, the routine of the resolute

Who let our ships of sanctimony attack

implied with the luxury of steering back.

nothing has ever given me a rush quite like leaving,
like sitting in an airport moments away from getting on a plane.
i’m a little scared of heights,
in the way that they make my heart go racing
and i don’t like feeling my pulse leave my chest,
but i’ve always loved leaning over the edge.
i’m scared of heights in the way that i’m scared of planes:
i love the concept and the purpose and the view,
but nothing scares me like going into airplane bathrooms,
when i haven’t slept in two hours too many
and the mirrors are like a funhouse from a scary movie.
airplane bathrooms are like a portal into the past,
except this time i can see every crack and fissure
and misplaced hair in the outline of who i’m trying to be.
i don’t like airplanes in the sense that time doesn’t exist,
that where you’re landing is different from where you were beginning,
that i can sleep for seven hours only to find out
that i’m two hours behind where i lifted off.
i’m scared of missing things, i guess.
i don’t like airplanes in the way that i’m scared of what lies ahead:
because i really like going,
and i really like getting there,
but landings make my ears hurt like hell and
takeoffs make my stomach churn.
i know where i am and i think i have a vague sense of where i want to be,
i know when i’m real and when i’m dreaming,
but it’s the in between that loses me.
i’m scared of the dark,
but differently than heights or flying,
because that’s just a loss of time.
i’m scared of the dark because it’s a loss of everything.
if you can’t see it then how can it exist until you’re
bumping your knees on coffee tables and stubbing your toes on walls
and the cat’s eyes are reflecting light from nowhere
and you’re waiting for the claws.
i’m scared of the dark because the dark is uncertainty
hiding all the truths that we want to believe,
because the dark is all the spots ahead of us that aren’t set in concrete,
because the dark is deep and suffocating,
because i don’t like not being able to see.

I Love You

I love you for who you are, you're my constant  inspiration,
your  never ending kindness, leaves me searching  for your  lite    

I love you for what you do, your spatial  imagination,
how you make me feel  special, each and every nite

I love you for your  wit, you always bring a chuckle,
a word, a look , or just  a simple joke

I love you for your kisses, that can make my knees buckle,
I know sometimes I can seem, like a peculiar bloke

I love you for your patience,  your  way of  understanding,
you listen to my rantings, and still know how to smile

I love you for your support, of my poor takeoffs  and  landings,
my latest brainstorm  choices , missed by at least a mile

I love you for  more reasons, than this simple man can reason,
you  constantly surprise me with your  style

I love you because your simple,  you can change just like the season,
I'm glad you agreed to keep me, let me stay for  just a while

Gomer LePoet

transient souls
takeoffs
and
landings
always going  
to
other places
are
ghostly things
and
paper aeroplanes