That workaholic lady who's always on call,
keeping up with the market fall.
That newly married lady with chunky red bangles,
returning to her father's big castles.

That person who's scared to get lapse,
so stays active on the google maps.
That person who swings like a kid at the back door,
Or the one who perform calisthenics on an empty floor.

That next door girl with a red lipstick,
flicking her shinny hair & gossiping with her clique,

That dreamer gazing outside the window,
That overworked soul dozing on his elbow.

That 21st century kid,
listening to Eminem & playing video games.
Or That 90’s kid,
listening to Jenga Boys & playing outdoor games.

That banker with a big fat stomach,
filled with his beautiful wife’s love.
That lady who eats like a thief,
in her big fat bag hiding a beef.

That old man who can’t stand Bombay's winding turns.
That granny spotting & criticing  every fashion trends.
That man who has Raju Rastogi’s concerns,
thinking & chanting for earns & returns.

Those kids who believe their job is to fill the voids in a battlefield,
in the still crowd surpassing like electrons into a magnetic field.

That lady sitting under cold seat like a glacial,
than standing with 7kgs in a crowded central,
& tryna stay sane listening to George Michael.

That geek who switchs from Linkedin to Arjun Reddy,
when the masses flee into the scenery.
That trader crunching numbers so rapidly,
when the stock prices go down hourly.

That person on the last seat,
diagressing from work & gazing around,
soaking in her pashmina, with a career newfound.

You are glancing out of the window
Taking a look at nature's creation
Wisps of your hair gently stroking your face
Feeling a cold wave against you
Walking slowly amidst the misty clouds
The endless curves of the mighty mountain
Spinning your head around
Deep down there lies deathly valleys
Defining life beyond explanation
All you can see is plush green colour
Ranging from warm to tender
While I travel,I try not to grasp at people
By their devotion towards work
An independent river flows curvily to reach its destination
Given much ore of its freedom
Captivating nature in just one go isn't enough
You have to soak in as much as possible
Sure one becomes perplexed at the first sight of the beautiful sunrise
And I bet the day couldn't get that better otherwise
The air had its own charm,its own charisma
While the chants and prayers of monks completed the atmosphere
I smile as I currently jot this poem down
Words fail to express my happiness crown
I say to myself-" This isn't imagination,This is reality"
Confused, are you reader?
My heart beats and  quenches for the aroma of green tea leaves
Hmm,I'll miss this heaven on earth,
This place,these people,their lives,their struggles
Their homeland.
Their Birthplace.
So this is my travelogue
And currently you were into my experience
My "Darjeeling Experience"
And not a dream,or a part of paper
Cause its far more than your mere imagination.

In the end, where is the courage?
~~~~~~

a festering poem~notion
that can not be kept down,
in the making, long,
in the scrivening, short

even the simplest life,
the most ordinary,
cannot ever avoid the question,
where is the courage?

this journey, near complete,
packages delivered, dust and mud,
a canvas of the well worn, conceded and deeded,
nearly done, in the corner almost all that's needed,
a scrawled illegible, encircled set of initials

but never mind that,
for that doesn't obviate, or explicate,
what is important, no matter where and when
you are GPS dotted on your particular travelogue,
the quest, the question that does not come or e'er go,
but permanent, like the dimple, given at birth,
where is the courage?

threescore and more and therefore puzzling,
what matters now this solution in need of resolution?
this easy to provide the clarification notification,
perhaps you are young and the future looming large,
courage in ample supply, for when and where
life requires resuscitation, even enunciation,
you easy answer, here, within,
below the surface, just underneath,
at the ready, in service, a call awaiting when asked,
where is the courage?

the sword of mine so oft drawn and bloodied,
my exploits, I unashamed, but yet new war cries recirculate
and they call out "give us the veterans,"
whose courage spoke of and tale recorded,
let them lead us once again to succor and success!

they cannot know or be told,
my chain mail armour, my heart's amour,
rusted and weakened, and battle memories
too well recalled give me not wells to draw upon,
but wells to be drowned in, fears of fear of it,
it cannot be done again, the supply all drawn down,
the well overused and dry, history revisionists
cannot bring back what once was just by asking,
where is the courage?

the temple in Jerusalem sacked and burnt,
but the Israelites returned and rebuilt,
in ages and days when miracles were a dime a dozen,
no one could not imagine exile permanent,
but it came and lasted but tho many,
ceased to believe, a hardy few knew the answer,
when the the quest, the question that does not come or go,
was flaunted both to and by the fearful, the tired~souled,
where is the courage?

here, within, but this time dig much deeper,
under grime and desultory historic rhyme, it be buried,
just sip and sup of it, but a taste will reignite hope hopefully,
of
what is only dormant, but never gone complete,
that is what they whisper, in my one good ear,
but I know better, tho eyes dimmed,
my heart replies, the inky dark answer
that I hate but recognize as truth,
when it inquires
where is the courage?*

what matters where,
when, when,
there is no choice,
you know what to choose,
choose the pretense in hopes
that the muscle memory will return,
and restore what was once yours,
and must be yours, yet again
and if you fail,
fail well
for that will be you at the last, and the
lasting medal of courage tendered

tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar

not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute

a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just  numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected

naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?

here is the hard part.

your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am

gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:

I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…

~


not a fan of reality TV,
plenty of "unreal" episodes
of my own direction stored,
available for further review
in the storage units of
neuronic black and white prison brain cells

which is why I have free~will chosen
to enumerate my poem~videos;
for easy retreat retrieval resurrection
of the travelogue of mind own insurrections

a garage of mobility devices,
car, rollerblades, cross country skis plus,
a potpourri of escape methodologies
that by definition are all round trippers,
returned to their storage unit after use

and I count them Noah~like,
two by two, as they come on board,
and when they disembark for days of
rest and recreation

this one, #4,
is born
among headstones,
just anther memory storage unit
specialized,
flag decorated,
but different

This is a one-way,
no return,
unit

but
it can be viewed at anytime
by those who care to be users,
by speaking this:

Read to me poem number four,
on a day we celebrate,
about free men of every color and persuasion,
who are calling out to
open the door to storage unit four,
so we to can perform
our once-a-year
Tour of Duty
to the those who called,
and answered with limb and love,
for by their glory,
we are
free too

to remember in any way we choose



~

Dark blue behemoths
Those behind wearing white caps
Geese fly over

The Doctor has a Sense of Humor!

<|>

give a surgeon a scalpel
and an excuse,
and the artist emerges,
for creativity is a good surgeon’s
natural habitat

Sure, sure, there’s a plan,
with best and acceptable outcomes,
but when messing with a real heart,
a sly *****, with numerous deceptive guises
at its disposal, you never for sure never know,
despite all the advanced imaging techniques,
exactly
what you will find once you go
spelunking
in caves of life and death

so, he takes a bit from here,
and a bob or two from there,
there a cut, here an incision deep,
Old McDonald provided a body,
or a canvas, and the Doc
is happy.

So I uncover holes where he
probed, redeploying the healthy,
like a good designer, Doc rearranges
and repairs, a travelogue of splicing and dicing,
his handiwork

Now standing over you for many hours,
can get tiring, though each ***** be
different, unique even, but leaving
a little marker, a stylized signature,
is well, is the rightful discretion of the artiste!

So you can imagine my surprise
when the tubes removed (ouch!)
the bandages ripped off in a
signature move of a delighted nurse whose
loves seeing grown men cry from lesser trivialities,
you cannot imagine my surprise
when I discovered my new tattoo,
upon my chest front and center!

Herein please find your heart repaired,
and revitalized:

Please Note!
We guarantee our work for minimum 15 years
(Aug. 3, 2038),
but our disclaimer
we assume NO  responsibility after that
if you should
happen to live for 30 YEARS or more

Dr. P.

I left this world behind
running faster and faster
in a hope to explore
with those wheels of sophistication.

I connected with nature
flying above the clouds
to the place unknown
with those wings of my imagination.

I glanced at the flowers
dancing in glory there
and the birds singing,
with those words of my admiration.

~for Ernesto, with love~

these last days, so recently arrived
to nag/remind, pre-commence,
the celebration
of mine fast approaching,
significant other mileage marker,
the day that is the in-between mid and seniority,
finds me asleep by nine,
only to be turned hard a starboard,
startled and startling,
sharp awoken at midnight,
a headful of dreadful and most colorful dreams,
my ever faithful midnight alarm clock

so I find myself alert and inclined to be
urgently communicative,
answering queries from friends,
catching up on comments and likes
to my poems that once penned,
are then penned by me themselves,
surrounded by fences,
put away to be ignored and enclosed,
my flock of sheep unshorn

that upon occasional re-reading
then become hairless, all pink and white skin,
newly denuding of me
by the reminder of public exposure

this travelogue
through heart and mind
is journey for journey's sake,
I have discarded older outdated notions
(the "outdated" conceptual
begs for a poem all its own)

of commencement, beginnings,
ends, finales, terminals. even periods.

instead I conquistador land upon a new
plateau, familiar but confusing,
where my muddled thoughts
have lain for several days,
cloudy in a accumulating cumulus of realizations,
the "compare and contrast" of
life and death,
their gravitas diminished,
understanding them to be but modest signposts
upon the path of this
stewing, brewing, yearning to be free
poem
~~~
The In-Between

all day, I too,
am penned in a museum auditorium,
listening, hearing, applauding a gorgeous gaggle
of writers, musicians, doctors and dancers,
security guards and comic book authors,
falsely accused death row prisoners,
sons and daughters
and yes,
even a poet laureate

all assembled to contemplate this connective notion
of curator-as-written
with capitals and hyphen (most appropriately) as
The In-Between

of course dear Ernesto,
everyone defines their personal in-between
personally
but all these artists corral my thoughts
onto and against a canvas blank,
awaiting the portrait painting
slow cooking in my oven

of you,
who lays dying in Texas
surrounded by family and
the notions of reconciliation
and thus birthing
in me
these words,
something new ironical,
if only to prove a point

You,
my self-appointed
mentee
ex-drug addict, father,
self-savior of yourself
make

I,
your mentor, cheerleader, steadfast critic armed
with
just encouragement enough to give your self-propelled
poetry an occasional push
of your hand-carpentered, tree swing

but this is a poem about
in-betweens

two words,
separate and equal
but when combinated by a
hyphen,
a dash that leaves no spaces
in-between
making two into one

for you and I
are both

in
and
between

each other

two-in-one

only a few weeks ago we talked about
you coming to my new york city,
and now life deserts you,
and you,
me?

here I pause and smile
for I hear you thinking,
natty, too long, too much,
wrap it up and connect that special and peculiar,
in-between,

-

*but I can't stop
for each hour of the last 72
has witnessed a new poem
in-between
minute one and minute sixty five
written for you,
writing for life,
writing of this moment
this space so gulf and so narrow
in and between
the unity of
us

the poet laureate talks of spaces,
the poem she reads out loud,
is emitted light from her body's mind
exhaled into the room,
and now designed to be placed
in-between
her and us,
purposed to successfully connect
our in-betweenness

I do not like this notion of
rest in peace,
as if peace was a desirable end in and of itself

prefer rest in pieces,
for what follows and precedes peace,
is pieces of ourselves
torn from the notebook
where we write down our poems unique and
secrete our secrets

rest in pieces!
connected by the in-between
which like
the
s p a c e s between  e a c h letter  here,
are the connective tissues of two parts
one, new
and the other,
created-crested by the transference
of every old reworked

I think of spaces differently

the gap between two fron teeth,
the space between two violin strings,
the V separating divider of the space
between our legs that is the baseline
of our torso entire,
the re-appearing and then disappearing space
between two bodies making love

all now remind that the
in-between
is a place of its own purport,
a parapet to stroll across from
one castle keep to another

so more and more,
mere mortal
are these discards,
I forsake these antiquities:

commencement, finale, terminal, ending,
even new beginnings

and all attention paid now to the recasting of our
happenstances and events
as a series of
in-between's,
the most valuable of our possessions,
connecting the only-seemingly
disparate days

but I must now return once more to the
in-between
of us

we uncovered something of ourselves
in
each other,
creating a causeway
between

for you and I are one big
differential,
so unlike in
life's
temperamental,
that
given the down easy to the shock and awe,
most happily easily,
our so very differing poems bridged the
in-between
us

the in-between us,
seen incorrectly as the timeouts
separating the fifteen rounds we fight

that is the thing,
the rub,
the main event on the fight card,
is not the fight itself,
but the crossing over

come quickly to our in-between,
my brother-in-words,
do not leave me
bereft and bereaved,
disconnected and despairing

let's follow,
both of us,
the trail
of dividing and connecting hyphens
---------------

I, given every advantage,
you, given every ghetto gang disadvantage
yet your voice soars
while mine aches and creaks
and breaks

I am better now
understanding existence as
a series of connected in-betweens,
but the not knowing when we will meet again
for the first time,
stretches me thin,
for without you
in
me,
between
us
the space flickers wider,
and the next in-between far far distanced,
further for farther,
and I worry,
who will love my poetry as you did,
who will be my encouragement now?

your passing shall not come
in-between us,
this I swear
~~~
in your honor of
your cellphone misty typo pings and compulsed hurried style,,
I do not edit this edifice that. I have lain down just now,
it was writ in slow haste and
fast forming eddies of ideas,
full of typographical errors of
omission and commission,
just
put out down as it was born,
just as you and I
we were put out as born,
only to cross and combine
to be a single
in-between

A ravaged beauty -
long threatened tired life,
riding appreciated*  


Friday’s  off-road cycle ride started late with a heart-choking chill head-wind blown rain - blurring my glassed vision, so I trusted into the triple lanes of colours slicing through the Vale of Neath.   Here a builder’s ladder jumped boomeranging off it's white van - attempting to decapitate me - behind me it’s miss was announced by squealing brakes and crunching impacts,  scaring alive splattered visions of a flat-end and being posted within a near drain.     Surviving today's devilled ribbon of the dangerous windscreen imprisoned - sitting with pub bound murderous cohorts - I found off-road safe solitude’s mountain bike path East to Coelbren - joining new, a fine yet unsigned cycle route curling around Mynydd y Drum, to open views of Cwm Tawe as I pass hunting twisting through woods a single Red Kite.   Then  gravities speed, circles barriers into Ystradgynlais top - a narrow ribboned descent, hemmed by cars and paved children to the rugby fields.

Senses travelogue -
previously un-experienced,
time spins slower

Here the trails old section points to Swansea - winding lost betwixt fields, paths, trees and roads to Cwmtawe Cycleway proper, there to pedal beside and across Afon Tawe with repeated special offers of  child saddled exhaust roaring  kamikazes, bicycle maiming broken glass, proudly owned attack dogs, branch hung ball-sacks of excrement, visions of the lost ripped-away steel gated stops, hacked-off wooden fences and never-there deceitful dreams of red doggy bins all disguised what passed for hidden beauty, which he called lovely ugly.    *Backing-into Pontardawe to crawl away below the dark bridge,
past a single inviting  pub - I accompany the Tawe and it's twin a decrepit polished canal
through ***** alleys - until our hero stutters, gapes then tunnels under
great noisious noxious ribbons of hurtling tired....

Pressured paced life -
impossible  commitments,
Living organic

.

A breathe of words ― 
a gust of thought scattered;
welling silence ruptures
bulging vault chambers
with the patience
of tongue-tied hearts

In a long deep breath
pith of soul manifests;
rich with the breathing spirit
of life that's passed

A timeworn lid spinning
on a blue glass jar
Indigenous roots
and memories tender,  
perpetuity gleaned
and garnered
on fruit cellar shelves

Segues of ancient culture ―
evolution derives
from many roots
trying to catch
time in a bottle;
a travelogue
of saved beginnings;
magic beans
in a mason jar

    Life’s native seeds gathered ―
organic building blocks
the immemorial soul
of the earth sown
and reaped;
sprouting unstilted
continuum
for which
ever fleeting time
cannot hold


Jesse e Stillwater
09  May  2018

Your hair is short,
And, You've beautiful eyes.
I am a lonely street,
Listening to the evening wind.

But, The wind would come to
spoil the moon,
And, I would fit in this noisy truth.

A natural flower being too dead,
to mock the
sleeping sequence of-
a buzzing hope.

The scraggy anger would get absorbed,
like salty waters among the gravels,
deep below, and all down below,
The foam of disguise.

But I would rise again, to make it sure,
like-
The Eclipsed Moon,
to eat your Rose,
And I would toil my Greeky hands,
All hunger, but an image fails.


And, I would capture an orange light-
For, I would burn my fear with an asymmetrical fright.
And, I would intoxicate the absence of all links,
upon the suspended mechanics of all-
suspicious inklings.

Thu. Aug 11 2022
7:16 AM


~ for Julia and Joanne~
good neighbors

<>
a renewable habit apparently, again, a first poem of the day
(FPOTD), comes early, this old practice, me-bedded and mugged, with music ear installed drowning the noises of television blah,
iPad rests on left leg, left hand pointer finger ejects capsules
of letters, charmed into existence by the Barber adagio.

the Weather Channel forecasts morning-rain and my window
to trample and shuffle this deteriorating body rapid closes,
and the sun, weak, in concession speech, begs pardon, throws
off a few miscellaneous rays by way of apology, fooling no one,
except for the hopeful, itinerant poets, & the bunnies-neath-the deck.

know now you understand the poems entitlement, as is my wont,
you’ve been invited inside, sharing eyes and senses, you journey
today from a vantage no one else possesses, just you and me. Later,
we will drive to the Parrish Museum, studying modern painters,
each will inquire, a poem for me please, I nod sure, perhaps?

promise little, deliver less, is this your best? A travelogue of the
mundane, the little things, that do not stir your heart, smile tears,
and make you think wish I was there, or this, being
just too-me-boring?
The brain growls, no one making them read this perfunctoriness,
nonetheless, you apologize, pardon the no-angst trivia of daily life.

like the acid reflux bile, swallowed and returned to whence it came.
before it invades, tarnishes the peace of our surroundings and
the pleasure of your company, as I read your writings,

worth so much,
filled with so much angry pain,
I want to easy-soften the everything,
if this missive, takes you-nearer, to the calmer~closer,
this  poem, you transform it from perfunctory, to just, simply

perfect.


8:18 AM
Shelter Island

return voyage,
window seat,
trapped but nonetheless neat,
the views anticipated,
the route, north/south,
Eastern Seaboard, on the right,
don't need no GPS,
just a flotation-in-case device
under my **** cheeks

the local barge pilot
sent back to port,
now, the pilot~poetry commander  
in charge,
now piloting
this body, this ship,
over interstate global waters

my censorship overridden,
watching words flower,
in a daze of self-formation,
my input,
torn-out by force,
brain clamped,
seceded unwillingly from the
united state of the brain~body
of my republic

off to the far right
thru white haze,
the coastline, pointing,
an arrow head directing,
homeward bound

see further the water's edge,
wide but still bounded
by a somewhere-out-there horizon,
a glazed vanilla cloud bank
demarcating the end of the world,
for surely,
this cloud line thickened
over shadowed by
rainbow shades of only blue,
for this is where the cartoon sign is
perma-posted,
the one that appears always saying
The End!

beneath a complexity too much to explain,
lies a jigsaw puzzle incapable of ever being
disassembled and reassembled,
so fine are the parts and pieces,
of this land

roads like capillaries,
over and through fall earthy browns,
connecting mini homes,
an occasional clustering,
all set down scattershot,
randomness of guard-posts
over endless cultivations,
some linear, most not,
but all irregular,
as if the toy designer,
drew a landscape with
intent to cause or replicate
human madness at its tiniest,
its finest

periodically, the sea
invades the land, net casting,
subdividing naturally
the subdivisions human,
into islands and lines
of rivers so bent and curlicued,
they too,
cannot be conked,
their single hair straightened

where I am I so do not know,
guesses are hazardous,
so I make one,
Virginia perhaps?

Of course, I am incorrect.

from my perch in seat 12F,
I see a noon-day moon, halved,
observing me and vice versa,
sneaky uncensored notions
periodically sneak in,
causing poetic commotions

does the moon write like me
of what it sees,
or it is an inured sophisticate,
the daily astounding of earth's
mysteries innate, just commonplace,
a regular, serialized TV show?

below clouds cumulus, cumulative,
the kinds superhero's rest upon,
a white blanketed shelf of
fluff obscures the land,
the irony for those flying above this
delish
most relished,
blue skies above me,
a white wonder of
fuzzy cotton ball
underneath me,
which to those hapless earth creatures
is just
but,
another cloudy day

all is lost.

the captain speaks,
descent imminent,
control soon to be
returned to the
fool in seat 12F
the guy that did not write this poem,
but that other fool,
some dumb doppelgänger thinking,
a vista was his and
needed sharing

soon he will be concreted,
his flesh moved like a chess pawn
gliding in and on mass machines,
to move his essence to a specified
confinement cell,
from which
this essay will be reviewed,
wonderment,  who,
who riposted this travelogue
while his hands were tied and bound

for only an innocent can be so
wildly moved, wilderness bewildered,
natural emotions run ramped
from ends to endless,
only hopefuls see horizons,
and what lies above
cloudy grey ceilings,
while below,
in land of
asphalt green and work,
where bills due, obligations a must,
responsibilities that crush,
and so

his innocence is shelved,
wonder is a child's task,
not his,
his are chosen by
clock and calendar,
and flying is an excuse,
to get away,
not a place to get to...

and he wonders who wrote this eloquey,
while he observes rows of rows of
single family homes,
tall buildings and a Brooklyn Bridge,
a Central Park and even his home,
hard upon the East River,
while landing,
finally,
he espys

this place,
this isle,
Manhattan

it  is his brick and mortar,
the stuff of what and where
he lives,
like everyone else,

*on just another cloudy day

Each human life, finally a travelogue
across time and space,
through emotional landscapes
**with a hidden text between lines.

Now an annual autumnal literary festival visit
to our island redoubt,
the snow geese come honking down,
in linear formation
warning itinerant human beachcombers
of their arrival on the beach runways
of our sheltered island

This TripTik recommended diversion,
is a pleasure long anticipated by them,
seen as an intellectual rest stop,
with excellent sea snacks cuisined,
flying down the Eastern Seaboard
keeping Interstate 95 on their right,
an avian version of GPS

Our birds,
follow a minor route,
commencing in Nova Scotia,
the farthest north of all the species,
never making it to Mexico,
ending their travelogue in Georgia,
lest their true species be confused
with other kinds of Floridian snowbirds

Sit by my side they do,
one by one in assigned seats,
on the now scrawny grass blanket,
their attention span famously long,
unless a school of striped bass
seen on radar in the vicinity

I, on my Adirondack throne,
a poetry reading to intone,
with more-than-occasional audience input,
considered their right most fair

Critics one and all,
animated animal devotees of the arts,
unafraid to express their thoughts,
oft in unison or in
unharmonious John Cage
cacophonies of disagreement

Sadly, I only speak local seagull,
thus their effusive exege(e)ses and criticisms,
either damming or acclaim, indistinguishable,
their only "tell" is if
they stick around for
just one more...day...

That my poetry they did favor
was a conceit I feigned to believe,
loving their attention even if not deserved,
for in their service, and nature's too,
I am now trained to sit and wait,
a minor stitch in a famous tapestry,
for well I recall Milton's words:

*"God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
His state is kingly;
thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

~~~


every word I write is a tribute


now listen here,
let's clarify the inescapable,
what this tribute thing means,
cause what I'm doing here,
ain't exactly clear

everything we write,
is only a watery-encapsulated
reflection of our lives,
which of necessity,
will always be messy

what the heck does
this guy mean.
when enlisting
this shady word,
tribute?

at 3:10 in the AM,
tribute is dressed in its
more defy-nition sinister,
a bad news speaking cultural minister,
who never fails us
by reminding,
tribute originated
as the nasty kind:

"any exacted or enforced payment or contribution"

every **** word
that I've written
is a **** tribute,
an exacted, enforced, wrung from,
payment
of a pound of flesh,
Shylock's variety pack kind

I'm not bitter,
a touch angry, perhaps,
even brave, ok, unafraid,
to admit, overall,
got it pretty ok

but that I still struggle
to get that satisfaction,
in everything minute and daily,
the tiny and the tremendous,
the cost production load only goes
unicycle upward sloping,
this crisis crazy we call being
alive,
and to you,
who keys and ken
my meaning well

herein is my good kind side
my paying
tribute
to you, your courage,
even me, periodically,
for awakening and walking
into the unknown outside,
and giving it up
in our travelogue of
shared poetry

5:48am
Jan. 21, 2016
NYC (aboard the stationary bike,
paying tribute for forty years of sinning)

this trip
homeward bound,
riding the Q (subway) train
from the messy grime of a
never fully repossessed
cesspool misnamed as
Times Square,

to our apartment
near but yet far,
a poem short & sweet was
born complete, on an 8 minute
fast track victory lap to periodic
successful urban planning,

that even and
even though
with and/of
which
no speedy highly
disrespectful witch
on a broomstick,
nor a midnight traffickless
auto trip,
could ever hope
to compete
<>
roses red, violets blue,
all the passengers, revelry tired,
both becostumed & be plained,
Hallowed eve festivities
again, lesser than expected,
life be, eager awaited
legal moment of crazy-
-inness-inward-permissed,
never quiet or as good
as hoped,

we tired riders
all look worn from the
aggregated
infidelities of a
a hoped-for
missing-out happier life

nearing midnight,
the new immigrants,
in subway platform
patrolling,
offer us candy for sale,
their toddler children,
beside them
at this midnight hour,
to drive home
the desperate willingness to

survive in a city oft hostile

no longer eager to be
beacon beckoning
to the world, we rethink
to our minded selves,
our Statue of Liberty
engraved invite:

"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door”
<>
we exit the underground rout(e)
and the walk from subway to front door
is another 8 minute travelogue segment,
we cover the quarter mile on foot,
covering a skimp of distance that
our urban transport  
of many mileage covered
in the same units of minutes
in flyer miles

<>
late at night,
we walk fast, with eyes wide,
our lives to hide,
from the risks of the
unpredictable
when the street parade
of stragglers
gives not the comfort of a
rowdy crowdy,
and the existence of crime
is not
entirely fabricated

<Did>
I offer short and sweet,

Oh well I only misled,
the trip 16 minutes
and the poem
in my head,
complete emerged
with minutiae attending
et. al.,
in far far less mini~minutes,
for it was
a product of
silent back labor,
from first staggering
screaming pain
to
successful unexpected birth
that can take maybe
minutes five,
to mentally survive
plus,
physically complete the birth,
introduce this poem to life.
when the photos of my mined mind
make images from negatives
into words,:

collect, sort and report the
output picturesque
now in colors black & white,
of a trip from a Broadway theater
through to a high rise building
astride the river
which gives me
a theoretical cleaner space to breathe
<>
rather than short and sweet?
I really reseed,
redeed it as/is:
not too long and a tad
bittersweet

a night in the life of
the mixture of successes and
failures of our troubled world
in
living technicolor,
a few seconds of film
of which one could fairly,
and in fairness
bless/write/curse/
each sight
twice,
uttering:

”mine eyes have seen the glories,
as all come to look for America”