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My Meridians

We are:
a great circle upon the earth,
passing through the poles,
the East and West of us,
unique pole points of each us.

At any given point
on the earth's surface.
the half of such a circle includes,
two poles,
a singular line connecting
just we two.

This great circle of the celestial sphere,
passing through its calculus points,
fixed, but in motion,
you, the observer,
me, as composer,
we meet at an intersection,
a zenith peaked
a poem,
our greatest achievement.

And when we meet,
at a point of our
highest development,
great prosperity shared,
in the body's rivulets,
a vital energy flows,
when two create,
a write writ, read, and beloved.

This then,
My Meridians!

Noon and midnight,
the period of our greatest prosperity,
without them, without you,
how could I be culled, found,
this meridian, this our direct line,
transferring a tangible taste to both our
Lips.


I need
My Meridians!
6:03am

In the seat next,
more than stilettos,
more on the order of a
Jim Bowie knife

never meant to but wound
or needlessly take a prisoner,
if it can quietly be avoided

and the legs,
Miami gold, Latino,
not the Cubano kind you smoke,
but mucho ok to inhale

and at 35,000 feet,
nearer my god than thee,
I utter an afternoon blessing
in rudimentary Anglospanol

"Gracias to you,
Lord our God,
Señor del Universo,
who has made me humano,
according to thy will,
modest and unworthy,
of the sight of rainbows
and your creature creation,
placed beside me in 14B"

of course,
the flight lands early.

I shoulda kept my mouth shut...

You cannot polish a heart,
there is no tarnish remover for sale

once,
a thought exists,
then always, extant

once a feeling felt,
there is no erasure,
no white out,
just another wear and tear
to thy fabric added

it enters and infects,
no surgery can excise,
chemo and radiation
leave scars
and remainders

certain sadnesses are unreadable,
even if counterbalancing weights worn,
we are the sum
and the summation,
we are the holy ghost
of everything
we have ever known,
even if we did not
father it

a storage facility,
you rent permanently,
for the "stuff"
you don't want
but can't discard,
pay dearly for that inability

the poetry,
an artifice,
a cheaply hired psychologist,
a rented imaginary friend,
from whom there are no secrets kept

I am not delusional
or deluded

there is a new tiredness in me
that I did not ask for
and sorry to have met

now a parcel I must carry
like the delicious awful testing images
of one's own end.

there was a joy here for me once,
a day and way
of atonement in my
writing and reading

and though it is 400am
and here I am
writing again,
I surely expect
the music genie
to play for me
"the thrill is gone"
any second,
for it surely is....

once upon a time,
in that chair,
could easy poem
and easy write
but the thrill is gone,
the love "of it"
upped and disappeared
the weave and the woof
"of it"
not the same

cannot get that tarnish removed,
the commemorative wall plate visible crack'd
though reglued,
the cracks are
mirrored images reminders
of what I feel I have lost,
and what is sadly indeed,
just a commemorative now

full in a heavy way,
self-absorption ended, really,
my paper towel self
a soaked ragged mess,
the more it wipes,
the more it spills...

a fullness that comes
from human hate
a sidebar loud, all overhear,
in the courtroom of
humans racing
"to excel,"
they misunderstand,
as they just finger point
to their own chest blasting,
look I got into harvard,
made a million,
but I am still a major *******
in a grand tradition

this stuff has ashen pilloried me,
everywhere in my
not so red anymore blood

I am not delusional
or deluded,
or even depressed,
just weary,
tarnished,
and
writing this does, releases nothing,
changes nothing, makes, improves nothing

the stitch in my side still there,
saying poetry, nice but who cares,
what once was fair and comely,
now just ordinary fare, unlovely
a McDonalds of common words

once the poetry of hate is writ,
it cannot be deleted,
a curse upon all
that abused this child so,
your promotional coupons
are discarded
with today's newspapers
and tomorrow and even today!
no one will care
about this or the
mismeasurement markers of no glory
or of hate, or the
pseudo popularity you create
or relish into thinking of yourself,
as valuable

tell me I am wrong,
tell me of New Year's Day
start overs,
will be grateful
for your trying,
your counterbalancing attempts,
if genuine, are
truly glorious

even if the thrill is all gone,
your trying to untarnish me,
well, every little bit helps
at the very least
gets me sets me,
down more evenly,
untilltng the lean of what ails,
ever so less

but the tilt,
the tarnish,
is immeasurable like divinity


here is where,
I leave it and
the fast approaching sabbath,
depending where on  your calendar
it resides,
can be both a weekly ending
and/or a beginning,
but a sabbath rest from the garbage of words,
by humans abused,
un blessings saying I am better than you

so, a place, a time to start,
to polish over just a tad, the stains
of what cannot ever be deleted,
cleansed
even if it is pseudo-gone from the internet

To write a poem, a single word select,
embrace it with a fullness that lovers, family and friends
and the *** who cut you off in the middle lane
do daily provide

Grasp said word, walk it onto a yellow, blue lined, legal pad,
touch said word with the whisper of a single tear, a single curse,
like a pebble in a pond,
said word will miracle expand
hugging you with concentric circles of lines of poetry,
visionary words and stanzas that almost complete themselves
and you

The rhymes you will require, the meter you will select,
no need to struggle, hug your child and as Abraham told Isaac,
God and Google will provide

The simple trickster, a wordsmiths, even your average poet laureate,
got nothing on you that you don't already possess, to offer them
plenty stiff competition


Example: How


How to Write a Poem

To write a poem, a single word select,
your fingers will do the rest.

Sept. 5th, 2020, 6:35am (wondrous palette)

the sun risen, but a solid foothold as of yet unestablished;
the new day’s skies borrow coloration from nearby sources,
no unique identity bright enough as of yet to call its own;
thin cumulus streaks, striate against an unidentifiable blue
paleness, more to contrast than to claim,  “here we are!

the bay is in labor: multi hues of blue intermingle, as the
light illuminates each part differentially; soon enough,
one hue will come to dominate, just like you, soon enough,
a single hue will dominate, and this day will be distinct,
and who knows? perhaps even distinctive enough to be
memorialized.

minute to minute is the ever changing interplay; unlike a
human, this rapidity maturation is unafraid to experiment
with new combinations but-based on prior recalled self-
examination; something on the water, a small boat low and
close flat to the surficial; a skiff, a rowboat with no oars,
drifting, languishing on the fishing spot, unmoving unhurried
humans aboard, thinking, this is the good way to start living

last comment; tiny hinting shades of violet, pink and orange
exist, hard to discern so well blended are they with the norm
of broader blue and vanilla white and then all readily apparent!
this is the new days message, we are what we appear to be,
one earth, one sky, indivisible but born from a wondrous palette;
and so yet another first poem of the day is created, a verbal
prélude, étude, unique but a product of its many ancestral
predecessors, just like, we the people.

Add Another.*

You ******* kidding me?
Add another?
Computer, you challenging me?
I can go all night if I have too,
you don't got the bytes to eat me!

Add another my ***.

You say I got 170,400 words.
****, you don't got the memory
to hold what I already forgot.

go to sleep and maybe in the morning,
I'll teach you a new word or two,
give you a dose of lachrymose!

We Are So Lightly Here

“So come, my friends, be not afraid, we are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made, in love we disappear
Though all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door
There’s no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for”
Leonard Cohen “Boogie Street”


                                                     <~>

my body, my eyes, my entirety, tattooed, with a city map,
here, at this exact place, our eyes glanced, our eyes closed,
who among us does not possess such a living guide,
memories presented in a 3-D versions, constantly edited.

placed your hand on my privacy, bid you enter, not a dare,
more an invitation to risk, become a true love of mine,
share exhilaration, desert valleys that pockmark unexpectedly,
changes us to we, regresses, you and me, post-survivalists cut.

2 gather, modify highs/lows, meet & peaking@peculiar tunes,
ever embraces residuals a sour film upon our lips, a puzzling,
what excites, pacifies, returns us street corner, X’d our map,
glances exchanged across an empty street, seeing each, not.

Six Minutes

Created: Jun 18, 2011  2:27 PM

Finished: Jun 18, 2011 2:33 PM
-----------------------------------------------

In every breeze, in every blade waving to me,
I hear the poetry that encompasses;
the insects brushed off my tattered t shirt
are eavesdroppers, premature sightseers,
over-the-shoulder peekers,
wanting a preview of what has just been scored
and written up and how big a part they have.

shadows upon the lawn,
dancing a modest but frothy salsa,
my heart lips speak peace unto us all
and my eyes see my dear ones, beside me,
in my envelope of words, you are embraced:

to all, I say now you are bound to me
by thoughts of tenderness no lawyers can sunder,
that needs no caveated blessing from
city clerk or prepaid spiritual diviner.

my forked branch twitchs where wells,
nay, reservoirs of all cherished natural vitals
are awaiting for us to drill and drink,
raw, direct to the bloodstream,
which when warmed by a warmth
I have no words to describe other than
it is given and stored within for consumption
when sad moments arrive,
and when called upon, restores and soothes
when hugs and words cannot,  
but for now, for knowing, for keeping.

you though distant, grow closer,
and I will ride through the nite
with two lanterns to announce our reunification
after so long, what could be better
than to fall upon your neck, and lips parted,
whisper words of thanksgiving

All my poems are copywrighted!

Not a typo,
I am the cobbler,
The leather restorer,
The itinerant knife sharpener,
The wandering spice seller who knocks on your door.

My wares, my tools are my factory,
Where I fix what ever sorrow
You bring me in need of repair.

I am a smithy,
I am a wright,
So I am legally obligated to inform you:

Every word I wright, ever stanza healed,
Every fix-it-upper restored,
Has been authored by you,
All I did was
Copy it wright down
And returned almost as good as before*
but modified, in poetic form.

So when I warn,
All my poems are copywrighted,
My meaning simple, words crystal,
They belong to us, but mostly to you
Who are reading these words,

and were created to be shared,
writ in disappearing ink to vanish
if you don't pass them on!

****!




8:30 am
June 9th, 2013
Steal This Poem, N.Y. 10000

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy


For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.


When Walt Whitman began conceiving his great volume of poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” in the 1850s, American democracy was in serious danger over the issue of slavery. As we celebrate National Poetry Month this month, the problems facing our democracy are different, but Whitman still has a great deal to teach us about democratic life, because he saw that we are perpetually in danger of succumbing to two antidemocratic forces. The first is hatred between Americans, which Whitman saw erupt into civil war in 1861.

The second danger lies in the hunger for kings. The European literature and culture that preceded Whitman and surrounded him when he wrote “Leaves of Grass” was largely what he called “feudal”: It revolved around the elect, the special, the few. Whitman understood human fascination with kings and aristocrats, and he sometimes tried to debunk it. But mostly he asked his readers to shift their interest away from feudalism to the beauties of democracy and the challenge of sustaining and expanding it.

Whitman offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.

This challenge is what inspired him to find his central poetic image for democracy, the grass: “A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.” Whitman says that he can’t and won’t offer a literal answer to the question. Instead he spins into an astonishing array of “guesses.” The grass “is the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven”; it’s “the handkerchief of the Lord…Bearing the owner’s name somewhere in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?”

To Whitman, “the grass is itself a child…the produced babe of the vegetation.” “Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,” he writes. “It may be that you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps / And here you are the mothers’ laps.” He offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.



But mainly Whitman’s grass signifies American equality: “I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,/And it means,/Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,/I give them the same, I receive them the same.” Whatever our race and origin, whatever our station in life, we’re all blades of grass. But by joining together we become part of a resplendent field of green, stretching gloriously on every side.

Whitman found a magnificent metaphor for democratic America and its people. Like snowflakes, no two grass blades are alike. Each one has its own being, a certain kind of chlorophyll-based individuality. Yet step back and you’ll see that the blades are all more like each other than not. Americans, too, are at least as much alike as we are different, and probably more so. America is where we can be ourselves and yet share deep kinship with our neighbors.

And who are our neighbors? Kanuck, Congressman, Tuckahoe, Cuff—Canadian, legislator, Virginia planter, Black man, all of the teeming blades of grass that we see around us. When you stand back far enough, you can’t see any of the individual blades, but look closer and there they are—vibrant and unique, no two alike. We say “e pluribus unum,” from many one. But who could have envisioned what that would look like and how it would feel before Whitman came along?


MORE IN IDEAS


The grass is Whitman’s answer to the problem that bedeviled his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson: how to resolve the tension between the individual and the group. Emerson is sometimes hopeful that the two can cohere. When you speak your deep and true thoughts, no matter how controversial, he believed that in time the mass of men and women will come around to you. Each will say, ‘this is my music, this is myself,” Emerson says in “The American Scholar.” But mostly he is skeptical, believing that society is almost inevitably the enemy of genius and individuality.

Whitman’s image of the grass suggests that the one and the many can merge, and that discovery allows him to imagine a world without significant hierarchy. Can any one blade of grass be all that much more important than any other? When you make the grass the national flag, as it were, you get to love and appreciate all the people who surround you. You become part of a community of equals. You can feel at home.

We can look at those we pass and say not ‘That is another’ but ‘That too is me. That too I am.’

In “Leaves of Grass,” soon after he offers his master metaphor Whitman rises up to view American democracy from overhead. The poem’s famous catalogues of people doing what they do every day are quite simple: “On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;/ The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,/The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle,/The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose change.”

This is your family, these are your sisters and brothers, Whitman effectively says. In general, we walk the streets with a sense of isolation. But if we can move away from our addictions to hierarchy and exclusive individuality, and embrace Whitman’s trope of the grass, our experience of day-to-day life can be different. We can look at those we pass and say not “That is another” but “That too is me. That too I am.” Or so Whitman hopes.

Of course, the benefits that Whitman promises do not come for free, or simply by reading his poem. We’ve got to meet his vision halfway, by being amiable, friendly, humane and nonhierarchical. This repudiation of hierarchy is not so easy; it’s not clear that even Whitman himself pulls it off. Isn’t he trying to be a great poet, the first truly American bard? But his effort matters. He knew that democracy is always vulnerable, that the best hope for human happiness could disappear from the earth. But Whitman would not let that happen without a fight.

—Mr. Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his new book “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy,” published this week by Harvard University Press.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 17, 2021, print edition as 'What Whitman Knew About Democracy.'

In the year 2016,
Yom Kippur was celebrated on Oct. 12th.
Leonard Cohen passed away on November 7th.


~~~

faint knocking heard at the heavenly door of the Tower of Song

the ministering angels, hearing a rhythmic,
lyrical rapping, sigh, thinking the atonement day,
the holiday/holy days, are supposedly over,
the human balancing act, the rush to judgement period,
all tallies totaled, the busy sale season for souls,
at last completed, each fate inscribed & sealed,
in the book of life^

but, always one,
the itinerant straggler, the last reluctant sinner,
a judgment resister, flaunting an almost expired coupon,
trumpeting demands for a recount, waving it,
claiming it, the bearer, entitled to a
mercy discount and an extra 30 days

"who shall we say is calling?"

the Angels are stunned to hear the responsa,
a familiar raspy, growling, almost indescribable,
yet, stammeringly beautiful voice enchanting,
equally asking and answering, (how both?)
with a strident humility, "a man in search of answers"

this voice, instantaneous recognizable,
the asking superfluous,
all beating wings now, all in vast excitement,
this psalmist, long awaited, one of His best,
a chosen one, a courtly singer in the Temple of his people,
blessed with the curse of seeing and believing,
the comprehension of beauty of the human superior interior,
never being quiet or quite satisfied,
in capturing, its multifarious variations,
in every language spoken

this is the man who took ten years
to compose just
one song,
one poem,
one word,
Hallelujah,
whose faith was strong,
but still needed proofs,
whose every breath of oxygen inhalation,
brought more questions,
every exhalation, only releasing partial answers,
and yet, still, yes, yes! finding hidden verses inside

a simple, everlasting
hallelujah

the hubbub subsides,
the man sings~speaks:
how came I here,
was I one, who by fire?
that fire afeared, that my finality
was spirit consumed?

in one voice, answers the angelic choir,
in one voice, the swaying back-up singers answer,
not by fire, not by water, not by stoning
or even drowning,
in tea that came from all the way from China

when sing we Angels,
the Judgement Day poem,
we alone, on high and above,
we, keepers of the books
and records of everyone,
are permitted this special query:

Who by Sufficiency?

you, the sidekick of the creator,
special commissioned by him, anointed to live a life of research,
record in word and song the mysteries of musical gene strings,
that intertwine the skin cells of man and woman,
man and his fellow us-human,
your soul commandeered, ordered, to delve deeper,
into the consolable chasm tween divine and mortals,
all those who are so poorly but perfectly constructed
in his image

you, who has earned his place, his best rest,
his works adjudged sufficient,
you, who best answered
this judging,
this calling out,
this calling in
incantation

Who by Sufficiency?

now forward on, write only of answers,
wade in the troubled waters no more,
no more passports, or borders to cross,
no more measuring the days,
the last road trip finale
finished & feted,
fate meted

no more changing thy name, changeling priest,^^
sing songs of solution, salvation,
for the questioning hours of confusion,
the urgency of revolution,
no longer need a hallelujah resolution,
you have been judged sufficient...
it is his will


                                                    | | |
Who By Fire                             Who By Fire, Who By Water:^
(lyrics by Leonard Cohen)     (A Yom Kippur Hebrew Prayer)

who by fire                             How many shall die and      

who by water,                                how many shall born,
Who in the sunshine,                 Who shall live      
who in the night time,                   who shall die,                      
Who by high                                Who at the measure of days,
who by common trial,                    and who before,
Who in your merry                            
                                                          Who by fire
month of May,                                 and who by water
Who by very                                 Who by sword,
slow decay,                                       and who by wild beasts,
And who shall I                      Who by hunger,
say is calling?                              and who by thirst,

And who in her,                           Who by earthquake
lonely slip,                                         and who by plague
who by barbiturate,                      Who by strangling,
Who in these                                    and who by stoning
realms of love,                               Who shall have rest,

who by,                                             and who shall go wandering,
something blunt,                            Who will be tranquil,
And who by avalanche,                  and who shall be harassed,
who by powder,                            Who shall be at ease,
Who for his greed,                           and who shall be afflicted,
who for his hunger,                      Who shall become rich,
And who shall I,                             and who shall become poor,
say is calling?                                Who will be raised high,
                                                         ­     and who will be brought low
And who by brave assent,                  
who by accident,
Who in solitude,
who in this mirror,
Who by,
his lady's command,
who by his own hand,
Who in mortal chains,
who in power,
And who shall I,
say is calling?




^From the liturgy of Rosh Hasanah, the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the  Day of Atonement, there is this truly stunning prayer (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unetanneh_Tokef) in the Jewish liturgy. The Book of Life contents the fate of every sinner. From the first day of the new year, until ten days later, on Yom Kippur, depending on whether the sinner repents or not, his fate is sealed.

(For Sia Jane)

once he wrote:

"Writing is more important than any of the individual senses that feed this (writing) addiction. Without sound, sight, touch, smell and taste, I can (still) live quite well."

and she loved this,
for well she lived this ideation

so textual emendation
for this girl,
one of god's human poems

irony kick in the head,
truth driven home by body of late,
crossed and staked,
weeks pass, I cannot taste or smell,
eyesight distorted by streaming eyes, no matter,
sight, sees only a decrepit man lousy
repeating repetitiously older spasms of writing,
all this time he is one
who touches nothing lest he infect the world,
with something other than joy...

all thanks to some insidious bacterial invaders
and one or two Lifetime Movie Channel dramas
playing out in full color in his own sad reality

so let me amend my prior write,
for this time, I make no overly boastful claims,
for I could pen nary a verse all these hours,
that was deserved of your affection...

write I could with any one of the five,
if four were repleted, deleted, none elited,
but one is
this man's de minimus

need at least one to function,
to master the bronco impulse to create...
don't matter which one,
which orifice writes the code,
all sensory inputs end up residing
in your heart and soul

but gotta have at least one in order to
express my love for love...

and if I can't do that,
then experience shows,
no way can the being supersede its
thrumming, hum drumming, existence,
motoring along highways circularized
of watching old tv shows

if I lose my hands I will write with
elbows, nose or toes...

my tongue cut, my mind will love more,
its recollection of your taste, delicious twice over

blinded and bereft, my mind's eye
will do double shifts, get paid overtime,
for reliving connecting your birthmarks

my jesting muted, my seers closed,
my nostrils sealed, even terminated,
dare you think, that I cannot hear or
smell my thoughts,
of the pleasure of a world in which
loves existence demands we heal the sick at heart,
so we can
extend love to ourselves and others
beyond the mere limitations
of our corporeal senses....

one, but one, all I need,
any one,  in order to
sense who I am,
to love, and be loved,
therefore,
to write

cracks me up
this erroneous error message,
looks at me and states authoritatively
nuh-uh, buddy, “it ain’t you you babe,
it ain’t you we looking for babe”

makes me crazy crying
copiously betw snorting fits of
eloquent derision

why oh why

is it daily savings time prematurely
(immaturely) aging me,
be it advancing decrepitude
or just the AI’s sullen attitude?

be it a secret messaging that my
mother’s slow descent into
senility, loss of speech is now me-
visible to the all seeing eyes on
a dollar bill, & or the iPhone genie?

this erroneous messaging appears
with an irregularity regular, just
enough to make me think that

this
       is
           not
                  accidental

come to nyC,
come me to see,
need an independent  
judgement  summary
please
before the winter pale overcomes my
poetic resistance and they park me
in the backyard, where I can sit yet,
studying for multiple hours
the river-fed bay on its way
to the vastness of the Atlantic
Ocean, where the water will combine.
all cells of each of our selected
those chosen body’s of water,
bodies now interring,
while populating
intermingling
taking stingling diatoms from
of each, they will kiss, greet, each other,
with the clarity of recognition that our
poetry has already bonded us in ways that are irrefutable, been coming long time
geological formations new and old,
still forces unstoppable foreseeing
every, every ever

613 poems in my inbox.
Will read them all,
Each and every, will be
Unwrapped and refolded.

When I am done,
there will lovely be
613 more.

God needed six days to create the world.

For the love of poetry,
I will do it in all in one,
For I owe it to you,
For trusting me with thoughts most
Sabbath Sacred...

August 30th 2013

My life:**

Kernels of truths,
Amidst the make-believe

Just one.

No need to keep you in suspense,
Because if you are a poetic soul,
A member of the troupe,
You live in suspense,
Wonderment and awe,
Never knowing when from
Your eyes to your mind to your fingers
You birth verse,
You already knew this...

This then is the point,
The point of no return and
Forever forward,
Poet home-grown,
Soul possession,
Slave to words,
The alphabet, your oxygen molecules,
Never knowing the exact moment
A poet was god-sparked within your every pore...

Take your points and pins,
Put them aside for another kind of contest...

Just let the confused children,
Love sick, suicidal, overjoyed, broken hearted,
Sad old men, worried about unknowns
Whose hot breath is flush upon their neck,
All those, all we,
Pained and joyous,
Who inhabit this space, these servers
Write write write write
To our hearts content or discontent...

Each one a hero to me,
I award them one point for living life,
The only point they will ever need,
A badge of verbal courage,
Thru the embrace of their
Works of words,
They are all the everyday heroes of
Poetry.

what need we know,
what laws to posit,
mission clear
but still us,
we remain a wee unclarified,
the theoretical, lacking,

so today,
all scientists, all visionaries,
all literature professors,
critics and ******,
today, only positing,
non-negating,
in order to
establish the tenets of
The General Theory
of Poetary Genius

once proofed and proved,
the theory capable,
discerned and predictable,
the foretold course
motion foretold of a
planetary body,
a special singular star,
a peculiar one,
plot not its course,
but it's discourse,
the emanating waves
of words arriving, self translating
in any and all languages,
but for all,
in their native tongue

The first element,
chiefest law of them all
is to pose the problem differently,
so that answers come from
a planetary poetic perspective radical,
enabling any old genius to see it
as no one has seen it before, till now

We mortal Joes,
ponderous weigh,
inexplicable unsolvable ordinary,
what is love?

The Poet Genius declares:
it knowable, it's real,
its solution a matter of a matter,
among two planes it coexists,
though in three dimensions...
what is love co-exists
in space and time at the
subatomic level
and moreover,
who gives a ****?

The second element,

(To be continued)

If you knock on our door
While me and my woman are making love,
Won't invite you in,
Even tho that delicious sin,
Crosses my mind frequently.

But this poem is my way of thanking you,
For a vision that makes life just a little
Spicier.

Do I fee guilty? Don't be silly
Desire is a compliment,
It forms deep deep, cored within
The prehistoric part of each of us.

But when it surfaces on the shallow pools
Of our eyes, it feels shallow, only because it's
Tired from its journey from the wellsprings.

But every pool has a distinct outlines,
Boundaries that cannot be exceeded.

My mind is not a pool.

Now, I am sated, but still hunger.

The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.

The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.

To write down any old notion,
A la de da rhyme of late and fate,
To write to garner points and pins of glory,
Is just, well, ****** awful....
And
Mocks us all who ache
To write but a single line,
That uplifts the heart,
Eases pain, gives delight to strangers,
And makes you laugh out loud
With shivery pleasure,
That usurps a whole day and night,
That is a poets true measure.

Mastery of the poetic,
Measured not in quantity,
But in tears of satisfaction
When others love the taste
Of newly born stanzas
Upon their lips,
couplets born and transcribed
In the wee hours of the morn.

~for betterdays, and all Aussies~


the fires massifs all around, the smokes surrounds,
the house invaded with closed-out-of-college students,
mother and father who are similarly workless, a fire bounty,
all this a treat to an nine year old (no school) boy and his dog

newly self-appointed ringleader, the little boy,
in his fire heaven, with a gang to command, to entertain,
some adults, silly college students, who don’t know “no,”
when he says this is the game we are playing next

this vignette, is not a Manhattan variety^
but an insight story heard, unwitnessed, but of
those who tell the tale, unwittingly, of finding small joys
amidst sky-full clouds, all grayed bunting of burning stink

few wiser than my old, tired and smokey clouded eyes,
though, one yet detects those who are truly not lost,
those who are found, and those who will find them all,
and lead them to the safest places inside themselves

and my heart and brain, at last in unison,
forgives the restless adults who with grownup worries,
yet can! just barely detect those mini joy-rivulets among the whiffs
of destruction and bravery, losses and new hands extended

So I ask, Mum, what game shall we play next?

Perhaps, Noah’s Ark?

at 3:37Am,
you ask,
I endeavor,
an answer
for you

an answer,
that is
intended
to last
a millennium

a millennium

a thousand years,
a thousand seconds,
a thousandth thousandth of
one second

the answer is firmament
the answer is permanent

the answer is plain
thy answer is fancy

You are my best poem
You are encased with in me

You are a piece of me

So, so selfishly
no endeavor needed,
but fervor'd
do I reply

Your being well is not
a sufficient condition
but a necessary one
for my own self-being

For whom the bell tolls,
For whom do I write?

I write for thee,
and in the words
are assured

the mutuality,
the betterment of us,
our private society

dare not deny me this!

for if denied,
I am
condemned

for a millennium

my best poems came:

in months, days of desperation,
hours, moments of elation, it was the
always imbalance that just was, that
was/when the karma-was in-balance

my best poems always, always,
came accompanied by tears, many,
before, during, certainly after, even
twice, when a later returning stumble,
brought the sentries to open old gates

never, at any time, was a man with many
friends, reasons plenty, reasons mine,
it was an imbalance that just was, that
of the karma-when-in-balance, except,
the creative offsprings became children,
painful to raise, coming to visit occasionally

hear no quiet trumpet moaning, nor a violin
shed the human cries that only a man-made
instrument can be forgiven for being better at
than their own creators.  Much by choice, or
criminal laziness, all tinged by a fear so subtle,
don’t think anyone knew it existed, yet, always
humming “see the man running against the wind”

there you have it. no summing up necessitated,
because how the numbers add up, the total is
just the total, and know, you can finish this one,
the total is just a rose by any other name, it’s a
number that by definition was the of, the when,
“when an imbalanced karma-was-in-balance.”

Relax, relief, Steve, a short one, I do believe,
is coming down the turnpike, a simple
thought kernel that occurs me to each
morning, and then gets swept out to
the sea, via the sound’s currents them,
a reality check on weather.com, an internet
a daily compilation of mispredictions,
guesses and disconnectedness to our
reality… that we yet must read first,
always & nonetheless…

so, here it is, a golden buttered kernel,
that flys past my poem seeking radar
so fast that, it has escaped for now
nearly sixteen years…

this spring chicken, lies besides his woman,
who wakes traditionally secondarily, and
she sleep best then, shedding the dreams that
come unwonted, the review and recap of life’s
tumult…and finally gets the deep sleep that
recharges our cells with restorative justice…

as she sleeps, her face sheds, a morning miracle,
deep at ease, she breathes soft, clean and clear,
silently and a m a z i n g l y, every line on her
face
eases,
disappears,
and her skin, smooth, tight,
and I’m face flushed, by guilt for never telling
her, and that guilt that has not been yet here
recorded, and yet…

a reminder that a first poem of the day (a FPOTD),
like morning ***, starts a human off right, clears
forehead, like smooth writing, fresh oven baked,
blue lines on paper, begging, asking for fufillment
and satisfaction, that has no competition, for it is,
unique, that the first deep breath of a day, when
you take in all that surrounds, and observe close
the minor miracles, all an addition, that gives our
body, the reasons to wake up, with wet eyes, and
just…
a thin, curly, half grin, hall (half+all✅) whimsy smile…

natty
6:34am
Sat Jul 20

(and this one flies out the window, past the oak trees,
to the water and the wind grabs by its lettered bones
and is sending it out to Iowa, Travese City Michigan,
Missouri, Oregon and the great  Northwest Pacific
over the Pacific, to the Philippines, India,  New Zealand, Israel, Europe, the UK as in You Know) and back past Lady Liberty in the New York Harbor, along the Long Island shoreline, to a little house on a little island, where it recenters my body, asking why oh why, no way, natty, have you not offered me
my first coffee of the day, (MFCOTD)
yet, all this traveling, loving and thinking is

so very tiring… java, por favor señor!)

Your guitar is strumming.

But it is your face that is playing,
Make sounds that have meaning,
With words that just fast-pour,
Cannot be restrained,
Coming from a place,
Where the sun aches heartily to illuminate,
Where the moon, in desperation,
Even sends the light of day,
Comrades in attendance,
Ladies-in-Waiting,
Your needs attending,
Waiting to for you to exclaim,
I am easy, I am blessed, my name today is
Hallelujah.

Every part of your body sends impulses
And the guitar is lifted,
And a new day, new stories,
Dylan-like are being born,
You are the mother,
The single parent,
Raise them well.

One year and one day ago, the Super Moon filled the night and I wrote:*

If you were beside me,
You would believe the unbelievable,
The Super Moon fills our bedroom cup with whiteness,
Light, a sky-delivered invitation to walk on the water
Upon a path illuminated that commences at the dock

If you were bestride me,
You would feel the majesty of
Our union in a new light, bathed in
Sweat and glory of nature's triumphant
Marking our bed and home, its nestled place in nature

Alas! Your potpourri of sleep noises,
The purring, the little yells, dream induced,
Signals that tho beside me, you are somewhere else.
The Super Moon, disappointed, has marked your card,
Marked it absent, but marked me, your lover~brother in arms,
Tasked, incised, upon my body, your homework assignment!

Moon:
Gaze upon his eyes when you rise,
Touched and filled with the history of your lover's
Encounter with the Man in the Moon this evening,
Study it well, memorize, these words, I have
Inscribed thereupon for you to read

When you next intimate, I will be there,
Whether in these words or his eyes,
No need to estimate my light,
It's safe, stored, so that the dawn's plight,
Vain attempts to compete the daylight,
All will fail,
For I am, you are,
the moonlight unhid, in his eyes


3:00am
June 23rd, 2013