All,, everything stretches, even paradise, love affairs,
the poetic intervals lengthen-but but not the interstices,
they do not require filling but the occasional hug, hair~
tousling, the unexpected hand holding to refresh the bonds
that sag with ages, worn to forlorn, by so much to remember…

I promise myself to keep this short, for the spaces themselves,
sag longer, wider, and need not words overbearing, but the
occasional tightening of the screws of connection, the markers
of a precise precious pulling that gravity may wear but never
ever break…

olp

the crying want of you (first of the everlasting)

so many ways this loving emotion manifests,
for each, a salutation, unique, some sleek,
some solutions jagged, but when I cry out for the
inexplicable but perfectly understood want of you

an all encompassing recipe,
a gasp, a shriek, a celebration, a loss illimitable deepening,
a need perceived with a crucial cruelty, inexhaustible
noise barely human, but quintessentially exactly that

you who have needy for fearsomely loved, and been
fearsomely loved with equal measuring cups which
have no delimiting notion of linear boundaries of cup and quart,
only precise calculations of defined unlimited overflowing

even silence totality of crying out loudly screams of desperation,
noiseless, crept for the unadulterated, unadjusted purity of want,
a state well dreamt, but so rarely hail fellow well met, the
startling exertion of meeting yourself in another over the borderline

forgive the paucity of my word~children in expressing what
was designed and created to be inexhaustibly rare,
the crying want of you, the missing final jigsaw puzzle piece
of want and being wanted, to touch the immortal soul, the first of the

everlasting, united, unending and unendurable undefined want



8:10am 2-20-2020

from within the confessional

Thanatosis
(noun)

pretending to be dead

a state that in some respects resembles shock, is characterized by cessation of all voluntary activity and usually by assumption of a posture suggestive of death, and occurs in various insects (as beetles) when disturbed
<>
thus a new word
joins the tongue,
a new bud solely
to express the state of two
when love has died,
and the energizer doesn’t
want to bandage~rip,
make entities separate,
face the uncertainty
of no mercy

so two humans
play dead
but inside
there is a long loud
agonizing screaming
******* your fading courage,
well hid but going to
the land of the unheard,

and the state of
Thanatosis
is the Grecian Isle
where you will be
buried
though
you but
*half~ dead

went to the doc for
my birthday suit check up,
usual barrage of tests,
withdrew 8 vials of blood red, and
pronounced me to be
officially
in his win column,
all good ‘cept for my

general deterioration
that is an unscheduled, indeterminate
process of time's steady determination,
for which there are tests
but no cure,
so he says,
don’t bother

after the routine is completed,
he asks with a twinkle,
for he knows this man
too X two
well,
“son, what really ails ya?”

Doc -
“don’t know whatI I am made for”

have not tasted the
excitations
of
falling in love in so long,
I’m purposeless

it’s the falling
that is
the inttiation intricate
that makes my
HR skyrocket to
130, even 150,
where the stress
is an exertion that
benefits and strengthens
heart muscles?

at a higher level
of stress
for intense but brief,
a necessity for long term
heart health

the diagnosis was simplified,
dear boy
( he is younger than me)
you have
ED

nope doc not the issue in hand,
he smiled at my savvy,

it is of
emotional disability
that I speak of

your life devoted
to loving the loving process,

This is your red engine
that can and could,
and would still,
but at your stature and age,
it is not as easy as
back in the day
when you smiled at the pretty girls,
and they un hesitatingly,
smiled back,
and you were on the road to
the inflation of infatuation,
highs and lows of an
incumbent incurable
you~humanist,
a valuation expert
of the human connection

there isn’t a cure
but to try
and fail fairly
repeatedly,

never give in,
never give up,

for the paths to
where you seek,
everywhere,
and I await happily
you next report
why you
stand before me,
with heart palpitations
for the very best
of reasons,
for my human friend,

**that is what you are made for!”

Too much sanity may be madness…


“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams this may be madness. Too - much sanity may be madness and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"

DON QUIXOTE by MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA

<

who among us does not wonder daily,
admit it!
am I mad, where does this malady madness lie within me?

wandering along the raggedy meandering linear ledge,
a tempting rock strewn divide of a tempestuous world unbidden,
a me-version struggling to keep a kind sanity
that is ugly, undesirable, undeserving and just “und”

I drown;
suffocated by a realized spring rainfall showering,
there is no thing as sanity,
we are all mad,
gone from, on the way to,
the epicenter
of where north meets south,
east greets west,
all differences are sublimated
the glint in our eyes confesses:

mutually cognizant
there is no division
not to be mad
is in-sane…

~you again?  a love poem indeed!

she stood by me even when
most of my disasters
were of mine own creative actions,
but in the crises that always
unexpectedly
rose up dramatically
when driving off road,
where there were
no guardrail guarantees

so when the doc says
“sir, needed surgery right away,”
She unashamedly inquires
“ok, what about tomorrow”
making us all chuckle,
and doc a smile/responder,
“how about 6:00am the day after?”
and you accept (me observing)
with
a stern smile of pretending concession

so when recovery consists of
three ++ walks a day through
the corridors of the Unit
which morphed from an endless huge
to a
small prison courtyard,
where in a day everyone,
patients doctors and
rotating shifts of nurses
are greeted by me,
idiot extrovert,
with an intitial
giant hello and a wink,
which after first three
“shuffles around the block”
has become a
saluting exultation,
a look of surprise
with a
“You Again!”

that gets the inevitable
twinkle from everyone

somehow
this greeting came home with us
and thereafter when,
she stirred awake
to see me shuffling in with
coffee and a quarter cup
of crunchy Kashi & banana
mixed in with Yoga~urt,
(a/k/a nana & banana smoothie)
and a too loud
“You Again!”
which infallible makes
an AM grumpy disappear
and
soon becomes
a time honored
ritual

now that I’ve honored the oath
which was promised jokingly
by me to She,
that I be the last to depart,
cause doing it twice,
was an unbearable job,
and long enough gone
and I am back in my
own private recovery
honeyed (yellow) painted
single room,
The Enpty Pillow
with imaginary smiley face,
hears a mourning yellowing phrase
once-a-day,
a vitamin supplement necessary

and when the grandchildren
make
their obligatory dragged along
monthly visitation they be greeted
by old friends
a firm hug and an
emboldened
“You Again”
and their smile says
“you’re embarrassing us”
+++ childlike acceptance

and the rivulets ridiculousness

that accompany this scripting,
+ any accidental overhearing,
or get even getting a read,

is fresh brought out of
tears storage
and each teary one with
a Hey!
meant to be cheery
greet & repeat:

😉us again!😉

she stood by me even when
most of my disasters
were of mine own creative actions,
but in the crises that always
unexpectedly
rose up dramatically
when driving off road,
where there were
no guardrail guarantees

so when the doc says
“sir, needed surgery right away,”
She unashamedly inquires
“ok, what about tomorrow”
making us all chuckle,
and doc a smile/responder,
“how about 6:00am the day after?”
and you accept (me observing)
with
a stern smile of pretending concession

so when recovery consists of
three ++ walks a day through
the corridors of the Unit
which morphed from an endless huge
to a
small prison courtyard,
where in a day everyone,
patients doctors and
rotating shifts of nurses
are greeted by me,
idiot extrovert,
with an intitial
giant hello and a wink,
which after first three
“shuffles around the block”
has become a
saluting exultation,
a look of surprise
with a
“You Again!”

that gets the inevitable
twinkle from everyone

somehow
this greeting came home with us
and thereafter when,
she stirred awake
to see me shuffling in with
coffee and a quarter cup
of crunchy Kashi & banana
mixed in with Yoga~urt,
(a/k/a nana & banana smoothie)
and a too loud
“You Again!”
which infallible makes
an AM grumpy disappear
and
soon becomes
a time honored
ritual

now that I’ve honored the oath
which was promised jokingly
by me to She,
that I be the last to depart,
cause doing it twice,
was an unbearable job,
and long enough gone
and I am back in my
own private recovery
honeyed (yellow) painted
single room,
The Enpty Pillow
with imaginary smiley face,
hears a mourning yellowing phrase
once-a-day,
a vitamin supplement necessary

and when the grandchildren
make
their obligatory dragged along
monthly visitation they be greeted
by old friends
a firm hug and an
emboldened
“You Again”
and their smile says
“you’re embarrassing us”
+++ childlike acceptance

and the rivulets ridiculousness

that accompany this scripting,
+ any accidental overhearing,
or get even getting a read,

is fresh brought out of
tears storage
and each teary one with
a Hey!
meant to be cheery
greet & repeat:

😉us again!😉

though deep he sleeps sometimes,
combining this exhaustive restorative
of old age, that alternates with a restlessness
rest of old age ~ the brain's nightly self-cleansing,
both necessities absolute

so he be unsurprised, by a parallel process,
occurring beside him, as woman rumbles, mumbles,
all the while reenacting the things we dare not acknowledge
in the waking  hours, much too painful, much to fearfully real unreal,
but, best unrealized

she bolts upright, looks around, attempting to cross back,
looking, investigating, ascertaining time and place, localizing
her orientation, while assessing external+imagined dreamt threats,
till satisfied sufficient that whatever dreamt, realized or dreamisized,
before, going prone once-more

the watch man observes, the critical threat level, doesn't
approach the red line, not requiring hands-on interventions,
and relieved, that she has expunged and expelled the mind's many
molecules of memories, true or false, real or revisionary, making clean
white tissued neuron+cell for the morrow

and thus he reminds himself, that he be watch man, observing, uninterfering, is too, is also, a definitive infinite
only love poetry