She was a beacon my soul was attuned to before I ever knew what a soul was.

She met me like a lioness circling its meal

She crashed over my life and my heart like a ship forced onto rocks by the storm

We mingled intertwined like plants from the same root marking ourselves permanently for eachother

She took a turn dined on dysfunction and tragedy in seven course form never looking up to see the sun

She tossed my soul my love out her window undone used up

She fooled me as many before used for only a time until she could wade back into the comfort of her own past dysfunction like warm water to her mind it was home

Great big empty space.
Great loss leads a teary muse.
Grateful at the end.

what is the what, this simplicity, the great difference?


                                                ­  ~~<>~~
he reads certain words,^ then

the poet uncovered, stumbles upon, a rhythmic bearing, provoked,
his own bearing now  lost in contemplation, exits the cottage, wandering on the always wet grass, observed by animal menagerie,
espy him watchfully, a human directionless wanderer wondering, asking himself the meaning of it all, knowing answers reserved not him

we celebrate subtlety, process the minutiae of extracting an exactitude of  the precious précis of each momentary why, only when he honest confesses his ineptitude, can he truly begin to pluck words from the airy atmosphere to assemble them in format that mines the great difference in everything, the differential veins

the creatures, unshy, wish to contribute, suggesting editions, subtractions, this turn, this twist, this nuance, always clarifying, valuing utility beauteous, making the meaning perfectly clear in ways that make you gasp at words, their powerful, to define, then refine, then just plain be, be fine, finding, exploiting, drawing freehand the lines of distinction exacting
this great differences
                                                  ~­~<>~~
^
“and next to nothing is everything, all worth knowing,
you, write my poetry, as I write of you with breathless
ease and comfort, for the thoughts of all men in all
ages and lands, are original to where our eyes espy
each other, where our lips kiss to cross, cross to kiss,
what is the what, this simplicity, the great differences?”

I will write about love
When I find one
That's worth losing heaven for.

I will open my mind to the breeze of love
I will open my tender arms for its blissful embrace
When I can see
man's mind construction etched on his face.

I will open the door of my soul
To the sea of love to flood my threshold,
I will open the door of my soul
to its wave that brings love's crest,
Only; when the sky lacks silver lining.

I will admonish my children to love blindly
I will tell them the caressing tale of love
I will sing to their innocent ears green serenade
I shall scratch the gall from its flesh
When love truly govern the world
The greedy-ill world.

this title has begrudgingly waited for some loving kindness, fulfillment-needy, since October of Two Thousand and Seventeen

which is not quite as long as the decades I have been waiting to
accumulate the words to provide us both, an inspired solution

my days are numbered
in decades, decals, varying lengths of hair,
belts with notches that ain’t reachable,
suits various, both too big and too small to fit,
the who who used to own them,
begrudgingly, writes this

city born and bred, with the pale skin needed to prove my urbanity, each day came unto me begrudgingly,
even, especially, the good ones

when I was ten and rode my bike from freedom to mystery,
and back again in a city that was ok, if you stayed out of its way
and knew the city’s vocabulary and its erogenous zones

when nothing come easy, when even the easy, when it comes, comes begrudgingly

when you think of love, and the next immediate thought is:
how great the cost - recalling too well,
the pain of childbirth and child rearing
and the staining, paining fluid is in perm-attendence,
that doesn’t ever fully departs and
is not never entirely stain-stick-removable,
and the children come ‘n go according to their schedule,
someone else’s vast eternal plan

life in the same apartment  
where my parents died,
listening to the stories of joined lives,
listen to the sisters telling them
over and over to a stream of visitors
earned from and of a 98 year life,
given up willing but, begrudgingly as well.

the story-telling skill because of them,
my mist-matched parents who did ok
and their very best,
gifted us hyperbole innate genetic
and all of us now registered
tall tale tellers;

some write for a living,
some live to write,
some write to make themselves clearer,
after honestly confronting their subway reflection  

words acquired bot ‘n sold,
they too are stains unerasable,
very always handy,
the one thing we shared, word skill,
was never at loss, words never held a grudge
no matter how long they waited to serve

this fact, begrudgingly confess;
all my-word skill was freely inherited...
and I hope it satisfied the title
and you, those that waited patiently but,
begrudgingly

The great puts itself last not first,
For it carries the weak, that all succeed.
And if strong falls where weak walks,
Surely the strong is less than weak.
It's no greatness to put yourself first,
For even the worm cares for itself.
The brave may die for one it loves,
But only Love dies for its enemies.

at the first encounter, i thought, that he stole my mother’s tablecloth,
and called it Great while she turned the flour into bread,

after, i thought, what if they were lovers, and shared the same tablecloth
while my father was sweating in his fields, and she was sipping wine from her grapes
when he wrote songs of despair, as they could not have each other,

i shake away my childish thoughts and doubt even more:
- what if they were traders,

trading the tigers, the bread,
the tyrants, the grim teeth,
the wine fields and hard eyes,
the lamb, the onions,
the hunger and the thirst,
the hours of eating the strawberries
and the blossoms on the great tablecloth.

oh, i am childish,
jealous,
curious, and can not stop the thought of stolen tablecloths:
- what if when sad and lonely he put a spell on my mother?
and used her as a tablecloth for those who never loved, or cried,
and those who never turned the flour into bread.