~for Paul & Art~

<>
melancholic, contemplative, introspective,
put on the songwriters of the Sixties,
looking for the comfort of old songs
that I once knew complete, from the days
when I believed, knew my own true self complete,

the tablet lifted, the spirits keening, a forth
will be coming, to soothe and purge, commence to dress my own wounds,
Whitman would be attentive, perhaps
a tad sympathetic, tho my wounds are
entirely self-inflicted

and alone, cry out for an assembly
of words, well chose, smoothly chaotic,
mirroring the lathe of my sharpened
disarrayed confusions, two old troubadours
come to comfort, with sweet harmonies,
and simple, but novel rhymes &
syncopated rhythms that all can
carry, sing along, all of us smiling

with ease, we cross the borders of each
other’s mind, paring snippets into
poetic clasps that keep us well attached,
filing away the roughened edges that
we all in common posses, and like
jigsaw pieces, we finish each other’s sentences, and we emote satisfaction
with smiles, laughs, sighs and sarcastic
groans, our words grasp, connect and

ease is in the air, there but for this grace,
we go together, you and I,
sailing away from
troubled waters

What can you do in a second?

I don't know, give me a minute.

Maybe an hour, just an hour to think about it.

Is that wrong to dedicate an hour to the thoughts of a second?

How many decisions made in seconds affect us for years?

Not hours, not days, but years.

To be clear, not hours, not days but years.

So go ahead take a second, take all the time you need.

I'll wait.

Time passes and takes me,
a secret from the sea it brings.
Spare me from this spirit
that corrodes veins and more,
leaping beneath the body.

What secret does it hide, then,
paralyzing the fevers,
raising fear within me?
What spares me from the soul,
keeping my breath sound?

Keep me sound and alive,
a fruit, crystal-clear,
that storms and thunder
cannot shake,
preserving its branches.

The secret whispers
in the waters of the dead sea,
calls my name and moves on,
reaches my feet in the tides
of the windiest waves.

Fingers beneath a thousand drops,
walked through gales,
dark and salty they are.
The moisture reveals
the beats of my heart.

Fever cuts me and fades,
in the time the voice comes,
in the depth of this sea,
with love that wraps me,
with a touch of warmth.

One dreams when the sky,
unashamed, cries,
with love and sadness,
wailing and breaking its voice,
never to return again.

The secret is a secret.
In the depth of the soul it lies,
in the depth of the mind it stays,
it lives what time keeps,
the voice of the sea and the desert.