yes, in full possessive of all the typical, ****** wearing-out diminishments and diminutions

so no surprises, that I’m squinting to see my own personal
street signs two blocks ahead, in case a dreaded left turn be
required

I hear eventually what your thinking, by the second, third rep, I am fully informed of your opinion and am left wondering why people blather rather than win some, with  
a winsome smile

but it  catches me unaware that my voice, (its tones, notions,and colorations) is softer, though not purposed or so intentioned,this is puzzling, so wrestle for the whys, as is my wont, for explicating my existence be my full time employment and time is  overly plentiful and it’s steady evaporation is not the diet I am needing or even
embracing

perhaps, (always a multi-perhaps), mine aging grants an edge-softening, the brain regulates away the shouting urgency of what seemed important, demandy &needy for immediate attention, has a natural implant subtly started subtracting and governs my always was voluble but less-than-valuable insistence to be heard above the raucous din of the world~is~ending~
scarecrows

perhaps, it is something simple physic, but I deny that
escapism excuse, for yet, my bellyful laughter still loudest I know especially, at the ironical, comical of my mirror image rightly making fun of my vanity and even yet today, on a busy city street my senior YO! still summons taxis  to appear from
blocks away

perhaps, he flatters himself, his soon to be required stick will be so big, the need to speak softly intuitively concomitant, but that’s a lie as  he has no stick as of yet, ‘cept for the one he himself, he hisself, penetrated & perpetrated up his own ****

perhaps, just the intuitive or learned wisdom to think slower, talk lower, excise the waste of haste that plagues  the modern life, all that quiet, buttery yet uncool logic persuasion triumphs over the no-reasoned- shouting-pretense to be everybody’s exercised right
to be stupid

so many possible perhaps that this  listing is making me too, 
list to one side; perhaps, the list is so lengthy it requires a conservation of energy, and sotto voce approach to the so-much-of-everything
yet unanswered,

but perhaps,
I  just have less to say and
it comes out of me,
softer and wiser…ha!

perhaps, time has worn me down into a…
**a modulated man

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…

so many women~poets have I loved

my occupation undisguised,
my intentions opaque~opposite,
my profession, lover

they,
most know, some suspect, a few clueless,
despite clear sky mountains of hints,
fastest currents of verbal affection

you scoff, think me old~poet~foolish,
know my loving has taken me to
every continent,
subway & metro, English gardens, Canadian planted fields,
my offers of shoulders, gentlest hands,
accepted and kindly re~fused, but still,
yet loved

grasping their words, parsing their phrases,
uncovering their remorse and spiced joys,
their gains, and losses, shared conjoined
the curl of a hair lock, the shape of the eye…

entrapment by poems of enticing whimsy delicious,
for it is in the well of their poems that my love,
born, thrived, drowned and died

something in the way they wrote, delicacies
plucked and ****** me in, the insight inside scraps
of life glories and sadness proffered,
that I loved,
broke me

oh fool, oh fool, how dare you cross the Styx
river~boundary of common sense, allowing hope to infect,
phantasies and poems inspired, conspired, died?

so
much more to tell, but nothing herein to be consummated,
I loved them with a purposed seriousness of imagination,
and only write this today after years of adventures,
because I no more…possess the powerful skills of
imagining loving

~for J Donovan Carrasco & Mike Marshall,
two far superior story tellers~

<>

now that I am in my seventh or eight decade,
(not particularly sure when you start counting)
memories bust out like the way flashbulbs POP on olden cameras,
a briefly hellish bright,, illuminating, yet annoying as all get up.

this peculiar flash came to me this morning, don’t know why,
deemed worthy of writing down for no particular reason.

when I was a child in one of those indistinguishable early grades,
my teacher informed my father at an annual parent teacher partee,
that I was “not particularly smart,” which angered him greatly,
for reasons he couldn’t then particularly express clearly, if at all.

He went home undecided whom he had to hide (1),
the teacher or me.

unsure, he was, which was the smarter course of action
(for my mother had passed and he without a consultant),
but informed me, who promptly hid (as in escaped)
in the only place suitable in our tiny house, behind the couch,
that was my mother’s pride an joy.

more tired than angry, he reflected while sitting on said couch
behind which I found refuge from all troubles,
while listening to my breathing/sniffling/panting,
he decided that
perhaps
the teacher was kerrect, and furthermore, I too,
was not to blame,
(told to me years later by his serious drinking bar buddies)

“given the stock he came from, it was less my fault,
and more his.”




3/23/23
nyc


(1j hide as give a hiding, a countable noun, if you give someone a hiding, you punish them by hitting them many times).

Compare and Contrast (the foliage of the heart)



<>

My work is loving the world.
 Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - 
equal seekers of sweetness.
 Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
 Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
 Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
 keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
 The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
 Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
 a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
 to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
 telling them all, over and over,
how it is
 that we live forever.

This is the first poem in Mary Oliver's collection Thirst, titled,
“The Messenger."

<>

Ruler of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass among all growing things - and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with the One to whom I belong.

May I express there everything in my heart, and may all the foliage of the field - all grasses, trees, and plants - awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things, which are made as one by their transcendent Source. May I then pour out the words of my heart before Your presence like water, O L-rd, and lift up my hands to You in worship, on my behalf, and that of my children!

-Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav

<>

too early on a Sunday morning for a trick or treat question,
still bed-bound @ Nine AM, browsing the internet state of the world,
it’s pre-my-walk on First Ave., in my Manhattan
concrete habitat pasture, where it’s gray and grayer
reveals of raggedy grass, certainly no sheep, and the only flowers
arrayed will be those with price tags fronting the bodegas
that are busy preparing breakfast for thousands of New Yorkers

trick question?

indeed! there is NO contrast, save the compare the kinetic similitude
of three kinfolk prayers, amidst frightfully unchanging headlines of
the dreary state of the world - weather report prototypical,
war, death & destruction, whiny celebrities and sports “heroes,”
editorials preaching, a vast quietude of no one’s mind changed,

but, always the but…

my work is loving the world, the grimy solitary blades of grass, true survivors, hosted & sprouting in dirt cracks miraculously,
letting the foliage of my heart blossoming in early morn warmth within my body’s extremities, clothed coverings of wintery wool,
confess my facts (“no longer young and still not half perfect?”),
filling the styrofoam cups of begging, wretched yearning refuse,
planting sprigs of mint green dollars in blanched froze hands,
wondering to myself, which one is the masked messiah?

these are the growing things in my fields, 70 years familiar,
the fruits and flowers of my life, are street crated>corners,
a panoply of vest corner garden-parks,
and the people!
people of every color and shade, what variety hath man wrought?

my eyes lack
not for anything, plenty the stimuli joyous within the astonishing spirit and life of all things blooming in hostile soil and you
may yet see the mark of
Abel joy upon my forehead, in my eyes, and see lips whispering this prayer~poem while being birthed, but in a word, a single word,
a pouring, best summarizing of a rebbe’s blessing
shouting out, anointing, appointing:

~Hallelujah~


Sun Feb 19 2023 9:15 AM
NYC