for Joel Frye, who loves
“my sharing the marginalia of my life”

<>

the tiny smile in mine eyes’ white *****,
glistens,
my eyes inhabited, as is my
habit,
of your noticings of the what & wherefore
of the “it” of my writing…
the marginalia of life
as you adeptly label them…

touch you, my fingernails ,
sensing the ragged edging,
alternating with the smooth

all is revelational, all is relational,
the irreverent,
the minuscule,
the bytes of super-valued
ordinary
and the
extra-undervalued-ordinaries,
each and both,
elevated by you…
observing me observing you!

living on the margin,
doesn’t mean the unimportant,
the margin is a place,
where our mind’s neuralgia
embrace; where you-receive
my envisioning, feel my marginality’s,
my discrepancies, the odd, that oddly

that makes us even!

and
understanding my fingernails,
are what you’re touching,
my touch, your sensing.
identical, precisely provisioned,
and our invisible envisioning,
with nothing in between running interference,
is everything
finest and fine

the marginalia are,
the margin is the beginnings and
the endings of my myriad words,
the overstuffed SUV of my mind
that you help me to unload!








<§>

Thu Jan 5
5:08 pm
Manhattan

The Privilege

rare s/he who contemplates the
painting that can only seen from
frame, looking to outside/from within

expelling words, expecting sounds
felling forest trees, a-seizing, but
listening, waving… hearing silence

For we mistake who’s the audience,
we are the audience,
we are

The Privileged

the Privilege
accepting your acceptance,
taking your listening,
listening to your taking


That This! was Granted,
you to us,
The Privilege,
astounding!
for you gave us
art
to create


JAN 8 2023
1:25pm
thank you
for the privilege.

when does the poem end?


creation is never ending,
the earth is endlessly morphing

but you lean back and say
enough
not because the poem
is finished,
for it is never finished,
because an exhalation feels
satisfying, releasing

but the poem never ends,
nor does the need to

exhale

not with the final .


the next poem is

but a

continuation

of the previous poem;

a continuation

of you~poem,

inhaling

and

exhaling

& morphing.

Sat Jan 7
7:57am

Kids Just Want Crackerjack-Sized Prizes

petite and instantly pleasurable,
prized poems of brevity that tax
at zero, the lowest applicable rate,
offering granules of delight, espresso
sized, it’s a no to sips from a muging

charming and charmed,
rueful &  ironical, easy to
swallow in one felling swoop,
a  minds’ amuse-bouche,
think of the tree bytes saved!

knee bent in deference,
obeisance heady bent,
counting crows & words,
awed by the encapsulated,
single, subtle, singular idée fixe

here I stand and as I write,
plaint every size has it place,
even it’s own-won-one-time,
short needed too, but ya
canna feed my soul
with candied nuts,
abbreviated notions,
if you desire an ocean crossing*…


<§>

I,
perpetual struggling poet, working-man,
purposely seek the illusion of allusions,
craftily crafted, crafty reverential
carefully chosen references & foreign words,
très charmant,
les metaphoric metaphors plucked from a
million metaverses newly explored,
theiving from our predecessors,
who deserve the homage of
genuine followers, inspiration
from those who borrowed liberally
from their historical predecessors,
the go-befores and go-betweens and
laugh at my impoverished copycattting
copied compliments offered “gratis”

enough.

Thu Jan 5 2023
9:07am

Writing Lessons for a Better Life
Nov 29, 2016 by Morgan Housel
Writing is one of those things you’ll need to be decent at no matter what business you’re in. It’s also one of the hardest things to get decent at, since it’s 90% art, 10% illogical grammar rules. Novelist William Maughan said there are three rules to good writing. “Unfortunately no one knows what they are.”

But here are a few I’ve found helpful.

1. Make your point and get out of people’s way

Readers have no tolerance for rambling. Lose their attention for two seconds and they’re gone, clicked away to another page.

The best writers tend to use the fewest words possible. That doesn’t mean their writing is short, but every sentence is critical, every word necessary. Elmore Leonard, the novelist, summed this up when he advised writers to “leave out the parts readers tend to skip.”

It took me a while to realize that a reader who doesn’t finish what you wrote isn’t disrespecting your work. It’s a sign that you, the author, disrespected their time. When writing, I like to think of a reader over my shoulder constantly saying:

What’s your point?

Just tell me that point.

Then leave me alone.

Part of the reason this is hard is due to how writing is taught in school. Most writing assignments, from elementary to grad school, come with a minimum length requirement. Write about your summer vacation in at least 10 pages. This is done to maintain a minimum level of effort, but it has a bad side effect: It teaches people to fill the page with fluff. We are masters of run-on sentences and unnecessary details because we’ve relied on them since second grade to meet our length quotas.

We’d all be better writers if the standards flipped, and teachers demanded length maximums. Write about all the major Civil War battles in no more than two pages. That’ll force you to make your point and get out of people’s way.

2. Connect one field to others

The key to persuasion is teaching people something new through the lens of something they already understand. This is critical in writing. Readers want to learn something new, and they learn best when they can relate a new subject to something they’re familiar with.

Finance is boring to most, but it’s a close cousin of psychology, sociology, history, and organizational behavior, which many people enjoy. Write about investing in a way that is indistinguishable from a finance textbook and you will capture few people’s attention. Write about it through the lens of a psychology case study or historical narrative, and you’ll broaden your reach. “Pop-psychology” and “pop-history” are derogatory terms. But most “pop” topics are actually just academic topics penned by better writers. Michael Lewis has sold more finance books than George Soros for a reason.

This goes beyond explaining things in ways people enjoy and understand. Connecting lessons from one field to another is also one of the best forms of thinking, because the real world isn’t segregated by academic departments. Most fields share at least some lessons and laws between them. Adaptation is as real in economics as it is biology. Room for error is as important in investing as it is engineering. Explaining one topic through the lens of another not only makes it easier for readers to grasp; it’s a helpful way of understanding things in general.

3. Sleep on everything before hitting the send button

I’m a fan of reading more books and fewer articles.

The reason books can be more insightful than articles isn’t because they’re longer. It’s because they took the author more time to think something through.

An article that takes you a few hours to think of, research, write and publish is subject to whatever mood you’re in during those few hours. Maybe it’s cynical, or pessimistic. Or analytical, or fatalistic. Whatever it is, it might not reflect the calmer, thought-out view of something that took you days, weeks, or months to think about.

I’m shocked at how much I want to change an article after I’ve slept on it for a night, and still want to change it days after it’s published. It makes me realize that if I stewed on the topic for a little longer I’d start thinking about it in different ways. I’d remember better examples, or a better way to phrase a sentence. I’d realize the original argument I made was flawed. Since one sharp example or clever phrase can transform a piece of writing, something you spend twice as long on might not be twice as good as before. It could be ten times better, or more. “The first draft of anything is ****,” said Ernest Hemingway.

A lot of what we write isn’t time-sensitive. You could sleep on it for a day or two or more. And most of the time, you’ll be glad you did.

Also, don’t read the comment section*.

the ink of succinct…

is this a poem?
is it a sufficiency?
it self, itself is in
possess of two f’s,
two i’s and two c’s,
thus, is it necessary?

necessity, a quality qualification?

the moment, this moment
is both over and forever,
a sufficient and a necessary
condition for art, for your art,
think - is your condition,
necessary and sufficient?

then you are an artist and a poem…