I under stand!
_____

<>

perhaps I do
not fully,
understand,
but nonetheless,

I under stand!

Legs locked,
shoulders set,
eyes ahead straight,  
mouth firmly wavering,
range bound, between
a back n’ forth,
from grimace
to smile resolute,

my support promised,
here beneath,
is where I am,
you, set upon
my frame,
capable~able,
you, for,
to surmount,
overcome,
rise above,
see farther,
vision clearer,
any troubling
fray and say!
I am risen,
with help
of friends,
to place
my reach
never touched,
or exceeded…
until now!

2:34 pm

walking on the beach,
musing, scheming, always,
writing, grabbing words
from sea breezes,
and gusts that
order plain:
now, now,
now!
is the
time,
to share
that load**

May 26 2024

The River ("Every artist was first an amateur…")

rank, rank, rank ~ a word of multivariate meanings,
too many with hints of degrading nefariousness,
know
this
then:

the river we write upon, invites from all shores, enter!
where and when you will, let the current carry, or with
intent serious, furious paddle along side the rest of us
permanent beginners,

because each time we start to compose, all that we we
have composed before, is just loam, soil from to sprout anew,
no prior ordering survives, we begin as fumbling rank
beginners, amateurs, starting first and then over and over again
for each start
is not a statistically significant event, difference, indeed, it is clarity of challenge, search, and the joy to destroy, in order to be of finding,
it is same for one and for all,
we all are ranked, the same, first time amateurs…

so I bid you: run, get wet, welcome disasters, crumple too many
first drafts, BUT be ready when the ah ha period!
a gasp confirms: competed, satisfaction guaranteed…

it doesn’t query qualifications for quality is
yours to discern, yours to differentiate, yours to  own,
to give away freely in abundance, nor does quality be an enquirer,
doesn’t ask what are your bona fides
your good sides,  
just
to
bring and borrow,
impart and deport,
take us by surprise,
comfort and comport,
leaving behind outside a
crumb trail to make us follow
you to the coveted inside of that mystery
inner tube within that brain of yours that
roundly supports all of us ever lusting
for
just one…more




12:32 PM
Sabbath
May 25
2024

S.I.

mewing, mooing & mewling*
(~ for Steve Reimer ~)

legged up and in three, 1, 2, 3, +++
count-’em, poems, the third be this,
as the Northwest Pacific reviews a
recent scribble to which I made reference
to a maternity ward of newbie p~babies,
all mine (!) howling write me, write me!

god, what an awful orchestral, tempting
me to pull the covers up as the National
Weather Service 15 minutes too late,
advises of severe weather, lighting and
thunder, thunder, thunder (imagine Dragons)

between the accursed meteorology, and
the heterology of my babies, all so unlike,
born from different mothers and implanted,
by you my brothers and sisters, the cacophonous
phrase “mewing, mooing & mewling” bellows
and bullies it’s way to the forefront of the list

cause its freshest, ‘jess like my 18 oz. of porcelain
encased Blue Mountain Java and Fat Free Fairlife  
cow’s milk, and sadly bullies get away with it far,
far, too many times…

and with that introduction I bid you a fond good day / bye,
as I wimped, whine and woebetide y’all if you’re fool
enough to think multiple births is a piece of cake,
most likely you’ll be howling, not just, you know,

mewing, mooing & mewling

somewhere nearby is a closet that only ever expands,
and all sacrificial offerings of homage, therein, accepted,
I know of a t-shirt of a medium gray chesterfield, with
white lettering, in a simple font, waiting, stating that:

FOG HAPPENS

this blunt factual, a summary judgment, does not
do fog full justice, though on the islands where I live,
its directness captures the massive totality of the
power of fog as a gentler reminder by the gods of
weather, that they are in possession of tools varied,
and fog which exert no harm directly, yet is fearsome
paralyzing, and extraordinarily stealthy, sneaky and
some other word that begins with S but propriety forbids
my writing *****.

is akin to an alien invasion, covering, never hovering,
taking all as prisoner, though never a full on
kidnapping, just an unlawful imprisonment -
sure you’re “safe” in the confines of your abode,
which is actually alarming, when you look out
the windows and see nothing, awaiting for your
own disappearance too but your cells knowledge
reassurance says not today boy, but do stay inside!

fog does not burn off. myth. it moves en masse,
in its beyond~bulky
undefined confines,
as a singular one celled amoeba,
moving at its own chosen speed, somewhere else,
to hide comfortably, knowing that its power is truly
awesome.

we watch it depart with relief, though it can come for
extended vacations in your environs, its peripatetic
course is such that it likes to lazy~leave, oft dropping
off pieces that are gentle called medium cloud cover,
as a reminder/warning/mission statement of
anytime, anywhere, anyway and nothing can
impede, inhibit, interfere, interrupt, with its own
rules of engagement, and is always victorious!

I will cease here, for there much more yet
to say about fog, as I’m watching its slow
withdrawal to caves in the sky, comfortable
air conditioned and above interfering rain clouds,
and the sun rays cannot harm its delicate,
deadly elemental,
shades of pale soft skin.

But it will be back, and so will I, to chronicle its
misadventures, describing better its blunderbuss
personality, hidden complexities, but for now know
in its abbreviated simplicity, eloquent encapture,
and all encapsulating nature, ‘tis no accident that
there are many things in your life beyond your control,
but this phenomenon unique for there is no
countervailing, counterwailing,
only a
just does,
but with no justification
only obsfucation,
when we state:

FOG HAPPENS!

a quicksands *******, a trap for sure,
but the cozy warmth of the feeling,
is muy attractive, and the first step
is a ****** sweet curlicue slide into
oblivion

the more you sink, the sweeter the meat,
but when you can’t breathe no more,
and the lungs burst, neath the sea of
reeee~greeted re|greet, and the pinpoint
***** of light bidding you adieu with
a wink, is thinking out aloud
“ah those human fools, they drown themselves
so willingly…”

The sun~poem also rises every evening…

A.P.U (as per usual):
this testimony~phrase tilts me sideways,
to relieve the condition, needy to be righted
one must expel the belly kicking seedling,
looking to be outed as a full fledged tree,
a poem planted, a gatherer of insects,
giving shade, perhaps shedding fruit

the sun bids adieu, self~same~centrifuge
of our solar system, is indeed alway rising
somewhere, though the light of our naked
eyes weak, incapable of trajectory bending,
to follow its course’s curvature, nonetheless,
we know it but struggle to believe just as we
struggle to complete, compare, and compose

replanted words in your heart, words that trigger,
are the notions inherent, of a center, rarely eclipsed,
that never ceases to offer up nouveau hope in each
of the days, a placenta to fret you blood and oxygen,
once purposed, discarded into darkness,
b u t
the words rise again, offering what you seek,
diurnally, need, to find within them, for my child,
is now
our child…

happened upon an extravaganza of spring’s hallmark,
the cherry blossoms outing their munificence of color,
I happened to position myself direct below a tree,
the thicket
of blossoms so, well, thick, that sky was obliterated ‘cept
for pointillistic spots of blue sun, yellow sky that poked
through the
few de minimus interstitial spaces permitted, and was
struck silent, by-for-before shimmering eyes that uttered the
requisite oohs and ahhs,

and

words came to me weeks later,
when the memory, now fully decanted,
reappears
courtesy of a giant tech company’s code tinkering,
merging and splurging the combined images in the
photographic memory
of my devices,
as if to say:
your life is
points of light and color and scent
as you write now
amidst the hubbub of jackhammers, raucous horns a blaring,
the homeless screaming on the street at god,
the fatalistic headlines of hate and
the pallor of a low level haze of perp~gray
between you and your true elfin self,
and you are not surprised,
but sadly, but not entirely,
bemused
that the photo’s true utility was to
remind weeks later
that all that my eyes utter
is not just
woe, double trouble and toil, toil,
but to Hey Jude and George,
step out and see the park on a Sunday
in its entirety and to glory in
your being
by being
a point in that tapestry spectacular
of ingestion, digestion and final comprehension and
a happy
exhalation

Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

”And you, dear poet, friend of many years,
have given me so many inspirations, birthed within
us words,so oft, and so well, that your pithy observations,
manufacture time, add minutes to lifetimes”

<>

wrote these words without thinking,
they’re sweet and neat, trivial but incomplete

but upon rear mirror review, Mr Poet
re-thinks, perhaps deserved of another serving,
curvy white, soft-to-the-lips, a moist vanilla kiss,
excellent ice cream in a sugar cone, words irresistible

for the sweetest poem sparks multi-coloration-explosion
of sprinkles ‘pon  a skin’s surface,
uprisings of what lurks in the centrum of your
embodied universe and disembodied soul,
shockingly uprising from an internal fulcrum,
sea~tossed flotsam of a jagged life, now, all recovered
words sprinkling, beach treasures, and yet,
*adding minutes to a lifetime…

reliving old reels, is time recaptured, creating a
certain robust additive to thine cranking and
cranky engine, that’s logged much more than
a picayune hundred thousand miles on a voyage
of e i g h t decades, you employ ten fingers to
calculate your fugue of multi-voiced numerations!

can it be? it cannot be! millions upon millions of
minutes, possess and passed, yet highlight feature
films, enabling reliving so real that by watching,
seeing, believing, re-reading it is as if one is earning
life extensions…adding minutes to a lifetime…

‘tis true, rereading every small scrip, every poem,
returns one to prior-places, each a datum,
a particular spot, a point upon a schema of integrity & integration,
that rule the visions, a message of individualism
in the largest context of a true vision(arie)

“chacun un point dans une peinture pointilliste…”
“each a point within a pointillistic painting…”

in a few years, a stumbling upon shall here return me here,
and I will smile with great gratitude for the life extended,
accepting with gratitude,
these few seconds, a last lasting chance,**
to say some magic words
with a great vanilla whispering
adding minutes to you life as well


nml