I poeticize, proselytize
Punctuate and pontificate.
I write couplets and rhymes
And I really do it all the time.
I exacerbate and exaggerate
With no desire to intimidate.
I make similes and metaphors
Indoors and even out of doors.

There’s cussing and discussion
And sharp literary impressions
Through diversions, conversions
Allusions as well as conclusions.
And with luck, no delusions.
Just syllabically deft fusions
Of some deferential references
With a deft touch of reverence.

I rhyme thyme with fresh lime
And cardamom with cinnamon.
Sweetbreads and shortbreads.
Chicken bones and licking scones.
Rhyming pumpkins with dumplings
And matching up filets with filberts
Just as cocoa goes well with Kona.
Marmalade can be a good marinade.

I rhyme chrome wheels and automobiles,
Freeway off-ramps and Tiffany lamps.
Cellophane and vintage airplanes.
Flapper vamps and streetwalking tramps.
Also Cinderella coaches and cockroaches,
Nothing is unfair game to a busy poet.
As well as RCA Victors and boa constrictors.
Since I’m a poet, everyone should know it.

“Orange doesn’t rhyme.”
Well, that’s what we were taught.
So, what it really needs is
Some careful new thought.

So, just for a moment
Let’s get a bit strange;
Let’s take the word ‘orange’
And let us deftly rearrange.
It can become something
Like ‘no rage’ instead.
Doesn’t that fit much more
Comfortably inside the head
And inside your rhyme scheme
As you gleefully poeticize
And smoothly abandon
The conundrum of other guys?

For instance, change orange:
On gear a transmission,
In discussion, ‘go near’?
Maybe some kind of Russian?
“An gore?’, on of Vidal’s children?
Or maybe like ‘Ego ran’,
A stuck-up jogging chicken?
‘Graneo’, something to call
Mother’s mom, if you’re hip?
“Groane’, an archaic manner
To let a moan escape your lips.
‘No gare’, a French gate
Too far away to easily use.
‘Neo gar’, a species of fish
That is sometimes in the news.

That doesn’t not signal
The orange issue surrender.
It just means I am willing
To consider almost any other
Way to look at this word
Another entire way instead
For this rather comfortable color
Halfway between yellow and red.

I put this cigarette between my lips
in the foolishness of maybe
it could make me poeticize.

Ingenuous thought when I know the only
drug able to mess with all my system is you.

More effective than nicotine, fogging all my mind
More dense than an smoke that I stubborn to
take to my lungs, your smell clogs my aerial vias.

More rough than the cigarette material
rubbing my fingers, your words scratch my skin.

More agonizing than abstinence, your distance makes
me writhe inside my own body, facing an intern fight
that always end in riot because I can’t decide between
leave you on your own luck or convince you that
we can be the lucky of each other.

And here is the living proof, here is the poetry
that i’m only able to extract from the collateral
damage caused by *you.

Students everywhere feel a close relationship with summer. It develops early and you never lose it. It’s durable.

Let's  poeticize..
It was a youthful summer of unblemished mirth.
In play, our youthful hours were freely spent.
We bore such idleness - we were indulgent.
Until Lisa confessed she was less so content
and longed desperately for a ‘wholesome reunion’
with her love (Dave) and to resume that courtship in the same
fevered spirit as when they last parted, in Paris.

“Life’s complicated,” Lisa offered, at the end of our talk.
“So complicated,” I agreed.
It’s amazing how quickly a plan can coalesce.

ANNND, we’re back in Manhattan, at Lisa’s (parents) 50th floor residence.
I asked Karen (Lisa’s Mom) once, “If you own this (a floor of a building) is it called an apartment, a condominium..,” my voice faded on the question.
“A residence,” she answered after a moment’s thought. She’s a lawyer.

Georgia got too hot. Not to dwell on the grotesque side of girlhood - but enough sweat already.
Shakespeare (Henry IV) wrote, “sweat extraordinarily, if it be a hot day.” Yep, done that - for really.

In lieu of all our pains, we now want AC, high-end amenities, constant concierge services and stunning views.
We’ll be back in New Haven in nine short days - and back in class in eighteen.
Call 911, someone’s stolen our summer!
.
.
Songs for this:
New York City Serenade by Bruce Springsteen
New York State of Mind by Billy Joel

To peel off your soft skin, mold it
into armor, let the blood gush out
until it fills your cup, and you gulp it in
as medicine; to pluck out your silenced
tongue, watch it slither across blank
pages, as it paints them scarlet-sweet
like your heart; to **** the trauma, bury it
under words, but make it immortal
on the same paper.

I like to spend my summertime
Making cheerful summer rhymes
I take a clever word and double it.
Then, that’s the start of a couplet.
I do my best at language bending
Looking for cohesive endings
For every line that crosses my mind.
That is why works the best, I find.
I just roll right on with the beat
I depend the result will be sweet.
I find if I think about it too hard
I will miss the rhythm by a yard.

My hope is the spoken word
Will make you feel what you heard
As if it were a voice in your head
That speaks for you in its stead
And moves to you to higher plane;
Makes you feel a bit more sane.
I have been rescued just that way
By understanding words that say
The things my heart truly needed
When my own voice never heeded.
I now trust that loving behavior
I know words can be a savior.

I like to parse in cold times too.
It’s such a warming thing to do
And I get to place myself inside;
I grant myself permission to hide
In my room where it’s warm
And poeticize any awful storms
Turning sentence parts to sounds
And let the harmonics surround
My head that thinks in four-four time
Writing every season’s cozy rhymes.
Then, in hopes I help more than myself
I send the poems off to everyone else.

You're born,
you live,
you die.
Is there time to evolve?

Sometimes I sit cross-legged and I hum,
and I congregate with familiars to hymn,
and I congregate with warriors to gym,
and I smash keyboards to poeticize,
but it there time to evolve?

I will not let you substitute my evolution.
It is not some rabbit evolves from hat trick.
It is not some ******* nothing to something odd.
I don't know what it is, but you're not substituting it.

It's something weird.

I can go insane and wake up a god,
is that not evolution?
I can fall in love and become superman overnight,
is that not evolution?
I am the ka-me-ha-me-ha fusion of my parents!
I was,
once as worthless and aptly sized
as the penny under your bed,
but just you wait (you know what I mean)
I became big enough to rob you of common sense
and maybe your cents (yeah, about those pennies... can I sleep with you?)
I became big enough to hurl mountains across lakes (warning: stated objects are proportional to ants).
I became big enough to be the most insignificant speck on the earth, but I could nuke San Francisco and you'd see my handiwork from the moon,
is that not evolution?

Evolution is the survival of the fittest,
that's right,
every football player could be the next evolutionary link,
just wait until the end of the match,
you might be the first witness ;)

Tell me I'm not wrong!
If you say the opposite, you're a communist... (see what I did there?)
Is that not evolution?

What exactly are we passing through,
to get from where I am typing "a" to you saying, "Why'd he choose 'a'?"
from all across somewhere else where I am not?
Mouthful? Mouth full of what? Imagination?
Is that not evolution?

I don't know where I am sometimes,
and then I pull out a cellular doohickey,
and I command a machine 100 times my size
that's somewhere where there's no air or gravity
to tell me where I am. Sometimes I threaten it,
"I'll give you the AIDs equivalent of a computer virus you,
you... you pervert! Yeah, I know you know where I am every hour,
of every minute,
of every second,
so... there!"
You've got to give satellites the what-for sometimes.
IS THAT NOT EVOLUTION!!!

I don't know.
I guess you don't believe me...
Is that not devolution? (See what I did there?)

Okay, okay, I'm not impressing you with anything,
neither wordplay nor swordplay,
neither hiccup nor genius,
okay,
I'll leave you with this.

What did the signing ape say to the other signing ape?
Boom.
(Is that not evolution...)

we really know most all, more than we
ever can vocalize or reason out loud,
never realizing it's implicit value,
though we poeticize paint sketch and anticipate
one day being able to,
like driving a car down the interstate
to who knows where it ends up

No words follow your visage.
I think of you
And my mind materializes your face,
Your shoulders,
Your hands.

I see your blue eyes
Clear as a stream,
Your wispy blonde hair
Balled up in my fist,
Your jagged nose bumping mine.

My heart jumps,
I hear your slow laugh.
I smirk,
Watching you turn away,
Looking up to the side,
Your hands deep in your pockets.

You are every sensation
As stark as memory allows,
With no definition,
No rhetorical root,
So I struggle to write about you.

You don’t say much
So it follows
That my mind has not assigned a vocabulary
For mourning you,
Though I continue to.

The regret resounds
And I’m at no loss
For names to call myself,
Knowing that I held you
And let misguided indecision
Let you go.

If I could take it all back,
Un-drink all that wine,
Un-cry all your tears,
Go back in time and tell you I love you
The second I thought to,
Maybe you might still love me too.

But the damage is done,
Our bodies untangled,
The pills have all been swallowed,
And you’d rather
I just give up.

So I will lie in the mess I’ve made,
Drenching myself in the blood,
The drinks I have spilled.
Soaking up the guilt,
Absorbing the hurt I let spew.

I will grapple with wordlessness,
Yearning to poeticize my longing.
But I will get what I deserve,
Silence and prosaic grief.

Only images remain,
Flashes of your face.
Tactile memories come in pieces
And I hear your exasperation
In short breaths.

This is what I have left of you
And with this
I must make do.