Inevitable, that the circle be completed,
celebrating our seasonal return to the
sheltering abode by river, bearing winded
surround sounds to our isle of near-perfection,
where slivered tongued foamy waves deposit
new & used poems on beach, emptied from
now repurposed sea shells and hardened
conchae's, evidence that the truest inhabitants
never leave, always return, with their markers

Inevitable, that I write this in premature
anticipation, amidst the towers of babble,
& honking taxis, imitating Canadian geese,
who await our presence to refute any paper,
that we fool human claimants, before Nature
pretense of ownership, are not mere renters, albeit
but for a few centuries, which by larger definition,
is an interim short term lease, writ in invisible ink, that tho it
yellowing disappears, the orange summer heat magic revives

Inevitable, that decades of worshiping this
place, now mindbound, as temple, shrine, to
a place extant in our minds, wherever we be,
as land that owns us; here, we have buried
super~hero figurines, sanded, polished memories
of loved ones, parents, friends, adventures, times,
confusing generations, for the children of earlier
children, whose children, now too scream with glee
& courageous abandon, familiar+identical to forbears

Inevitable, that we live here, though life demands
our presence elsewhere, in our minds,* for each
year burnishes our genes with sun rays, while sand
smoothes our roughened skin, and we are only refresher
modifications of our earlier selves, when we first were
lost, and stumbled upon this grail, with shovels and
red plastic pails, with which we commenced erecting
foundations, homes, gardens and vines, and images
that are always at home in our minds, living on,

in real time…

~dedicated to the heart fixers~

sometimes I smack my head,
when a poem commission is lying on
the ground before me, and I just don’t
hear it, believe it, in order to retrieve it…

many months of physical rehabilitation,
sessions always ended with a certain cutesy
Gen Z~Millenial crossover phraseology:

“remember to tell someone you love them”

the instructors mostly youngish,
so we senior~smile
a tad dismissively, give them a reward~grin, and
head for the locker room,
where we gossip and compare notes,
on the Part II of our in-process-future-realization,
living a grueling new life of self-preservation, 24/7

the PTs & EPs pound you on the machina, go faster, work harder,
eat better, sleep more, take those meds, motion is lotion,
walk the talk, never be still, but race to live longer and
prosper, this hard work is your new job, and resignation
is non~optional

now, it hits me, via a figurative sharp slap on the side of the head,
triggering an actual physical manifestation that reverbs to the toes,
that the most important lesson went under the radar,
evading the former trader’s dimming vision,
flunking himself on the rehab test paper,
a purple F for fool,
a grade, earned and deserved, and herein poetically preserved

the hardest heart work, begins only after you co-
commence the longest road back to where you once
belonged, but where you can’t walk alone, for therein
a recipe for failure; and the work that needs doing,
is on you; take that tear-repaired heart, and give it away, it,
one can be healed, but not if sealed, for the hard-hearted
walls thicken, and “over  time, the thickened heart muscle
can become too stiff to fill the heart with blood; the heart
can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.”

so break off pieces of your heart, give them away with
relentless abandon, for this is the heart that self-repairs,
new tissue, new fiber, and most important, regeneration,
the one single reparation that can successfully
accomplish the true miracle of getting by giving,
no forgiving, if you don’t exercise the heart by

“remembering to tell someone you love them”




dedicated to the hard working staff of the
Cardio Rehabilitation  Unit
of Nyulangonge, Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation
who started  me
with a mighty push on the long road to utilizing my heart properly

<•>

I do love my poets so, those ones, soft spoken, genteel, feeling,
using first, but never, guile, words mano-melo~harmonizing,
softening the edges so smoothly, no rough necessary
for me to protect, confounding the harsh takers,
who never think to ask, end by cradle, stroke,
don’t go below, see deeper that my nerves
are feminine, that pink is but a color,
that anyone could be love, not an
invitation, but a philosophy of
the mutuality of surrender

now you know why I write poems,
to understand better the heart human,
ferret out the chaff, the bad, for everyone else.

June 2020

~~~
for our children and their children
~~~

the reason we say so oft,
in whispers emboldened,

I love you

to our children
is not the utility of
its summarizing brevity

no, no.
it is because

the eloquence of simplicity
supersedes any other poem
we could ever write...
~~~

July 26 2015

~ For Mike~

an abundance of:

illogical reasons,
of hate,
of emboldened badness beyond inexplicable,
and nor is it
episodic, not periodic, but abundantly continuous,
so
no need for a fan, one of those upright six foot tall,
MF’er tornado sounding fans, for the hate free flies every where,
damning the consequences, full speed ahead, spreading
medieval plague style, and as we two talk of this world,
on this world,
electronically a thousand miles apart,
we, worn and wearied, being ******, and awaiting the
spill doors to unleash officially tidal waves of  
dammed up, still held back raging, hate
that is just edging over the top,
a nauseating goop (apologies to what’s her name),
I awake at 4:something

(to complete six hours later
whatever this is, this lamentation, of woe and sackcloth,
ashes on my tongue,
commenced the eve before,
but genetically ancient and familiar
in all
my cells),

to complete this heavy evensong,
commenced and begun seven hours earlier when one soul
states to another a simple,
“forgive me, my heart is heavyweight heavy tonight,
the world’s disheartened burdens beyond bearable,”
the quiet calm of a sleeping house pervades my soul,
and a lament is transmogrified into a
psalm of hope;

for having shared the pain,
when one asks the other for forgiveness,
for exposing the other to this sadness infectious,
then,
understanding and comprehension
overcome me,
realizing that hatred has failed
when two bleed into each other,
that
shared distress is
distress defeated,
by a large and grandeur
purer expression of connection
across state lines,
tween two souls
unlikely to meet,
ever,
and yet this cellular combination
is so powerful, so
a w e s o m e,
it is
indefatigable,
(incapable of being defeated)
and we are each others
Shepherd and lamb,
in a time of woe,
one more time,
but soon the dawn will come
to welcome us with
the embrace of a newborn,
uncontaminated,
and to finish this now psalm,
now, and forever
newly perfected.

I mean, it's kinda funny
The punishment for life is the death penalty, that's literally the only true guarantee
Alterations void the warranty and there's no return policy, which I guess if fine honestly
But you can only rotate the tires so many times before it no longer matters
A crash will become eminent and just like the windshield, your future also shatters
No one's looking for a clock with a erratic tick and a broken tock
A polished **** advertised with a tiny sign as a shiny rock
Occasionally found screaming at nothing as frustration fills the body and muddies the mind
A full breakdown, stuck behind a roadblock, this time one of your own design
Trained by history to take every word heard with a pinch of salt
Cold and bitter, but is it by default?
Is it truly all my fault?
...why was I in such a hurry to be an adult...?
I'm gonna go make a fort and sort this all out

©2024

“This Insubstantial Pageant Faded”
(spoke by Prospero, The Tempest, by W. Shakespeare)^

<>
Our words are all actors,

a long run, run its course,
our long playing record,
scratched, love~worn to
worn out extremity, yet
yeoman service did offer,
extreme only in magical
transforming plain sight
into visions, a legacy,
bent gray, tarnished by
weary wearing aging,
their brief sparks now
but reclamation flares of
burst lights of waning days
in short lived tastings of what
was and can be nevermore

everyone’s magic has its preset
timed timing, and with
every day, each a concentric
ring marked and hallowed,
a heartbeat ring narrower
than its predecessor,
a shallower hollow,
a fair represent of both
all that came our way, and that
we resent with no resentment
into a cloud capped atmosphere
for all to ****** from a flailing,
flying breeze, their brief gleam,
multiplying, thus envisaging,
illuminating the manuscript of our
hinted future forward’s next percept


“And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep”^