some years back, not too difficile to recall,
revive and animate those memories of love and disasters,
but the distance is comparable to half-a-dozen
eighty day trips around the world, many frequent
flyer  miles accumulated with trips to love disasters,
interspersed with the days of shock and awe believing
(sigh) that stumbled, fumbled my way in what we silly
call true love, which is really the high of believing
that you deserved the easy way, but now know, there
is no easy way, and romance is a hard earned privilege,
and sensory deprivation can  fool you, absence makes
you vulnerable, don’t be vulnerable, stand up right,
**** out, and eyes smiling but phasers on full, nonetheless…

this not a downer, but a dis-claimer, even I claim the
never be sure of the 100% foolproof methodologies for
discerning the genius of genuine,
when the risk is the reward
maybe when your 22, even 23,
you’ll be better at true discernment,
but until then be wise,
there is no saving the day,
till your knees are scraped,
and crackling and cracking
heart seem like the same thing


but they’re not
do not confuse
causality with correlation
love is not your cause, be-all,
or even the end-all, do the  work
on your self to betterment
24/7, knowledge to be wiser
comes with vive les expériences!
and

someday you’ll senses will be tickled,
and the aroma of possibilities will
arose that dormant hunger, and may
be a correlation to another human in the
immediate vicinity, a man, swimming
in your moat without permission, then,
check him out and maybe, jump in,
once you’ve passed the red cross lifesavers
test, cause the murk is murky, and is never
fraught with just rose water, but jump a
few toes in and if you’re still sinking,
hell he’ll
find away and give him the rope to help
you climb a board, yeah, a broad tough as
clear varnished nails with a heart radiating
the nuclear fission of Strontium 90.

~another love poem~

In the thousands of years of Earth’s foregoing,
marking the reign of humans, all seek sapience,
knowing full well, neither first or last am I to mark
this day’s commencement with a need, a desiring,
to notate this not unusual but definitively unique
calendar notation with a tribute, neither requested
but freely given to the person who lies beside me.

Did I wake commanded or so compelled to scrabble
a collection of words, sequences, initially disordered,
into a shape, to chisel these sendings of a chest into a
living disbursement, a statute, a marbleized creature,
that empties and releases a sensory disposition rumbling
into a messy, mediocre utterance of sentience while they
sleep quiet, pockmarked by dreamed mumblings, dreaming?

No, I did not.

News headlines come demanding see me, insistent that
I am urgency, but one displaced by the next, making them
instantly stale by pealing replacements. This poem, a self-
appointed task is now eased, spent and spurted into an
lifespan of a length unknown and untold. Here I end, ceased
and resisting, demurring, desisting another stanza, The hour
approaches the seventh hour before noon, rising time. Go now.

The choring chords of fibrous tasks that stitch existence into
a sustaining impertinent permanence, list-crossing-off, a-nagging.
The itches of living, ask for scratching, 1st cup of coffee making,
but smile bemusedly that this first and freshest to do, newly added,
is done, dispatched with a line-sworded satisfying crossing off.
She sleeps on, while I soon to rise and quiet paddle to the
kitchen where kept the utensils for sustenance,

I am contented, miraculously, simultaneous,
emptied and fulfilled.

4-14-2021
NYC
7:18am

Returning from the grocery store,
my only trip out in weeks,
I passed by our small town's
High School, all pandemic
deserted and shuttered now.

Slowing, I stopped my car,
taken by momentary joyfulness,
out there in bright blue Band
uniform on the football field,
a single drummer marched
all alone,

Her enthusiastic snare drum  
echoing out stirring, lonely
rhythmic staccato sounds.

This solitary stalwart drummer
practicing in the rain, rehearsing
skillful steps and robust drum
beats, until she gets the call.

Remaining ever ready when
normalcy reluctantly comes rolling
back around. Where marching bands
and football players once again tread
upon this nearly hallowed ground.