Dear Carlos: Poet & One Man Band,

have heard these words so many times,
always bemused, trace~smile appearing,
but this time, it hit me like a Blue Mountain
extra hot, micro~window-waving cup of java Jamaican,
that is me, this was me, always, even before
I knew how to poem to music that I had always
head-heard, before I understood that these,
my songs were soul~pieces escapees, my…legatees

I leave them them in puzzle form, surely a piece,
or three missing, but no matter, each piece an
individual composition, standing alone, but the
big picture no one will ever see, understand but
that is the poet’s audience, his own one man band,
no bandwagon attached, a solitary figure quiet
contented with his disconnected discontentment,
a lifetime spent in refining, defining…refinishing

2 poem themes crisscrossed cross in my head,
interweaving themselves instead of becoming
two cells, one split apart, I call this process ruefully
reverse me~mitosis, blending that coffee with
a quarter cup of white milky, leaving me a caramel
colored confection, perfect in unity of trinity, that
combined cuppa plus my insides warmed, cozied,
the heat combined with the fire inside to write…one more

on the “two-to-write list,” in the “draft”y attic chamber,
were two titles, twins, now conjoined; the first, an
expose of why I choose to write these poems, and
the other, why I have a life of few friends, the few
chosen ones; the inherent conceptualizations differ but
cross the same forests and deserts, hid in my own Northwest Territory, rugged and inhospitable, where to survive, it required 
accepting lonely solitude, with a ragged welcome, & an honest mirror

an unequivocal, no equivocation permit, that telling yourself grand lies was pointless because you were a criminal on trial, prosecutor, defense lawyer, judge  and jury of your, ha ha, peers all rolled into one, there will never be a higher court wanting to grant an appeal, what is…well, is; a sad bliss but after decades of trial and many errors, wonderful and awful partnerships; it was modestly
perfected, dis-satisfyingly…satisfying

this goes on too long, like an intolerable avoidance of
answering, there, a phony confessional declarative; the whys un~provided, so fall back on that all encompassing
defense of temporary insanity that was locked in those
self-same sealed cells, carriers of my tainted DNA,
looking like bagels~donuts with holes, no, voids,
a central, air pocket of emptiness, with no surface to fill full,
or to adhere to, a drifter, an observer, never, a full participant

these empty holes, were just fried dough, sugar coated,
a fleeting life~lies of no substance, that I’ve spent
a lifetime trying to fill with worth, and I’ve written a few
moments of kindness, unqualified unreserved loving, but
too few to justify my existence to myself! That’s what
happens when you judge yourself, no defense strategy
can succeed, the fight is fixed, but I write on vaingloriously
hoping that there is yet, a flawless poem waiting within,
that a one man band, can both play and enjoy…

fav poets: Whitman, Hafez, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Pradip and so many countless others on this site…

when the sky turned black and we see red circles blazing from warlike planes,
when rivers streamed deep red and we see no children running,
when the air smelled like gunfires and we see nothing but the wilting of flowers,
when small boys turned daggers into toys and we hear nothing but the shaking of the grounds,

know that my presense is always in the scent of orchids that get lost through your nostrils,
know that we breathe in the same country and i would cross seas even when they became a pool of corpses,
know that i will be the same child who kissed you under the moonbeams