love poems to the lost

poems to lost loves 

are often built upon a high wire,

tentative,–– but

there's a tenacity to them which

enables them to hang-on.

on the other hand, they’re incapable

of stabilizing their positions adding to apprehensions.

I blame myself.

love lost is the most poignant and penetrating

aspect of love once gained. few will agree. but

well,–– there you'll find me pining over a beauty

who once was as much a part of me as my blood,

or my flesh, or toward the end, my socks.

invariably, poems of love lost end, swaying for the sake

of their existence upon the wire of my making high above my life.

irretrievable.

 

                  fear no Man from Mars

1.

nor Woman from Venus.

suppose the first contact we hear

from the SETI is the voice of a distant poet

a female of the alien species, with

a sultry voice,–– warning us of the dangers

of sending our puny rockets into space, or to remind us

to pick-up milk and eggs on the way home.

how would our military convene in secret special session

to lay-out its plans to kill her? with tanks? with B-52s?

with the suppression of certain elements of the case?

2.

It begins with a young

couple riding in a heavy convertible

with the top down, always the top down,

through a desert,–– the spiny, parched cactuses

setting the mood under the moonlight,

this serious moonlight, when the strange, otherworldly

sound of a theremin played by professor Lavern Sparks

at the “Institute for Serious Goings On" (ISGO)

startles the pretty young woman riding shotgun.

“Tom! what on Earth was that”? she screams!

––Tom, from behind the steering wheel,

the circumference of which equals the size

of a significant moon’s equator, cries out in fear:

“Sally, that’s no sound on Earth as far as I know!

I think it’s the Woman from Venus”!!… pause, and fade to black.

“this serious moonlight” is nabbed from David Bowie’s “let’s dance”.

                   the ballpoint pen in prose form

It’s the latest arrival. It was found in a gift packet

from my health care provider along with unnecessary information

on where I should go and what I should do before I go, and

who I should see when I get there.

the ballpoint pen is substantial in its heft, twin-tone in color

incorporating a twist-turn of the barrel to expose the tip.

I like doing that. It’s sensational. sometimes I’ll just pick it up

for no reason other than to simply twist and twist back and twist

again before the final twist finds the ballpoint retracted.

I haven’t yet used the pen to write something or even test it

to see if the ballpoint functions. I have coffee mugs filled with

ballpoint pens, and cocktail glasses and drawer’s full.

In the mid 60’s, a TIME magazine cover

graphically displayed an American army officer, an “advisor”

to the South Vietnamese military, who'd been shot dead at a time

when an American combat death in Viet Nam was a rare occurrence.

clipped to his breast pocket was a “Paper Mate” ballpoint pen.

an art school friend quipped: “I bet his pen still works”.

that elementary juxtaposition between life and death, between usefulness

and uselessness was instructive.

as it lays upon the table, this latest arrival is less historically significant

as ballpoint pens go, although its place in the canon of historic events

has yet to be written.

2/15/24

                    sailing westward conning southward

I dreamed I was sailing aboard the “Pinta”––

the boat as much of purgatory as purgatory itself

such as not to be seen in the company of Columbus.

we had horses and goats and pigs and piles of shit to shovel.

at the starboard rail I could see the “Santa Maria”, glorious

at her sheets, the unforgiving hemp catching the wind as if

she were the breath of God !

I’d sell my soul to be aboard the "Santa Maria"!

I don’t recall much of the little “Niña".

she looked awkward and alone like a wayward child being

swept away by the wake of the water.

arr, the “Pinta’s” a working-stiff.

arr, the “Pinta” gets up at daybreak to shovel her shit.

blast if the "Pinta's" stink don't stick to me like the morning's head it is !

––later, when the sun warmed enough, I asked my therapist the meaning

of this dream, but he referred me to someone else.

my dreams frightened him, but nevertheless I didn’t want to drive

such a distance as to affect my mileage, so I didn't show-up for the referral.

––If I was half-the-man I am, I’d say the dream was telling me something.

but it's during the realm of consciousness that the dream reveals itself,

and I fear a coming bout with scurvy from consuming dried, salted anchovies,

and fierce constipation from chomping into jaw-breaking hardtack biscuits.

but such is the life of a common swab, and arr, ye fuckin' "Pinta"!