Make it stand out.

I am not a violent man.

Of that I can be sure.

Even when a bore and angriest, I was the one I hurt.

Well that’s violence of a kind.

I find it’s missing the point.

First and foremost, I have not hurt myself in years.

Unless you count bad blood sugars and a few beers.

I steer clear of violent films and books because their content puts painful hooks into my nightmares and upsets my daily thoughts.

I will let these pass as I do with news reports, shoulds and oughts.

Harm OCD, perhaps a little.

Learn better self-control so I don’t fear my anger.

Of course find ways to be less pissed off and more lofty.

Zoloft may help.

Forgetting the past is not possible.

Nor can I seem to learn from it.

Move on, do the next right thing.

Ah, now then take wing.

Help out. Help In.

Help out.

I am crying out for help.

Help someone else.

When I tried, my truth was made into lies.

Paranoia, self-fulfilling fantasy?

Prophesy probably.

Wobbly sense of the essence of the problem.

Is it my inability to learn?

More than a kernel of truth serum?

Dumb and dangerously dumfounded

but changing as I learn languages and yoga.

Not well or fast you say?

I say, no hurry… it’s ok.

****

Help In

Do I have anything in common with maestro Zinn?

Even less with Rin Tin Tin.

Death wish?

Go play go fish.

Ability but not enough self-control.

Become a master not a disaster.

Bad star, translates my son for some Latin fun

A princely prince misplaces his scepter.

It’s rest and sleep I seek.

First a drop of nectar from Hector’s Heathrow Bar.

I’ll sneak off to the conforming comforter then snooze away

before I start to compulsively write another play.

Getting old and fit

You may be surprised

To hear me say

“Ok, I’m no prize but Beth loves me still.”

Will we fill each other’s lives with more joy?

Proud of our healthy boy now a man.

Can Beth’s back heal?

Yes, that’s the ticket. That’s the deal.

In the farmer’s market, we’ll pick it.

Then we’ll cook healthier meals.

Bit by beautiful bit…

We’ll travel a bit as we both get fit.

OCD and me

Is OCD getting the better of me?

Though calm, happy, free

It’s not how I often feel.

My general weal depends on ritual chores

More fun than bores.

Still in the end

I bend to having to do more and more

Just to feel equal to the guy next door.

****

Are meds for me?

Gee, what’s the difference one or a few more?

Are my peers keeping score?

Pills galore will tame intrusive thoughts, keep me in touch.

Can’t yoga and diet accomplish as much?

Throw in a few sutras, a meaningful job, love from my wife.

All would be well?

It sure would be swell.

Bibles Bibling Up

I feel silly being here.

Here we’re all a-struggle, wizard and muggle…

Trusting Ira, I’m having a psych eval.

For my pals, family, even uncle Sal.

Yes, I have violent intrusive thoughts.

No oughts, shoulds, woulds, or couldas would make me harm self or anyone else.

Might a med help?

Do what?

Calm down more than yoga and meditation?

Help me learn to be a better husband?

Help me learn a trade?

Is that what I want?

Anger bibles up.

Interesting. Slip up, slip down, not so silly this round, trusting the process for

Pals, family and Sal.

The problem?

and

Zealous Zeal.

The problem?

So what’s the problem?

Ahem, does it stem from wheat?

I’ve got plenty to eat, good care for my feet.

Ira and long-ago Lou hinted at it too.

Don’t bother about learning or understanding everything if it’s far from your strengths.

Even with beginners’ mind, I find my ego creeps in

when I spread myself too thin.

So what are my strengths?

What do I want to do?

To die to sleep afore that

scat a tune, play a little bassoon?

****

Zealous Zeal.

When I take losses in the markets

My car, bus, truck, train and plane advance by fits and star kits.

“What’s a star kit,” you ask?

It’s when people fawn and bask rather than doing the task.

What is needed:

laps?

A nap?

Only in so far as they help you help another chap.

for hire

Stamina

Stamina, strength Stamina

Stamina, strength, confidence

Stamina, strength, confidence, most of all desire.

Ah desire…

                        A blue cloud in a bluer sky

                        I desire it but do not know why.

It is desire which motivates

It creates.

It alleviates.

Alleviating what’s in the way

Stamina, strength, confidence,  resurgent, self-refreshing, self-renewing, self-regenerating perpetual motion machines (numbers one through five) oh, delightful desire.

Machine number six might fix my tired-out lyre…

I’ll be sufficiently wired, yet calm and collected to be a son for hire.

High on my Bluff

Is it one thing or is it many?

When I was young, I was Kenny.

Uncle Benny was not uncle to me.

He was Pop, my dad’s dad.

He was a wise-guy.

Did he try to lighten me up with ice cream and pie?

Is tweaking poems enough to call my bluff?

Ringtones

They did me a favor pushing me out.

Had my sense been working, my snout

Would have told me to leave before I grieved

So grievously for thieves and pundits braved, bereaved

Heavily heaved lifting.

Why am I now so nervous still?

Is it because of alcohol and coffee withdrawal?

Have the wherewithal to be my own healer.

I don’t need Leventhal or Weitzman or other therapy dealers

but Lou’s

Compassion truly rings true.

Vacation at the Vatican?

Many compulsive decisions recently

Whiplash!

I’m not the only one.

Done in, done wise

Not so wise.

I surmise, my ego flies about.

A win then a rout.

Trying to time this market to earn a dime store size

Pickle with my logic escaping ever so fickle

This nickel-plated gold, old news of the petty bourgeoisie buying buckets of bituminous, brittle bottled-up brain blots

In other words:

Take a Latin Vacation, Spanish, French or Italian

Not necessarily a vacation at the Vatican!

Vivace

5/8

In one breath

p poco a poco cresc

Rhythmic poetry

Rhythmic poetry

Is the best of me

Rhythmic songs of thee

Are the free verse key

Rhyme and vigorous

Dance arboreal

Tree monkey, chimp and

Man, gorilla and

Orangután bands

Rhythmic songs in trees

Get me closer to

My ancestors’ roots

Moving, living free

Thanks to humor and

Thanks to poet tree.

prone to prune

Leonard Cohen may have been prone to prune the pointless pain from his personality. He had the wherewithal to do withdrawal from harmful stuff because he could think on his feet and perform off the cuff.

I’m envious of course.

So I play the bourse not the ponies or a horse but still lack the will to improve my game sufficiently to be super rich, fish or fowl. I wish to be less foul. I hope and howl in the missteps of this bright,bright day. Away, away.

Out to the street to hopefully someone to meet.

I’m so lonely.

So is my wife.

There’s a wall we’ve built brick by thick, sometimes by microscopically thin brick.

Sick this burning burger killing King wick

Candlestick of a Hanukah trick

Hanna and sisters

My brain’s blisters are resistors

Can they pick up a signal?

Leonard Cohen got the signal. He ran with it.

I ran into Iran and then back to Bangor, banging my head no more, my eyes red from reading

Reddit on the red eye. I

may try to prune tunes of runes from primary primitive texts.

Talmudic texts weren’t emails not even snails’ mail.

Manly coats of armory armor, pointed lances causing pointless pain from Medieval weevils, vultures and insidious human cultures didn’t destroy his heady and appropriately uplifting, lighthearted personality. He had the wherewithal to withdraw from harm in city, village or farm because he could think on his feet avoiding getting lost in a huff. He could perform off the cuff.

He raised his kids far from a bluff.

No hilly dangers, he called himself the neighborhood genius.

I would have been wise to not challenge St. Peter’s Principal and taken that last job. Though the damage I invited it to do to me is not necessarily here to stay.

I do now say I can learn a better above the fray...

Yoga may teach me ways to play and think on my feet as well as hands, neatly on knees in a better balance performing, better yet simply functioning appropriately neither too sycophant soft, intellectually aloft nor unnecessarily tough,

just playing it clearly by ear, intuitively informed off the cuff.

Exercise is good for a person of any size.

You don’t have to analyze it

To realize it’s good to be fit.

Fewer medical bills down the line.

That’s fine

Instead of all that heavy lifting

I could be drifting afloat in a pool

Sipping piña coladas like a drunken, lazy fool.

But back to the gym I go

Because I know

This is a better choice

I’ll feel better, be nicer and speak in a calming voice.

Exercise is good for the here and now.

Drive a snow plow, farm with cows or drive in the summer rain

There’ll be fewer aches and pains.

A person who’s fit won’t capsize

Small size, a bit of protein powder,

vegetable soup, some might add salmon-corn chowder.

Exercise is good for the here and now.

Genau! Claro.

It may not be praised by him who tweets.

But it’s good for the man on the street cutting down on sweets

You don’t have to be thin like a sparrow or go in disguise.

If you exercise, if you analyze it

You realize it’s good to be fit.

The idea for this rhyme

was suggested this time,

to me of no charge- totally free, full of glee

by Eva who is studying to be a PT.

Clown for a day.

Oh if it were only a short hellish purgatory stay

Stray from the three ring circles. Potters play in potter’s clay.

No longer stay fearful of circus, cruel,

Eat good food, not gruel overdone, dirty, boring an outdated, strange tool?

Didn’t do much better with the animals in zoos.

Whose choice?

My voice says “Choose differently”

Zoo’s blues are time worn clues of a dog named Green

Learning self-control from a machine?

The key

Bring knee

To chest

Invest in self-aware, compassionate self-care.

Stay with that.

Stay right there.

Don’t need sugar.

Don’t need weed.

Don’t need pharma, maybe a business and philosophical creed.

Feel safe, feel alive.

Don’t Strive. (These are lines one through five.)

****

Stand tall.

Help family.

Help friends.

Freely thank the many.

Thank Ann Frank

Thank Muslims

Thanks to Jews

Ancient Hebrews

Learned from Sumerians

Greeks taught Rome

To the Western gate,

Asia caught up late, then at a rapid rate.

Venerated teachings of the past

left the west yammering, complaining

Doing stupid, infantile things brings us suffering.

To our farmers and already put-upon poor.

Our great leader offers trickle down buffering.

***

Thanks for ideas Talmudic,

Native American and Buddhist

Thanks to those whose barbs cut deep.

No longer weep.

A year out:

More independence, more clout.

Better language skills

More money

More strength, agility

Writing ability,

Beginnings of yoga

Beginnings of things, a creative spark

More light, more life

Less gloom, less dark.

Enjoy the ride.

Don’t hide.

Be simple

Not full of pride.
More poems about Beth.

In previous poems and a poemette

I let pen rhythmically rhyme

‘Fine with that’

Said Cat in the car who drove me crazy but not very far.

Bar none, rebar the piece from common time to waltz

It’ll be a cold day when in Hellespont’s halts

Waltzing waltzers waltz to music with extra schmaltz

Hellespont’s Halls not a bad name for a slang, hangout for Turkish dancers with Turkish hangovers eating a fish dish of leftovers

“Covers a lot, said Louisa May Alcott 

Beth and I were lovers hot

No tears, less wine, fewer beers.

Maybe we’ll get a pet in our golden years

****

Still more poems about Beth

Not as addictive as crystal meth

To death do us part

Love, lust and need were a start

Now thirty years into marriage

A buggy ride in a horse and carriage

Would be a novelty.

Though not completely and not free.

****

More songs about long, lost longing

For my wifely wife who nightly and night after night puts me to bed

on a couch slightly different than how we wed.

More songs about buildings and food

If you understood what was good

It would not elude Talking Heads

We’ll understand it better if we listen to a few TEDs.

It was said, David Byrne was my neighbor

Was his practice a labor

Of love?

Please reference line 200 above.

****

Just one waitress in this hopping place

I should have eaten at home

That would have saved face.

Home, home on the range

‘Twas strange that Western single song

Still resonates of Copland-

Dad, who if he had had the chance, might have been a songwriter

Or moonlighter

Why does he come up when I’m writing about my wife?

My life is still so colored by his envy.

“The un-lived life of the parent,” said Jung, “is

among the most powerful forces on the child” to whom it is silently sung.

What do I want?

“Two dogs and a brew?”

Not a clue?

Do I dream in a field with sky so blue?

Not so fast. Not so true.

Beth desire me. Desire me do!

Yes after all these years, in more than one way

like we are each new in connection, in caring foreplay.

*****

English Horn, all sadly forlorn

Awoke one fine sunny spring morn

Tired of surfing the Net

Desirous of hearing a bass clarinet

or at least a lark

Strolled in Central Park

There on a bench he heard a young wench tooting her chalumeau and clarion all reedy

So he with his bocal, his ears still needy

Asked if she also felt the need for flute and bassoon.

Soon strolling arm in arm, they stumbled on a charming karma in a meadow near strawberry farm

Several hares of which they were aware for whom they did spare a crumb from fingers and thumb, suddenly a sparrow

Led the newly minted quartet past the Verrazano Narrows.

Driving west they decided was best.

Driving east would have been a sound idea too.

Sounding Long Island several miles out to Connecticut they found seagulls

higher above a few eagles in the stratosphere

one straight away then one gay here

Stopping at an inn for a beer

Post nap they happily played for loose change.

Applause, the clapping audience of three

Sodden ex-marines eating sardines reminded them it was passed time to exit Queens.

Honking their woodwind horns, hearing honks on their way to the

Bronx, they flexed muscles musical texting “Hi, Ho, hum, diddle dee dee, look at me.

With friends, feeling carefree in this car, letting go of qualms,

no need to be Bernstein, a Mahler or Brahms.

****

Despair 

Railroad darkness, barren and bare.

Why care?

Imagining all blockages melted away

Now I can play with Danny and Beth

get on with my day.