Make it stand out.

Monday, December 30, 2019

Was bolder today. 

Didn’t get in my own way.

****

Beth is affectionate. 

In tiny smallish doses. 

Less than a tease. 

She’s pleased 

To dole out affection 

As if it were a luxury priced confection.  

****

One day left to this here year. 

Have no fear 

Tomorrow we’ll drink champagne not beer.

That much is clear. 

****

Why don’t I go to sleep?

It’s because of poor decisions about food and insulin. 

And why do I continue to do this

Not following more good advice?

I do do a lot of good stuff. 

It’s not so much that’s it’s not enough. 

It is that I cut corners 

In some way I’m lazy or blocked

So why do I block, knocking myself blocks back being a beginner has benefits as long as you lead with strength. 

At length make it short, come to the point!

I’m addicted to drama. 

Have Stockholm Syndrome. 

Have internalized intergenerational hate. 

And what about the attacks of late?

Were these white supremacy menaces?

Were they black, green or yellow?

Does it matter what color the fellow?

I assume it was a man or men. 

Women in general don’t do violence. 

Exceptions exist, not to be sexist. 

Or vermischt. 

Thinking I can’t take the pressure 

Because I don’t learn to measure. 

While that was to a good extent true 

I am not currently that Horton or who.

Ah. 

So true. 

****

Beth says I laugh at her all the time. 

It feels that she is laughing at my stupidities

Foibles, failings, habits and incongruities. 

Maybe both are true. 

Nu?

Can both sides be clear to me?

Can she?

****

I’m as weak as a toddler of two 

But less mature in my own too terrible territory of the terrible twos lasting many a decade I’m sorely afraid. 

Hop on top 

Pop my fragile ego balloon non-stop

good god 

Can I ever learn to toughen my thin skin?

It’s been impossible so far 

But there’s a strong light from my internal northern state of star gazing childlike glee in joys as pure as can be becoming

I now more clearly see. 

***

What no poems today?

Say!

That’s a bit harsh. 

So the Martian Martins might marshal a way 

To find fault even with a car as perfect as a Renault. 

****

Thursday, December26, 2019

I feel like a king. 

My dentist says I need a crown. 

****

In my creative cavern 

And numerous taverns 

Hiding from prides of literary and semi-literate projective lions. 

Trying in social-phobic towers’ steeple 

Accompanied by intermittent petty paranoia of people 

Wearing light coats of mail

Happy when I get neither calls nor email. 

Never could learn to do the heady lifting. 

Corporate veil in place unfailing 

Yetis 

Railing at the moon

Proved myself repeatedly a loon. 

***

A loon, a tic 

Two baboons in a big balloon went trick or treating 

Heels clocking a la Dorothy in Kansas 

Badass Batman, Wonderful Wonder Woman

tabernacles of creative pride 

 Self accepted, nurtured, appreciated

No longer denied with self-perpetuated lies. 

****

Doing good in adventure in the trail 

Getting lots of fan mail. 

****

Stop eating by an early hour. 

Were big lunches and breakfasts the rule for 

Guys like Eisenhower?

Powerful potent potential 

Self-referencial

Poetic muscle 

Follow good nutritional advice. 

Getting to bed on time would be additionally beneficial, helpful, restful, restorative, even nice. 

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Keeping my own council 

A face for poker 

Has not been my gift. 

A smiling countenance like that of Al Roker.

****

Need a lift from the dumps?

From bumps on the low down highway?

By making dumpsters out of discarded 

lumpy jumpsuits, iron bars and  java juice jars. 

***+

My lamps to light

Enlightening 

Allowing lemonade making 

Celebrating

Brief internal celebratory parade for having stayed the course. 

Staid, sedate respectable

Now desirous of adventure. 

A servant no longer indenture. 

Keeping my own council 

Now my gift 

Exchanging gilt-edged guilt

For fulfillment of my core. 

No cute, cosmetic cure

Owning every damn thing 

In every damn store

****

Lusting for more and more no more 

Is sure to be that gift of mine own council worth waiting for. 

****

My pen runs not dry. 

I wish at this late hour 

it would 

by and bye. 

***

I’m in an old rut. 

The nutty silly putty 

Stretches over gulfs, gullies

Engulfs my gut 

In a gutless gut punch. 

Crunch-time as I climb once again 

From this all too familiar terrain. 

My handy cell 

Not needing a mainframe. 

All the same

I forget 

What I get from these ruminative thoughts. 

Is it naught but pain?

The same old tired, refried beans for brain game refrain?

Reframing 

In the main 

I think not. 

I find my way out of this rot

My self having tied in a Gordian knot

Cutting through the historical histories of the great Alexander in 333 BC

Less do I in Australia’s Tasmanian river Meander 

Meander no more in Ancient Greece before the meander of infinity, the continual flow of all things 

Brings 

As well, as far as I can tell 

my endless envy 

Of the gifts, skills and will of all but me. 

The holy sea 

Sets me unassailably free to fine-tuning see the inner workings that be in me

So freeing a path 

to reduced suffering 

A path my own 

A path glimpsed 

A path glimmered on peripheral seeing 

It is possible I can only infrequently stay on this path 

Through meditative studies 

On this path I may find myself 

Awakened and awoke

No longer lost in joking jokes

A bespoke tailor-made 

Idyllic hidden glade 

No longer forbidden, frightened afraid 

It may be in the right time 

The only time I am able 

Before now was prelude

Half conscious

Half awake 

Suffering in self made hell 

With a healthy helping of 

Familial, probably genetic and intergenerational yelping 

Myself at long last am I helping. 

***

Prunes, runes, midnight bassoon tunes.  

Prunes accompanied this rube’s rudimentary reading of ancient runes. 

The midnight flight of the dark fruit sighting 

Ancient Scandinavian, Anglo Saxon 

Runes sing to some on the Rhine 

Northern European Oracles, these letters 

Have relationships with Norse gods. 

Spell out the situation at which you are at odds in the recent past. 

Cast three runes 

If you soon 

detect no affection for the path to which your actions lead 

In deed, you have a choice 

Hearing your inner voice to change to a less ruinous direction.  

****

In just an hour 

I gave her power. 

****

Repetition compulsion 

Has brought me expulsion. 

***

If compassion is the key 

My lock has an unknown combination.  

If bagels be the lox 

I’m in hock 

Up to my hicks bison particles. 

Thats the secret, special subatomic sauce found in Buffalo Wings.

Not that bison and buffalo are one and the same. 

After all

What’s in a name?

Buffalo do not roam near homes on the range. 

May seem strange but buffalo, the watery kind  find their home in South Asia. 

Other buffalo shuffle off to Africa where despite not wearing a cloak, are known as Cape Buffalo. 

Beardless, long horned, humpless buffalos 

Bearded bison, short, sharp horned and humped. 

How did I know all this? 

I just asked the man who knows more about everything than all the experts. 

Yes of course 

That’s our one true brilliant, stable genius. 

Yes the chosen one tweeting on one of his innumerable golf courses from which from time to time for fun and profit he manipulates the bourses. 

Long horned story, short

If there’s ever anything you want to know including about horns and humps

Or holes in one of our indefensible fences 

Just go ask the showman 

Who has hair of more brilliance than

A sun because he’s in reality 

A real reality TV star by far 

The best double-talking con man 

Of a grand party that prides itself on helping the rich while duping their base. 

In case you hadn’t noticed 

They are slightly two-faced. 

So one hump or two?

Dump dumpf and run

Yes 

A better candidate we must run. 

‘‘Tis the session for 

Exposing dumpf’s treason. 

He befriends our enemies. 

Gives them gifts 

Gets nothing for us in return. 

He burns bridges with our allies 

Denies his crimes 

His lies pollute the air 

He cares not a whit about what it good, right or fair. 

His party covers for his shiitake take on mushrooming danger out of greed and fear 

They’ve sold their souls cheap. 

To the rapist, misogynist, the one who knows best, the crippling cretin hallowing our defenses, handing the keys to our gates to Putin 

who rates with powerful dictators directly siphoning our security as dumpf helps them destroy us from within. 

So you might understand if the explorers 

That’s a mammoth, elephantine undertaking 

Breathtaking task for tusked Tuscan 

Troubadours in Northern Italy and Southern France eleventh through thirteenth centuries 

Courtly Love 

Courtney Loved to sing punk and grunge 

A task for basking 

giving or taking a raking in the rollicking grass 

Ranking Ann on top billing 

Thrilling on Broadway, East, West or Upper West Side. 

***

A recent posted poem posited:

Group is about 

eliciting feelings towards others. 

****

To articulate the written word is fine 

To articulate in real-time, sublime. 

****

As on tines of forks on the timeless grinding, wending, winding way is infinitely more powerful, useful even somewhat sublime. 

***

I started with Chantal saying 

Shan’t tell too much. 

Can’t tell if I’ll 

Rant well

Sans tel or text 

Shall we dine at Lutèce or Taco Bell?

To spend a spell daydreaming about women who aren’t my wife is a well-spring of strife. 

Here’s where I pick a the theme

From a waking dream. 

***

Often I say this or that is as if for the very first time 

Madonna sang it too

Doesn’t make it less true. 

Today it seemed to be two plus true

Equals the realization that it was my putting myself under pressure in middle school and high to deny my insecurities 

Why?

No need for the old college try. 

It was that old dad stuff by and by. 

I 

Overcompensate for feeling inadequate 

No question, no need to debate 

It leads to self hate not abating year after grating, grueling 

fearful year gaining 

Steam that internal roller coaster, steam roller mill machine of mine still milking the tiller I got grilled, ground, sullied over and under even behind them grinding silver bullet blinding sillier burned out incapable of learning 

From self directed sadism to intrusive violent thought there is a direct but hitherto-fore and even before and before hither and yon, a well-trodden, densely vegetated hidden path where full knowledge is bidden 

As I ride my riddled, oft ridiculed laugh on paths

of sour grapes and wrath. 

I find it’s not really true. 

WHAT?!

After you made me write and read all that batty gut-wrenching stuff?

Now you say it’s all wordplay fluff?

Not exactly. 

It was true. 

Aha!

And still is sometimes. 

Aha and again back in the same old players’ penitentiary having plenary sessions positing preposterously in unresponsiveness!

Let me make myself clear:

The truths which we hold as self-evidentiary dear are made manifest as Zoloft helps me myself to appropriate tests. 

Finally I leave childhood tantrum, hopeless, helpless mien. 

That’s it’s taken so long is seen

Still better than never

Better by far than some others who barely started the climb from our muck and mighty mire. 

I turned out ok thanks to 

Not giving in to tiredness 

Even in retirement or perhaps 

Especially so 

I glow with a return to before the flood 

Of familial thrills which instilled in my blood 

Something not good. 

The key is

Redoing my past 

My vast unpleasant crassness 

Overcompensation at long last. 

If not for the very first time

Two plus true

Equals lessening low pressure blues by now

How

I 

feel continually more adequate and ok. 

Self hate abates 

Replaced by abilities to self comfort and care 

It may be the start of the strength, desire and stamina to help another. 

*****

Last time we discussed altering consciousness. I was discomfited by the topic and our associated rambunctiousness. As I frequently do when uncomfortable I pretend to wholeheartedly testify That’s what I was in the mind of being unctuous. Resisting the compulsion Led to Instead in my head went to bed and spent a few moments over the week seeking to untangle, decipher a possible Doppelgänger.  Her comment that she’s a lightweight A dancer from time to high timesResonated in the moment Like the movement of a dance of jazzThe pizzaz of music theater too For you to bring in Lisa’s guitarStretches things out of the room too far. It’s as if she And I and all here tonight do not recognize who we be. Who we are.  Do we fear knowing the depths of our minds setting too low the bar?Our own true gravitas. A Hass avocado needs no abogado To learn it is richly green, nutritious and delightfully delicious. Sunday, December 22, 2019****While fairly disciplinedI need more self control. Yes I know where and when. Good. Then there’s no need to pen it again. ***As Ira points outGroup is about eliciting feelings towards others. My ability to articulate them in the written word, a bright thinkers’s thought Better than noughtOught to do more in the group itself. Ok I’ll start with Chantal. Shan’t tell too much. Can’t tell if I’ll Rant, wellSans tel or text Next: Flex a mental muscleLess pressurized hustling or bustling I’m stumped and perplexed. ****Speaking with people who have different opinions I get angry and sad Not the least bit glad That I can’t move them even one red shifted radian rad. ****Even at our own parties I’m uncomfortable. At least I had little desire to drink or eat much sugar. Lots of regular food. It was delicious even if not for you the most healthful, nutritious and otherwise good. ****So Beth is closer I’m more distant Moving away Go figure. Saturday, December 21, 2019Formerly it stung Not so handsomely young. Among thoughts tugging my beard. More independent, self-assured, on an even keel not least of Zoloft’s appeal. (Maybe it’s just from Amy’s gift of a jacketJust what’s needed in the smack It’s real cold out thereSo I wear this real great steely gray Makes my day with its furry feel.Yes as I tugged on well-regarded beard Many a hurdle have I cleared. From many, I simply steered clear. Appeared apparently by word and deed Indeed less frightened, frightening or weird Yes, as I tugged and hugged my multi-toned beard The suggested self has grown Be it so known From the dawn’s red eye red Something known all along Forgotten Reclaimed Neither commanded nor read In scrolls from the Dead Sea dead You see More aliveMore free Every day Not just anniversaries. Even at night, in bed Becoming. Not just humming. It becomes me to be humming, embracing Facing challenges in ReclaimedNot read Not from the Dead Sea Grateful to be Not a drummer’s drunken drumin The Grateful DeadGetting ahead instead When all is done and saidAround it I get my head Acing Phys. Ed. And Hug-Ed. I’m way more potently rugged. ***Ode to Ira Not to make you work overtime This little rhyme is a hallmark Of thanks, in stark. Relief from so much grief You’ve engendered Something changed, I remembered. Not only better communication with Beth Warm connecting to Chantal, Deb, Michael, Lisa, concern for Patrick(You’ve got down pat).Increased self-awareness, increasingly put to good use in place of former self-abuse. Not to be abstruse, getting to the point without ire...I’m increasingly appreciative of Ira. My happy face when I got the group Email from that school. What a surpriseNeither disgruntled nor disguised No matter how hard one tries Not to over-analyze It’s quite the Zoloftian and Ira prize. To be sure,Thanks Ira, I value you more and more. ****Friday, December 20, 2019I can barely keep my eyes open. I don’t want to get up Because I don’t want to do my night chores. Not that they’re boring. It’s just that to make a fish story out of itA little bit If it were fish 🐠 I wanted on my special fishy fish dish I would wish for the water 💦 critters To bite. They ain’t biting this night.It’s like my not wanting to get up to get ready for bed with Beth I want to be her furry teddy. ****However guilty i am Of not being a good enough dad I accept my failings without getting mad. Thanks to Zoloft and my Oft used other numerous normalizing IHave barely scratched the surface Of what is done without thinking what’s the purpose. ******Our son of whom we are proud Has lots of challenges. For help he is not crying out loud. We want him to be more peaceful Happier, safer, free as much as humanly possible from suffering. We want his life to go smoother with more independence and less parental buffering. We want him to let us help him.We’ve been not exactly there Where he is but close enough to Be able to share stuff Worked for us. ****Thank you for reading the other night. Our ensuing discussion was quite a delight.****My friend Ray, not Tedsaid If you could have an inkling Of your fluency You’d be congruently a rich man. I can do this. I can. I can think of this inkling Ice tinkling Tinkering with the wordy pen and ink thing. Thursday, December 19, 2019Now though not that hungry, it’s time to eat before I feel a low BG tingle in my feet. ****I didn’t call Ray.I let him down Hurt his feelings Proved how selfish I am. Yes there are other times I don’t do what I say I will. In my defense I did not plan to call him right away. I could have told him that But it feels angry andUncaring(Beaing my soul too much is another wearing thing.I’ll address that on another flight, another wing.) To apologize with a hint of recrimination Is no apology at all. Bill was right about this and many thingsNow years later ring true His blues, jazz, teaching skills, his humanityI oft overlooked in my anger, half-hidden rage oft exploding in class, less oft on stage Perhaps I’ve not been a hypocriteJust nervously inconsistent, inconsiderate Thin-skinned and oddly articulate. ****Five thirty a.m.I’ve been up for forty-five minutesAm tired, slightly nauseous Because it’s the revenge of the Margarita and having overeaten As I’m want to do each Wednesday eveThis little hangover doesn’t prevent me from going over and over to do the same What a shame I haven’t found other adventures. Wednesday, December 18, 2019Why doesn’t Bolton testify?Has he received death threats?Is that your best bet?Could he be shy? No, not this foreign policy hawkish guy. I don’t buy any excuse. He’s believed in American security for so long But Rudy was once an honorable guySo, long story shortMaybe his soul has been silenced by being bought. He must certainly understand the peril he puts our nation at risk of a leader who makes at our expense...Makes... makes unfortunately more than nonsensical decisions in his popular, but ever so dense way You can sayHe made Russia Great Again Because our insecure, violence-inciting Anti-Constitutional, continuously lying,Cheating, stealing Putin-puppet Likes big, murderous strong-men. Maybe Bolton believes there’s more benefit to his extremely conservative cause by giving the gift of not coming forward to dump dumpf A gift no doubt From Santa Claudius Claus. Claudius healed Rome from Caligula’s excessesA builder of roads, aqueducts and canals. Brought freedmen into government. Seems like he meant To do good. So too Bolton should. ****theodoreross at gmail Hi Ted,Have you the next issue put to bed?Presumptuous and emboldened am I. Not sure why I’m reaching out to you, sigh....Hope against hope?Nope that’s not it, nope. Coping by writing poetry and storiesNot seeking glories nor moneyHowever sunny thot would shine on bank account mine.  Just to hear a random daft laughWould be worth the price of a beer on draft.Drafted unbidden by Biden, AOC or Buttigieg Not playing Brahms or GriegDidn’t I hear of the dreary state of The Fourth Estate?Having steered clear of submissions to date Knowing full-well the fate Of writers hopeful. I’m no dope full of pipe dreams. Seems the deck is stacked Against unknown owners Of creative streaks. Wikileaks has more important things to doThan publish me or the impersonal you. Many of my works have a left-centrist leaningPolitical view. Would you like to see a few?Respectfully andA best regardFrom one among many thousands of amateur bards. Ken ***It felt new to discuss without defenses A bit it clarifies and cleanses My history of self-harm, thought and action How it morphed into intrusive violent thought about others often a replay of what I’ve seen that day in the news. I choose to be more peaceful and loving. It lightened my load Integrating what I had been told. I feel as a result, increasingly confident More appropriately, less apologetically(still self-consciously) bold. ****Oh for Pete’s sake O’Henry had his tavern. I have my Cantinero. Most will think it preposterous to put myself in the same poem as literary well- knowns. Yet here I am So here go I know it’s ok To relax once a week Seeking, so to speak to coax a streak, eating salad not steak A stroke of luck my poetry muscle Away from life’s hustle and bustle. ***He did nothing wrong. Same grand old party song. So long to democracy unless...Unless, with hesitation The Kremlin gives us representation.  After they attack EuropePutin telling dumpf to stand down Will there be a simultaneous attack from North Korea’s nukes?China dumping our bonds?Russian and foxy friends making light of the Cold War so before you know it the Moscow ballet will play itself out on the White House lawn while our presidential pawn fawns on the military parade at May Day made in Red Square as our nation is rolled, roiled, sullied and played. Have no fear, dear. I hear, he’ll be nice and warm there in that previous war the-a-tier. A career he’s made of having played victim Yes him!As climate change makes the strange African range buffalo...Bisons beckoning to belong and bring its long horned cousins to northern now subtropical clime. Oh the places you’ll go, said the sweet Dr. Seuss If it’s sickening for the gander Then gerrymandering is sickening for the goose as a noose your party inexorably strings around America and the restive rest of the enfeebled West. For you and your ilk You milk us dry. Why?Because of party’s grand old love of lies Tries and succeeds in taking away what people need as they and you bleed us, tweet us and great us with good sounding sound bites as hollow and trite as the thin ice on which you put us you false prophet, cheating POTUS gloating on the treasonous pain you cause us. No doubtably you can rely on the telling of countless big and not so little lies. Try as the populists might believe Eventually the course of the current current will reverse and we’ll emerge from this dark age entering a period where truth, fact, even diplomacy and tact are in fact valued. fear and fear-mongering subsides As we slide, eliding into...Bingo!Where’s Ringo to star in the often times go Oh the time of your life committing non-stop crime. It’s a perfect call, yaw’ll. From big things to small  From inciting hate crime To robbing the treasury To killing the climateMaking food less safe Poisoning the airPolluting our waterTo instilling fear To getting neo-nazis into full, gun-bearing gear To hoodwinking farmersTo persecuting those who ring alarms To weakening our FBI, CIA and armed forces To decimating the EPA, the IRS To making our DOJ into the department of injustice and foul play. To packing courts Aborting reproductiveAnd voting rights Not that you care about women To you they’re just for the grabbing and groping while you find your faults in everyone else hoping You find it best to find fault, playing the whole deck of the victim card It’s hard to find a home grown american charlatan of your sickening magnitude But you they found on the filthiest ground under overgrown swamp fever and with a little help from your best bestie beetle-like eager beaver friends you try to amend the Constitution with every breath you take moving to Police-like state. Is that really making America great?Institutionalized racism is nothing new. Yet by now with it we should be through. You do not learn from history. Your greed is so overly consuming But I guess it’s no mystery. Always posing with beautiful young women and girls Your guru gets that right for the right wing guys there’s a Pavlovian reinforcement Connecting you with pleasurable viewing. A democratic would not think like a used car salesmen with extensive experience going bust and bankrupt. Of course you’ve got a money laundering scheme with Deutsche Bank To thank and extol the Russians who control Your moves Like a pawn in the proud game of chessYou are moved by a player A greater player than the likes of you. Yes, you do nothing wrong. Sang the grand old party song. ****It’s Wednesday. Whatever. Never thought it would take so long. I never really thought about it. Therapy according to Sima is an endless process. An onion with pungent, sharp scent meant to Empower but for most of the first twenty-five years or at least the last ten or fifteen of those I chose to remember painfulSelf-defeating strategies As my chance at a career went up in slow-burning effigies. ***Why is it that after decades of refusing To be using Psychopharmacological meds I now instead seek more and...Sure it’s part of my OCD and cognitive patterns distorted to go from one extreme to the other. Oh brother!I’m glad I’m married to Beth Who pointed this out the other night. Rather than have a self-righteouslyFueled dithering word-dueling fight I ponder this remarkably reasonable questionAt this morning’s writing session Finding she is, as usual, quite the right wife for me. Oh wife of clear-sighted wisdomI too had a little wise wisdom truthHad I The day I asked if you wanted to tie The wedded knotAnd go with me a wedding ring to buy. Did you foresee How difficult I would be?So needy and dependent then was I I didn’t see I was sometimes a delusional dude inside. My dependency has shifted from people To Zoloft not doting, on dyspeptic disciples and gurus granting me occasionally A few fleetingly phantasmagorical moments magical even fabulously Frou-frou. I still enjoy being a bit cleverly cuckoo. ****Visiting the lost and found I found my long ago lost mind Finding also I had let myself out And off the hook My nose finally out of a book Out, out Dalmatian Spot No longer hounded By ideas unsoundedUnfounded Now at long last on solid ground. Yes I had let myself out Out Of the wild lost dog pound.