for vicki who loves this poem for the best reason ever: just does...
<•>
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance that  is the only concert
the imbalance that is the the only constant

how do I know this?

what are my credentials?

you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know, recall of these matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner;
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient

then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move off

  begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked.
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
---

~for Lori,
they await you~
<>
be:
of two minds, a peculiarly human
distressing and wonderful
characteristic s~trait,

straightforward and regular,
as hu-man was intended,
or
be:
truly crackling delighting
twisty like a river bend,
with a flood plain,
defying nature illogically,
here today,
and new direction on-the-morrow,

the creativity of time
making its own best laid plans
that either wash over you,
or wash you away

what you may not be aware,
as I too, was overly innocent,
that the sidewalk cracks are mini-seas,
full of overheard words, true tales,
a depository of the stories,
of tithes of titles
beckoning, becoming fables,
left by millions of
endless passer-byes
and passer~overs,
a repository of human insights
held inside them cracks,
under cover of
thin brown line
of ***** grime, soil and ****
& history

for this ugly surficial,
environmentally rocky but semi~
solid environ, is perfection personified to
retain. restore all the power memories & glories
of those who tread upon them
in flip flops and snow boots,
spilling the detritus that is all of us,
thus,

a gold mine of poems for  asking,
a vein of jewels for simple taking,
no secret word, no library card, just a
few taps of the shoe’s soul, will kick up
the dust of disorderly unused words,
to be easily inhaled, or cab~hailed, and then
by gum, yous for the making

so walk with me, eyes open, nostrils wide,
ears keen, tongue open to lick up the dust,
impress them upon you skin,
do so!
so they be
not forgot,
nor slip away to a new street line,
and be lost again until someone else
comes along to use
what was rightfully yours
for a moment of seconds

bring your sheaf of blank memory sheets,
scribble madly for the volumes are supersized, stupendous, and you
will never lack,
wander for hope,
nor
wonder too long
for the whereabouts of that next poem,
for lives-it, beneath you,
awaiting and aging,
pry it out by by fingernails
if too well hid,
but trust an old fool,
thee best me-kind there be,

the grimy grinning grungy pallor
is the best camouflage extant,
the dust is gold, a miner’s delight,
speckles of glassine letters
sapphired and rubied,
all yours, when you fall to your knees,
and finally witness, finally see
wide eyed
a new flood plain
of satisfied tears pooling,
*****, hard earned,
falling, forming
from your own
flood plane

pick a word, let it lead you astray, then (soil)


a poem to exclaim, refracting the sun rays emerging
from the curves of your chested heart, the waggle of
ten fingers conducting your inner song, the baton first
waved swipe to earth pointing, let us commence there:

think of yourself, entirety, as soil, you the potter,
what has been planted by others, nourished by others,
along sides of your ingestions, you the grower, seeded
anew, each word, hybrid edging with existing vocabularies

the sun from without, the sun from within, the rivulets
of water, the arterial pathways, feed the treasure chest,
and you, farmer, planter, grower, picker, plucker of the
produce, serve us, baskets grown on the fruited plain of

poems’ soil consisting of the writings grown in the
unique you,
all of you,
body & soul

Perhaps I prefer to play the ghost
To only be seen by the ones
I love the most
To limit the stress
Of life’s bumpy roads
I won’t let bad take its toll.

(But that’s not how I use to roll)

Life’s beauty fulfills my quest
A peaceful life is my success
There is no sense in worrying
Simply stay out from under the gun
If there’s nothing chasing us
There’s no need to run.

They came and went some time ago
Left their imprint deep in snow
To flare through history's dawn to dusk
In massive curvature of tusk,
Vast woolly flank in shaggy pelt.
An intelligence, expressly felt,
Of sadness in the way of man
Whose savagery of intellect, would plan,
A woefulness of short insight
In determining the Woolly Mammoth's plight!

Like the candle's brief, bright flare
Great herds, once roamed, no longer there,
Majesty's lost innocence
Now extinguished in intransigence.

M.
Foxglove
Taranaki, New Zealand
11 July 2020