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Italian: Three O’One

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Advanced composition
& conversation
wednesday afternoon’s
grammar drills
working with my practice partner
the professoressa’s
compelling exhortation:
“In italiano, studenti!!”
in my head
I, no longer capable
of ignoring
my insistently chattering
urinary urge
politely & quietly
excuse myself
slinking artfully
up the aisle
tight with books
and student feet
quietly & politely
open the sealed steel
of a creaky classroom door
slip into the hall
quick-paced en route
through the cold
institutional corridors
my goal:
to catapult myself
incident-free
past the metal glass barriers
to land blissfully
in the room for men’s relief,
but not before responding
as when in Rome:
Grazie signore!
to a pleasant, well-dressed
now-befuddled
middle-aged man
who’d
politely & quietly
held wide-open
the heavy metal-glass portal,
as if instinctively recognizing
the sole possible significance
of the universal
unmistakable, unconcealable
anguish on my face,
to ease
a fellow traveller’s trip
to relieve
his pressing bladder

Clarity

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Clarity
Assuredness
Knowing

Arrive like unpredicted
Cherished
Warm winter days
Our sun blindingly
Glistens
on New-fallen crests
of Snowy white

On wings of silence
Managing effortlessly
To land
Into a grateful lap
Most often
After mindful movement
Into the noisy stillness of my mind

55 YPH

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Wakening in mid-journey
as time speeds up
to 55 years per hour
a life now glimpsed
through rear view mirrors
with less apprehension
my powerlessness
as crisp and cool to the eye
& touch
as september’s shades
of bright azure
and indigo skies
the surest harbingers of fall
content to embrace
its unmistakable clarity
cherishing moments
of time past
making friends
with untold numbers of
joyous disappointment
and glorious error
like a super-charged molecule
engulfed within its cocoon-like
magnetic field
stirred to action
by electrical impulse
coursing through veins unknown
I long
to explore with wonder
and to accept
with grace
what is yet
to come

Acceptance

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Whenever I accept
my own humanity
with its countless limitations
& imperfections

I regale myself
with the strength
& kindness
of love’s compassion

This is the love of self
that fuels our capacity
to return to the world
brimming with loving-kindness

Manca di Ripresa

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Sluggish and tethered to my lettino sull’adriatico
dopo il mese in gruppo leccese
victuals & chemicals spinning
in vortical flow throughout my exhausted poisoned body

Sucking at my brain precious with thoughts
of self-directed ageism,
of paralysis
by an unwanted pregnancy of
self-mutilating friends with
stingy tongues cutting like rose’s thorns their words of prejudice & denial about life’s possibilities

Cowering like court jesters
before the cruelest king
that mere consideration of
entertaining
a philosophy
that pretends Life’s purpose
to be
just
to live

Inundated
within a vortex of
uncentered thoughts
evoking expectation,
desire & disappointment
projecting fears for future plans

An artist’s hand
sets the cherrywood tear drop
free
falling
into the perfectly centered
nipple of ghiaccioed cola blood
of the inversed chalice’s
umbilicus

And I am healing
from a world wrought
with inherent contradictions
in which lies
my salvation

The Dogs’ Bone

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Once
Cocksure
Of what I’d thought I’d wanted

Imagining
Objects
of My desire
under some
Self-serving Svengali’s spell

I realized
that What I’d thought I wanted
Had become
The Bone
of The Dogs
Of which
We hear tell

Clutching closely
Mere consideration of
Reluctancy’s relaxing grip
Acknowledging Bone’s
Undeniable potential
Of wielding greater power
Over me
than I over it

Within queasy
Ready reach
of Its devouring Seductive Essence
the Bone stole away
in the deep of the night
leaving unspoken
but the hollow callous frank
of abandonment’s
Numbing
indifference

The years then did pass
17 to be exact
Until the dog understood What had happened
that What he had wanted
had Changed in his sleep
by Unknown
& Mystical
intercession

Wantonly driven
by Hero’s need,
to Achieve
self-Authentication
in as Fleeting
a thought’s moment
as the Rhythmic
Flutter-Humming bird’s wing,
lighted a
Potent
transforming
Intuition

Pondering
the Years of
Unbridled
lofty
Ambition
with Assuredly its ensuing angst,
Wasted moments
Wishful clinging
to a Bullish
canine Claw reunion
with his
Delightfully
Ossified
Juggernaut friend

Now
I
Know
the time is past
for Hubris
& unchecked klingen
like the final fatal bite
Of the honey bee’s
sting
the bones
of the Dog
Lie
Far Beyond the Crush
of his one last grasp
At self-deceiving