ODE TO MYSELF

Let's go I and I,
While intuition is on the fly,
Like a riot through the mind's most moot designs.

Let it spill into the streets
And collect into a throng;
Fill the world with torchlight lit like second sight,

Loot inhibition of its lonely condition,

And send us both slipping from the sirens with armfuls of savory song.


Me,
Rushing to the skills of Me

Me now with Me again

Tending to the question I am endlessly and forever fending:

Am I my druther's keeper?

Not much of what this world has to offer could please me more
Than knowing I have the keys to the coffers of my own sweet self.

ODE TO THE LATE BLOOMER

There's no need to get ahead
There's no need to set (make) a goal
You can only do what you
Know yourself is ready for
You can make it in time x4 (x8)

Late
Bloom
Nothing ever comes to me too soon

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ODE TO KNOWING HOW ONE "LIKES IT"

Picture a Japanese restaurant.
Inside the restaurant is a Hibachi Chef, spraying Sake in a streamline
over his workstation,
across a dining table,
and into the mouth of a patron.
The Patron allows the Sake to rainbow into his mouth.
His friends watch, and they are proud- He is a pot of gold.
Other patrons notice, and they can't help but cheer him on.
He winks at the Chef because, after all,
they are in this together.
As the seconds pass, some of the Sake begins slipping down his throat
like a scorching waterfall.
The Patron's eyes go frantic, they are franticising.
His feet, though they started partnered like Missouri and Kansas,
are now Pacific and Atlanticising.
He makes gestures with his hands that he considers to be
probable forms of International Communication:
Desist! Desist? Desist!?

But the Chef continues endlessly arching the Sake.
The Chef makes high-pitched noises.
Some of the spectating patrons later recall hearing the Chef yelping, "Yeeee-haw."
But the scene soon sheds itself of spectators-
All that remains is the Chef at his station,
the Sake, and the Imbiber.
They are the last two people on Earth...
No. They are more than that.
They are the last two cockroaches on Earth,
Cockroaches without negative connotations because there is no one left to judge.
They are partners in persistence, the last left with destiny.

The Patron quakes-
and with that, his mouth collapses shut.
The Sake continues to spray into his beard,
like some horrible foreign fruit being hydrated in the produce section of the grocery store.
The jet stream finally falters, soaks the Patron's shoulder momentarily, and stops.
The Chef speaks to the Patron in broken English, "I know how you like it."

The spectators appear in time to question,

"Who knows? Maybe he does...."

ODE TO THE DOTE


There's no need for worries,
no cause for alarms,
I just want you to hold me like a kitten in KoKo's arms.

And for this,
I would be willing to match you, dote for dote
In a volley of infatuation,
like two suns lavishing each other
in collective, resplendent attention.

Bystanders beware!
You will be set ablaze by the amazement of our gaze

a portrait depicting the young wizard in early allegiance with Sprezzatura

Definition: sprezzatura: 1: studied nonchalance: perfect conduct or performance of something (an artistic endeavor) without apparent effort
2: to display an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them


ODE ON SPREZZATURA


My mother told me as a child that all the baptismal water in Italy
has traces of a glimmering amber,
and that this tinge of color in the colorless is the only
physical evidence of sprezzatura in its purest and most single self.

It otherwise moves in a willfully disguised spirit
through men and women crafting their lives privately
in a tireless fine-tuning,
only to glide through public life as if hatched from a race of grace.

"You can make the World move at your own pace,"
my mother would say to me,
as she mixed that same glimmering amber into my tea.
"You just need to master your eccentricities..."

And so I imbibed the counsel of you, Sprezzatura,
Godparent of skills sown secretly.
You stepped out of your infamy
and I saw the fruits of your handiwork:

wristwatches worn over the shirt cuff
a necktie used as a belt
unabashing, cleverly unmatching socks
toothpicks as accessories......
you and your monk strap shoes,
worn unbuckled and flapping like leather flags,
waving in what would appear as indifference to the winds of this world...

But what no one should know
is that you are the wind itself, invisible manipulator,
wind with agenda,
Always intentional in all your unintentionals.

I have been a sloppy disciple,
not for my lack of trying, but for letting it known how I do try.
I perspire in my aspirations.
I don't mind admitting how I've worked on this Ode alone for 14 years,
And I'll sometimes publicly regret choosing to have worn saddle shoes
to my first Holy Communion.

Help me, Sprezzatura. Silence my explanations.
I don't want to be read like a textbook,
I want to move like mythology, no apologies,
in allegiance forever with you and the eloquently elusive.

ODE TO THE AMATEUR BOXER,
from his inexperienced Co-Manager/Hype-Man


My Friend,
Hobby Nomad,
Fellow Fisherman of Salacious Sensationalism-
You have cast your line in deep water,
so I'm in your corner manning the net.
The bets have begun and the word on the street
is that you are the underdog,
a stray boxer just trying to avoid the pound.
They're saying the only rounds you can endure
are being served up at the local bar...
and it's waxing my heart cold, it's taxing me,
because i have glimpsed your tenacity,
your capacious heart gone ballistic in the practice of your spastic jabbing.

Practicality will only mock the unorthodox in us.
We must move in a state of Peripheral Training.
Let your opponent think it potent
that you have never locked mitts with the Pugilists.
We will only insist that you are as undefeated as the common cold!

And when you wake up first thing at the crack of 3PM,
And the thrill of The Challenge lingers like magic at the tips of your fingers,
Let this regiment begin with a yawp! and be guided by the dragon
that beats a ferocious heat beneath your dense forest of a chest.
So that when the Hour arrives,
you will rise like a Great White,
bursting from the ocean of your limitations-
teeth bared, body airborne,
to strike! at the glass chin of the naysayers!
And as they shatter they will see a Champion
made from some strange new material...............
A Sparring Artist
conjured from the blank canvas of the Ring.

ODE TO THE ABILITY OF FERTILITY

Fertility!
Fill the rooms and rooms of wombs in our minds
with your density,
your ideas,
your poetic zygotes.
Take us to the places where inspiration wears no condom.
Even when the risk is high
and we could find ourselves creatively venereal,
let us look into the blank eyes of the barren minded
and rejoice in your abundance!

ODE ON ABANDONED FOOTWEAR


Old Cowboy Boot in the snow, where did your partner go?
If it's any consolation I doubt your fraternal twin is getting very far without you.

Your leather pouts now,
but I imagine in its heyday sashaying in a country line dance
thinking this day would never come,
this set would never sun alone...
Perhaps you're pining for the times your owner would discard his articles
but keep you both on secretly, under the covers
for traction when he took a lover...

How can anyone help but digress when we spot such sole-mates divided?

They sneak into our everyday visual landscape like pedestrian yetis,
seen and unseen, spotting the globe.
I once trotted and plotted them as such,
hot on a trail of flip-flop, slipper, moccasin, ugg, shootie boot, puerto rican fence climber,
oxford, welly, stiletto, zapato, chausson, and on, and on...

Until I recognized the familial silhouette of my Uncle on vacation in Israel
crouched along a stretch of the Dead Sea,
photographing a deserted sandal.
We wondered together whether the foot that inhabited this fine shoe
had had the misfortune of being swallowed
by one of the notorious Dead Sea Sinkholes...
30 feet down seems impossibly deep,
lower than the Earth's lowest elevation.

How could we help but digress?

So now I dress my feet and start walking.
Look how playful these two move together,
gabbing in their garb!
I"m on the hunt again,
and I'm wondering,
how many solitary shoes are between you and I, tonight?

ODE TO THE PORT WINE CHEESE BALL


You are the most daring of all dairies,
Roundly gowned in a nutty flamboyance,
yet no less sophisticated to your fans,
While ignorant bands of critics label you gaudy,
a veritable "Liber-a-Cheese" perhaps.

I happily hark to the generous hearts of my Holiday hosts,
Who allowed themselves to be upstaged by your cameo,
A thing most who know them would perceive as an impossible task,
considering the Hostess and her eyes like twin planets
and the Host with his prism of charismas.

But back to you, fine cheese.
You were never intimidated by these,
Instead you weaved your swirls of reds and golds in a polite duet
with our Host's beard
Which moved and reflected light as he spoke to me of pistols and rifles.
The soothing balm of your flavor played an intricate tune on my
tongue that night,
When I found myself accepting an invitation to the firing range.
Maybe it was because i couldn't help but envision you as our target,
the bulls-eye and centerpiece you inevitably are...
If only our ammunition could be an assortment of pecans and walnuts
that we could propel like astronauts to the surface of your atmosphere.

I've been informed quite often
that the Port Wine that dwells in you
is not enough for drunkeness no matter how much I indulge in you,
But I am intoxicated nonetheless.