if e.e. c and Emily D.

birthed a son

surely be He

a radiating

Man of the Future

eclipsed

born out

to mom 1909

with glass eye

ivoried teeth

and peg leg

besides--

daddy

barely

fifteen

a shade

of a lad

--Either

enamored so

or mortally blind

to take hold

and spinster

'em for a ride.

love and leave

for who'd

believe

'er

claim at 79

to have

life New

inside... ? ? ?

still a child

poem

never spoken of

unnamed, like

so many a verse

by e.e. cummings :

& Emily Dickenson

Scrolling through my Prose Archives I am not sure which readers would choose.

But here is what I see potentially,

Most Likes on Poem that pops up in "best" search:

https://theprose.com/post/207407/with-fickle-heart

Most Likes on Poem to have won a Challenge:

Poem Challenge: How much pain can a soul take, write a simple poem about the darkness of soul in overcoming its pain.

June 26, 2018 

<<<Darkness>>>

You Asked for Simple & so Simply This:

I Am the Well

into which—

You have dropped

Your Wish—

#Darkness #Challenge

https://theprose.com/post/221425/darkness

First Poem with Most Likes & Comments:

https://theprose.com/post/159035/belief

First Poem with Most Likes & Most Reads 500+

https://theprose.com/post/274522/i-sausage

And one more because... why not?

https://theprose.com/post/239417/here

For all the

bewilderment

and wonder

you reflect

back to our

Beloved Boy

as the

Son

at the

center

of your

sense

of I

Handprints

entwined

with

the Heart

and the Music

of your Life

in me...

the awe

and disbelief

at the incredible

Blessing of this

shining fragment

of Us

that stands

with arms

outstretched

and whispers

fiercely

eyes clamped shut

mouth puckered up,

"I Love You Papa!"

For Papa Bunny Villaire

Rémy & I love you so very very much!!

It wasn't him. Not that one that you are asking about. The one with the piercing eyes, palest of blue. Pieter. No, it wasn't him. He was a wisp of a man. Harmlessly, he haunted his own household and yard, at the edge of the neighborhood, with a wife that nobody hardly ever saw. Glimpsed here and there, to suggest, some vague existence of Mrs. & Mr., when the sliver sedan backed out of that rear detached single car garage. But that was all. It was a very quiet house.

That was the lemonade yellow home on the Left.

No, the one you are asking about, lived on the Right. Under the flag. Under the badge of medallioned veteran. George. He had half a left leg, and one-and-a-half loud attitude about what we did or didn't, and what he would if he could, unspoken, heavily axed in the silence of the air around the khaki and olive-colored porch he never seemed to venture off.

If we were late with cutting the grass, he'd crack something about "somebody having a bad back, eh?" or if we tarried with taking out the trash till dawn of garbage truck day, he'd be there on the front deck bar stool with his barrel of a service dog and stump of cigar, insinuating that "we forgot." If we did the bare minimum of shoveling, to attend to other tasks inside, he'd remark snidely about not bothering to go the extra mile.

In short, he made everyone feel handicapped. He preempted any sympathy one might have had, or any respect, as Civilian.

When they carted him away, in Sirens, it was his woman Ruth that had called. Standing on the deck, hands on her hips, watching the Police and EMS, I gave my condolences and asked with caution, "Was it coronary?"

She looked at me like she'd bagged a terrorist, something like a damp white handkerchief of a restraining order waving in her hand.

"Hon, he lost his heart in Afghanistan."

I fear a future of silence. When I see our children in distress, I note more than anything else the unwillingness to communicate-- the downcast eyes, the small gestural responses, the tiny voices heard only if summarily called upon as final necessity. These are the soft-shelled hermit crabs scuttling backwards for a borrowed place to huddle. Why huddle? To better take Orders, because doing what is told is "comfortable." Silence allows for that smooth glide through Society. The slide that leaves a residue behind of unintended Consequence for which we in our safe-cased anonymity cease to feel responsible. I used to fear a Global Myopia, but now there is Lasik for that; So maybe the boys-in-the-back are already working on something to make the tongue automatically wag?

"Open wide. Wider," he leaned in, those small dual jeweler-like magnifier dental loupes making him look bug eyed and hypercritical, "A little wider, wider," there! he popped in a bite block as a precaution, lest I renege on my release statement and swallow a finger. Unintentionally, of course.

I had curtly dared asked, "Will it hurt?" And he had said, only a little. After a while.

By now I was so swelled up from the horse-dose of local anesthesia that I wasn't sure if there even was enough space around my tongue to continue with the procedure. I was convinced that the already weak natural apparatus for speaking would never again function on its own. This operation was taking on all the more importance. To be honest my brain was feeling the brunt of the lidocaine, and thoughts were thick and heavy. When the Orthodontist motioned to his assistant for a wad of gauze, and then another, and yet another, all quickly drenched in blood, I was ill equipped to respond.

Recognizing only that I was being spoken to, I nodded slowly, automatically, with all appearance of self-assurance, to the unrecognized question that "Yes," I was perfectly "all right." Though that ought to have been questionable from the beginning...

The surgeon had just inserted the major metal plate behind my palette and was now injecting small pellets of nickel into critical points of the epiglottis and superior longitudinal muscle. The projection of magnetic fields from the Operation Tower would trigger precise up and down movement in such ways as to choreograph speech patterns. According to the projected theory, all I, or any subject, would need to do, is breath-- and the desired sounds would be emitted.

It was a test procedure of course, and I was being compensated for my time--- automatic parole on success of the operation.

Reference source:

'Magnetic illusion' can create magnetic fields at a distance – Physics World

https://physicsworld.com/a/magnetic-illusion-can-create-magnetic-fields-at-a-distance/

You are sitting at the window several stories up and the Moon is as if at your feet just beginning its journey, on the night. It's exactly as you say--the holes in the sky are inverse to the focus in your eyes. The back and forth, the twinkle and dark, the inward and outward reflection, is like respiration, like a hymn. A meditation. One syllable in; One syllable out. I do not know what happened in the Moth eaten past-- maybe it's personal, maybe it's Universal.

If you jumped now, surely, you'd roll out of these dark garments. You'd fall into the Moon with youth's bravado and no doubt you would rise with it. Not because you are so conceited; but because Imagination would carry you across the shadows of dreams that are pulling in, even now as we speak. When the Moon is centered, as it should be, everything will be tucked beneath our feet. Just like at High Noon, in a silent plea. Unless you are heartless, tomorrow you will wait for me. At strike of Midnight, you'll climb down, the hard way, down all those flights of stairs on your own two feet. You'll crawl if you have to; who knows how low you've sunk in the depth of your emotion to say that you feel so very empty--

--I will fill you. With tireless wings I will lift your blackened carcass as if the weight were meaningless. And I'll breath a single kiss of passion forlorn into your wordless abyss till the color floods back into your fingertips, back into your ankles, elbows, and knees, back to your mind, ventricles, and entrails and all your lifegiving forces-- readied like paint for the making. And when we're fully connected in broadest of daylight, you'll come to your senses. You'll stand with me willingly, forcefully, giving... like it never happened.

I was supposed to shelter you, all of you, inside myself, remember? For you, I would be that safe space, every incarnation, and desire of Imagination, at play. Can you feel me now? the brush of hair and skin that shivers with your hand tracing the contours of where I, I should have always been. Our eyes interlock, and you finally see right through me.

We do not go and look above a body. We look above a Life.

On our lips-- a Name.

It's a person, a place, a thing. Whatever the noun, if it is the outlier, it is the Anomaly.  The Word of whatever it was that remained Unresolved in the lifetime of the dying.

That is the Name that escapes upon the breath, upon the fading gasps-- The Rose Bud as it were. The final vying for resolution. Perhaps for restitution. Or redemption. The return to a moment. To an opportunity. In any case, a desired course of correction for whatever actions remained taken or untaken, words spoken or unspoken-- that which might have altered the trajectory of the ones who lie at the brink of life and death with limbs still outstretched. The Departing, looking over the shoulder, at all the deformity; the chips and burdens in the now distant bodily backpack that was being so unwittingly carried to who knows where, never reaching its imaginary destination.

And now it is too late. Everything is suddenly more real than real. The Finality, which contorts with hallucinations, phantom sensations, stupor, and then with the Equilibrium, which only Death can bring.

I have seen the Dying up close on several occasions, among animals, but only once with a human being. I will refer only to He, as Who, so that we can focus on the What, and that you might better understand the nature of the Outlier.

He was dying. He had known it for months, as a foreboding, through subtle signals of the body. The shortness of breath. The fatigue. The black stool. The way the circulation wasn't flowing, and extremities would alternately whiten or blacken from lack of oxygen. Rigorous massage by his beloved would revive the hands or feet, but the forced blankness of his face betrayed an understanding of what was coming.

And when the time came, he demanded vehemently that all the windows and doors be opened!! Then he insisted they all be shut, because it was terribly cold, and a persecutory They were coming. He spoke of his poor Mommy. He remembered fondly his Father. He hollered for Her who was not here!! Anger over shook him and distain that she was always too late in coming. Always. Never living up to Her potential. On Her arrival, he no longer recognized her.

Then he reminisced about She for whom he had done everything, Everything, whose love had dissipated and escaped him. He called this one by proper name. He did not chide that articulated She for not being there. She was called tenderly by secreted pet name, and then words failed him... breath became a rasp, slow and rhythmic, and then a death rattle. He was pale, sculptural, cool to the touch and an expression of bliss covered his face. His eyes shut; his lips parted. He rested like this a while; then as if suddenly, the Soul was gone. 

When I called the One, the She who had been his Everything, and told her, she asked, of course. She asked the pertinent question about the last word and received it with an unhidden pleasure. The private long obscured pet name cementing that all Significant personal Importance in a Life now ended.

Jealously, She wanted to know if he had called out my name as well? No. He did not. She didn't comprehend the converse significance: that we had No unresolved issues.

My friend makes an

important connection

--a call collect---

on our cellular

structure.

Letters shift

across the board . . .

He says the cellphone

is the new Ouija

and I am sure

He's in the know.

I'm texting back in group

several years before, on

the memory of some

interrelationship of

poltergeists

--every time my phone

disappears and reappears

in odd spots of the flat

or blinks menacingly

on the floor at night

spasmatic

I commune with the

spirits believing,

You are out there

light years

hanging

telekinetic

invisible threads

on a battery

tapping

And you say--

we are already dead

from God's perspective.

It's interesting to me that you don't like dogs. I myself have the disposition of a dog... A dog-cat to be more precise. Let me tell you about the best and only dog that I have ever had, my girl Roxy <3

Let's start again....

I don't particularly like dogs. That is negative experience speaking. Growing up, we had three: a Husky mix named Husky, and a pure-bred German Shepard with dwarf legs named Stefania. Stefa for short; and a Shepard Retriever Border Collie mix, named Mela, Italian for Apple, named so for no other reason than alliteration (in our family we were all M).

Husky was a biter with a sense of humor, no malice apparent in his nature. It's just that whenever he met a passing stranger, from behind, he could not resist "the temptation" of nipping them in the butt. An Alpha-Beta thing? (Father was Alpha of the pack.) If Hushu, as was his nickname, scented food, he went stupid and would bite right through a hand. He did this twice; once during a rare visit to Grandma, and once to my sister. Both bites drawing considerable blood, piercing right though top and underside of the hand that feeds.

Stefa, was a runner during her "time of the month." She was never spayed and never pregnant, and never leashed. She was a patroller of the house but would lose all sense of duty from time to time and had to be retrieved from somewhere in the neighborhood with a dazed look in her eye of procreaterial confusion. In short, she also, went stupid.

Mela was mostly Border Collie in DNA, and separation anxiety plagued her like a long-lost ancestral hound. She could not be left alone, or she would claw and jaw at everything in sight, especially doors and floors, to try to get out of the room or house or yard. I flatter myself to think it was to find us, but most likely she just wanted out. Left for more than ten minutes, she went stupid.

But my Roxy, was a gem. She was very intelligent. Too smart for me I would say. I got her in a time in my life when everyone frowned at my decision to "tie myself down." I was isolated in the woods in the family log cabin and bear were coming right up to the doors so that I felt very insecure at every point of exit, not being able to see around the bend of what was in fact a very expansive solid wood dwelling. Wildlife had kept its distance because of the scent of dog in the past. Years had passed, and raccoons, bears, skunk, and even ground hogs got bolder and made themselves known as co-tenants of the property.

So, I did what needed to be done. No, I did not get a gun. I went to the pound and adopted a dog.

I was looking for a pit bull boxer mix that I was going to name Igor. And I found one.

My heart sank when I heard the bark. The most ear jarring yelp, one that I knew would agitate the cats who I had adopted two years prior from a shelter as feral adults, who were otherwise Bomb Proof. But this yelping nobody could possibly stand. In the compartment next to this idealized silver pit mix, was what I said I didn't want: a female German Shepard mixed with what I was told was Ridgeback, but later came to believe was actually Whippet, because she never ever had that doggie odor, even in the rain. And what a bark. Stellar. Adoption was near certain. My niece Molly would confirm for me if this was the "right dog," because I had conspired to myself that this dog would be partly hers since she is so keen on dogs.

When this dog was led out to me, alone, she showed respect and a docile-ness that was aristocratic. To revise any misconstrued imaginings, she looked like a fox. Red fur, with a little burn around the ears and muzzle, and tip of the tail which puffed accordingly. She was lithe and tall, with a narrow skull and frame of body, and exquisitely soulful amber eyes that betrayed a sadness, and a longing, the origins of which I understood in a short while. 

I should note that her name was Roxie on the certificate. If anyone knows me, you know that I have picked up many a rock in my lifetime and turned it over and over, peering at its inner essence, to draw out with paint and brush one of myriad of faces contained within... it was like a Sign to me. This was The Dog.

When I returned a second time, sure that I would indeed take her home, I brought Molly. It was agreed wholeheartedly. I asked Molly if we should maybe change the spelling of the name, as I knew she had been keen to rename, and this would be a good compromise. I did not dare change the name itself, because it was Perfect, and also because my lady was already 6 years old. It seemed unconscionable to change the sound, but the spelling was irrelevant to her though pertinent to us. Of course, Molly wanted a y; so she became Roxy. And when Roxy saw Molly, she came alive with a spark of joy that I seldom ever saw in all the years of her life. I soon understood why.

The pound knew of her full backstory. She had been owned by an elderly Missus who had passed away and left the dog to her son and his young family. The family had a little girl. Right about Molly's age. The family was at the time of abdication struggling with a newborn and having financial difficulties. Roxy was not lost. She was surrendered to the pound. Severed from her family, holding out hope... of a change of heart, or change of circumstance... She had been there only six days. The county required eight to check for distemper and other potential health or aggression issues.

I took Roxy home two days later and found to my astonishment that she was fully trained. Truly a gift. Sit, stay, heel, beg, paw, even roll over. She always asked to go out, abhorred soiling anything and was a veritable Princess. No, a Queen. Aloof as can be to me. Like a cat-dog someone might be prompted to quip. Yet whenever she sighted a little old Lady or a little girl age 6, she was beside herself with dog gone enthusiasm and that spark was back. How I loved to see her like that!!

Here is the heartbreak of the tale. Roxy enjoyed road trips and walks and tolerated me as new Master. Yet when I would say "Time to go home, Roxy," she would look about us so forlorn and lost that I stopped using that phrase. This it was clear was not home.

When I moved to Michigan, something in her broke altogether. True she was getting older, but 12 is hardly old. Life expectancy should have been 14 or even 16 years had her heart been in it. Soon after the move she lost her hearing. She began to get spells of vertigo so bad that made her look rabid, rapidly circling her own tail, heart racing unable to calm or sit down. It was like she had subsequently lost her mind and went mad. She was put on medication and that unparting sadness perpetuated her being. She began to lose her eyesight and control of her bladder. I made the wretched decision to have her put down.

I have every respect for her and for the comfort she brought to me as the smartest, most disciplined, attentive dog I have ever seen. I also know that she never loved me.

I like this topic. It seems secondary but is so very important a theme-- primary. I feel Friend is more of a verb conceptually than a noun. A Being rather than an Entity. A Becoming rather than a State. It is the relationship of one Self to an Other.

One is drawn to Others for reasons inexplicable. I use One very deliberately and avoid person, because this relationship occurs as much with other humans, as with animals, or objects even-- odd as that might sound. All depends on personality, more so than human nature. (Friendship is not reserved as a human capacity; and we know that One can be human, and unfriendly.)

My observation is that most people are Interested-- they are adherent to the idea that Friendship is Give & Take. With an emphasis almost inevitably on what is Received. Or if given, then on what is gained from the apprehension of the Receipt. Where genuine friendship exists, there is no such Transaction. 

To me the underlying trait of true Friend is Disinterest.

When you are Friending someone, or something, you do your best and with no expectations of return. You simply have a recognition of the need or needs of someone or something else and attend to it; whether it is being present, giving encouragement, or warning, or sustenance, it is done for the Good of the situation. Almost as if you have an unwritten obligation to that Other. Maybe from a past lifetime.

In the course of this opening up of One's Self to interaction, there is considerable risk. The Other has its own personality and characteristics. You run the risk of having your habits and thinking altered by that Other. A thing which may happen quite inadvertently and to the dismay of the Other, who suddenly finds things that were regarded with esteem to be vanquished in the necessary reaction that occurs when entities, on whatever level, meet. This occurred to me recently. I lost my ability to multitask. And everyone reassures me that it is for the best, that it's simply better to do one thing at a time, for the result of thing; but it is a Loss, to me, because it means simply that less gets done.

As an illustration of Friendship, I offer my Bajeczka. My familiar, whose name translates from the Polish to mean "Story," literally, though it could also be Fairytale. (*This is a true story.) My Bajeczka was half Siamese, half American Shorthair. Solid ginger, untypical for a female. Mackerel pattern. Her only brother, Słonecznik ("Sunflower") was Blotch tabby, also solid ginger. The two were born to our tiny red point Siamese, who my older sister had rescued from a tree with her friend Amy while at the bus stop. We were 12 and 14 respectively at the time. Free to good home, Słonecznik was adopted within minutes of "availability." Weeks passed. Nobody wanted Bajeczka, because she was female and deemed eventual kitten-making burden.

Nobody, I should say, except me. There was something about this cat that was unlike any I had ever experienced (and we'd had plenty, all great). I had this distinct feeling that I had been Friended. That this cat would choose my company even if I had nothing to give, in terms of material things (food, shelter, basic needs). Bajeczka saw me, and sought me, to perch on my shoulder as I did homework, or worked around the studio, or to take a walk in the yard with me side by side for 14 years. I suppose someone might say-- "sounds like a dog." To which I nod--depends on the dog.