Teak, The Poet Tree

  Oquaga Lake By Teak Kilmer June 30th, 2014     The Sense of smell was given us to beckon or repel   Oquaga Lake   Leaving Binghamton , New York on Old Route 17 from home the grasses, pines and wildflowers coalesced evermore into Joi de vries for the soul of this young boy – so sensitive, so pummeled by the city by its coal smoke, exhaust fumes its pressures and sweaty toils   I never think of home Twenty-one St. John Avenue without recollections of my paranoid schizophrenic, drug-vegetized … or raging, seldom bathed, cold creamed despairing mother’s odors … oft exaggerated by her anxiety of having to face another moment … or was that my angst infused aroma? Certainly both   But, oh, Oquaga Lake – that smell of sea weed pheromones decaying flora, sun drenched ions, ozone and dirt roads, abandoned tennis courts cedar shakes, our joy in being and playing in the wild out of doors the rotting of old garages and

Peter Schmitz Eulogy By Teak Kilmer December 27, 2004     Do you hear me weeping, Peter Schmitz? See me writhing? Feel my anguish? Word of your illness had not reached me Now, they tell me, you are gone from here   The shock makes bright and loud my grief makes memories roll out like carpets of ways that you have touched me I honor you with tears and recollections of your wonder   I cannot yet imagine our Seward without your joy to see me – greeting me asking how I’m doing with sincerity so pure so assuring and so easy   You were constant in all the many virtues that showed up as Peter Schmitz in wisdom, mystery, vision, intuition, authenticity and service …  justice, kindness, humor, talent … in writing and in art but mostly in being fully human   Love always preceded you and fulfilled you You embraced who God made you and all the courage that that demanded You determined for your Self what Truth and Spirit are and stood in that shining light before us, beside us and within us   You

  Poet’s Intent By Teak Kilmer   My head is full of cleverness My purse is full of naught When I but untwixt this twain I’ll have all that I ought

  The Most Popular Penchant of Poets By Teak Kilmer   There is a joy in writing a rhyme that comes into my head for the fleetingest time but most often by far I’m within myself fighting   the poet’s pastime of greatest delighting

  Our Dear Cathy By Teak Kilmer A Birthday Tribute May 23 rd , 2010   Your love and grace and caring your prose, your laugh and daring you’re reporting how you’re faring being honest without sparing bringing comfort to my despairing when from Myself I’d been wayfaring   When we see you, smiles we are wearing because humanity’s committee you are chairing to all of us bring unsparing upbearing this despite and because of your childhood ensnaring into emotion’s depths to your inner kid so scaring from your true and joyful self-uptearing   that few have been as brave as you, forswearing temptations to let these of your soul be tearing You’ve taken sensibility and pain to go tale-bearing to one and many, as your friends (as we) are underbearing   and so together help those alike by stories sharing with all the love available for sparing you are aglow and glaring     And I and we love you: we are this happy birthday day thus declaring

  Oh, Thomas, My Thomas A Love Song to My Friend On your Birthday June 17, 2010 By Teak Kilmer     Oh, Thomas, my Thomas You fulfill the promise of friendship, of kinship, of companionship that’s blue chip stewardship and lots’a lip. thus cheerio and pip pip!!   For your love and support it’s with you I comport You’re a major seaport, resort and (davenport?) of my loneliness to deport What a sport!!   Your laughter and your gaity upraise my joculaity , for which I have insatiaiety You soothe my blues and greyity when I feel like Humpty Dumpity You’re the Highness of happieity Oh, whoopdidoieity!!   Your forgiveness and understanding are on my heart and soul a’landing bringing grace and hope within me standing whilst you are humanitarianding to myself and all who would be banding into a life supporting outfit from yucky to outstanding Yea, the world’s a better place because you’re my friend foreveranding!!

  My Tub by Teak Kilmer summer of 2008     MY tub – it gives me succor, snuggles me up to my laughing place, that nest within that evades my worldly, hapless exploration   I busify, over-think and overdo, over-expect when just a warm and soapy soak away awaits embrace of first memory   My tub – it beckons me and with my trove of candles it harbors rapids to massage my places   or still waters to lend recall of amniosis when all was done and won for me no effort, no care for damage   My tub – induces and allows recall of … all is well, but by believing in One on One with All and All   The Oneness, the Eternal Now – All there is, was or ever will be – the Now, the Now where All is just a bunch of fine and doodle dandy   My tub – the alter of my church, the reconciliation of my thoughts of burden where down the drain they’ll go   relinquished to solution Grand. cleansed – within, without ─ baptized anew  

  MY PRAYER By Teak Kilmer   circa 1997     Quickly from the burden I would be Then it dawns from myself I flee And from Spirit and joy that by the burden beckon me, And now I do the work in harmony As now through clearer Glass I see And notice evermore the work is really done by thee.

  My Mind is a Poem By Teak Kilmer Circa 1999     My Mind is a Poem My Heart is a poem My soul is a poem My body is hungry … I sell cars       Written while driving to a psychotherapy appointment mostly at traffic lights, but some during the process of driving.    

  Muses Quotes Added April 2005 Quotes I used to share at mental health, department of education, MN state conventions and at middle and high school auditoriums recited along with my own poems and quotes for the benefit especially of those suffering from mental illness, yet blessed with gifts many of which were undiscovered. My wife JoAnne played flute and piano pieces by famous composers who had and do have these compound conditions in order to encourage the presently encumbered to pursue their gifts in order to give to themselves to their compatriots and to the world. JoAnne and I worked with a marvelous organization called “Touched by the Muses”. Among other works of mine, we included my poems "Burning" and "The Fats of Life".       “Terror drove me from place to place. My breath failed me as I pictured my brain paralyzed.   Ah, Clara, no one knows the suffering, the sickness, the despair of this illness, except those so crushed.” Composer Robert

In the journaling group at our drop-in center for the mentally ill, Michelle passes around a photo of a building and asks us to write about what we would use this building for if money were not an issue.   I am, fortunately, the last in the group to read what we have written. I somehow hand-printed this within thirty minutes.   This World Insane: The MultiVerse By: Teak Kilmer   January 20, 2006   The will to live keeps one alive longer so what does the fear of death do? Creative people have twice as much sex as do   the uninspired, drudge-alongs and power seekers so why are there so many more of   them than us and why do they aspire so to dominate what they are destroying or ignore, deny truth and facts and militantly support those that do?   In these alone they are creative: in the spinning of the tale and blaming it on “The Word of God” and making interchangeable: flag and cross and gun Where is the " Pro-Life"  in war? Do only un-borns c

  Most Alive By Teak Kilmer July 2, 2006     When in the writing, I am belly to belly with the Great One this, the first Joy; then the sharing ─ these bits of Spirit We roll in the grass in blessed recognition of essence, of beauty I sit again, now ready to reflect grace with the Nikon   I pose as the cameraman, they as themselves: the Nature’s creatures Our equals, not in intellect, but in wisdom, in divine purpose We need their instruction, their glorious, reassuring companionship The photos will, when done, if done well, impart these truths   Our souls are not in wallets, but in chipmunks, in surf’s rhythm, Not in castles but in cardinals, in mountains, in silver-swords and goldfinch, in sunrise and rufus sided towhees and in the laughing brook These bring my soul to me   I swim at midnight in lake far into the wolf’s howl eagle, gull and beaver, trout and kayak singing one song I have biked and walked the waterfall, my spirit has no secr

  LipStuck By Thalas “Teak” Kilmer Circa Christmas time 2005 Written to my eternal wife, JoAnne   Written on the inside of a blank greeting card. The cover is of “Gerda and the reindeer” from Stories by Hans Christian Andersen (1911).   A very pale girl in a clearing by a wood leans forward to kiss a bewildered reindeer … smack upon the lips. Though these two meet in the snow, Gerda is barefooted and wears but a whispy dress. I suspect their lips may still be frozen together; 94 years hence.   My darling JoAnne,   You are the glorious white chocolate divinity on the left you of the brave and trusting heart softer in demeanor than the snow we trod upon fresher than the woodsy, winter air more joyful than spiritual victory more lovely than collages of wildflowers more awesome than supernovae and cosmic dust clouds painted by godesses more intricate than fractals more loving than angels as mysterious as God’s mind   I am the hairy, horny

  I Have the Red, White and Blues   By Teak Kilmer March 3, 2006   Bush knew beforehand about the levees AND 9/11… long before they happened; suppressed all investigations, so that the World Trade Center would be destroyed, and Americans would be outraged; creating an external enemy, so we do not notice the real enemy is within; the rich always start the wars. Jet fuel burns at only 1500 degrees Fahrenheit maximum and it takes 2200 degrees Fahrenheit to melt steel girders. They immediately buried all the rubble, destroyed all evidence. George and his Dick used that and totally contrived lies , including to Congress ─ another criminal, impeachable offense ─ to illegally invade Iraq and Afghanistan to steal more oil for the huge corporations which own our and most of the world's governments.  Read Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, and The Greatest Government Money Can Buy . Were our corporations CIA/NSA backing   9/11?   We should put George Bush’s picture on the Tri