Potent poetry
Is like a steel fishing hook
That skewers your thumb.
The smiling orchid
Foolishly crosses my path
Dealt the kick of death.
Licking matted fur
With the unruffled finesse
Only a cat has.
Gold foil packages
Laced with red and green ribbons?
Show me the money!
Bountiful bookcase
Bulging with decades-old dreams
A mere megabyte.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
More Haiku
Husband hurries home
Where winsome wife is waiting
Holding a striped cat.
Pages from the past
Turn to a new medium
A digital death.
Baring your soul
Through clues in your handwriting
Inevitable.
Simple wooden stick
That holds so many stories
It will never tell.
Each arriving train
Promising to bring my love
Pours out empty crowds.
Dreams have no power
But that which we allow them
Neither do nightmares.
Pithily-packed thoughts
If they were to be unwrapped
Would fill volumes.
Smirking cat sleeping
Atop unread newspapers
Knows more than you think.
A simple house cat
May seem lazy and stupid
But who waits on whom?
Maybe creation
Blinks in and out of being
When we are asleep.
Sleep is like a rat
That scurries across my chest
When I least expect.
Cymbals held ready
The thunder patiently waits
For the signal flash.
Photographers camp
Those spies with their black boxes
They don't belong here.
Where winsome wife is waiting
Holding a striped cat.
Pages from the past
Turn to a new medium
A digital death.
Baring your soul
Through clues in your handwriting
Inevitable.
Simple wooden stick
That holds so many stories
It will never tell.
Each arriving train
Promising to bring my love
Pours out empty crowds.
Dreams have no power
But that which we allow them
Neither do nightmares.
Pithily-packed thoughts
If they were to be unwrapped
Would fill volumes.
Smirking cat sleeping
Atop unread newspapers
Knows more than you think.
A simple house cat
May seem lazy and stupid
But who waits on whom?
Maybe creation
Blinks in and out of being
When we are asleep.
Sleep is like a rat
That scurries across my chest
When I least expect.
Cymbals held ready
The thunder patiently waits
For the signal flash.
Photographers camp
Those spies with their black boxes
They don't belong here.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Nothing Else in This World
Death is not what I fear, but I dread death denied.
When all reason has vanished, all memory gone
And when loved ones are strangers, how can I abide
That perverted existence that settles upon
The uncounted infirm, neither living nor dead?
When I plunge to the point where I need help to don
My own clothes in the morning, or get out of bed
Let me join buried brothers, the happily spared-
Do not feed me at all if I have to be fed.
Very lucky are corpses to zombies compared.
Even ghosts are not trapped in some rickety shell.
Will I cross the bar seamlessly, or be ensnared
Forced to languish for years in a half-living hell?
Far too many I’ve seen, unaware of their plight
Wander lost through the halls of the places they dwell.
Days without demarcation, that blur into night
Nothing else in this world gives me more of a fright.
When all reason has vanished, all memory gone
And when loved ones are strangers, how can I abide
That perverted existence that settles upon
The uncounted infirm, neither living nor dead?
When I plunge to the point where I need help to don
My own clothes in the morning, or get out of bed
Let me join buried brothers, the happily spared-
Do not feed me at all if I have to be fed.
Very lucky are corpses to zombies compared.
Even ghosts are not trapped in some rickety shell.
Will I cross the bar seamlessly, or be ensnared
Forced to languish for years in a half-living hell?
Far too many I’ve seen, unaware of their plight
Wander lost through the halls of the places they dwell.
Days without demarcation, that blur into night
Nothing else in this world gives me more of a fright.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Memento Mori
Photo by Didier Descouens
Always more a diaphanous veil than a swaddling blanket
Is drawn away
Not by a pale, ghoulish hand
But a soft, silent breath
Which whispers across my face:
Memento Mori.
At the horizon I see
That perennial game of hide-and-seek played out
And I return
To irrelevant reckonings
When I hear a muted murmur
Floating in the air.
Memento Mori.
I have a great day
But one that is somehow tempered by a simple lesson in geometry
For I know
That I am not a circle
But a line segment.
Who Looks Too Hard For Poems
Who looks too hard for poems never finds them.
A myriad of verses uncreated
Eludes aspiring scribes whose hubris binds them
To wrestle words that won’t be syncopated.
A myriad of verses uncreated
Will taunt the poet overly-ambitious
To wrestle words that won’t be syncopated.
Those budding stanzas, seemingly propitious
Will taunt the poet overly-ambitious.
What most propels the poet into madness?
Those budding stanzas, seemingly propitious.
Initial jubilation turns to sadness.
What most propels the poet into madness
Eludes aspiring scribes whose hubris binds them.
Initial jubilation turns to sadness.
Who looks too hard for poems never finds them.
A myriad of verses uncreated
Eludes aspiring scribes whose hubris binds them
To wrestle words that won’t be syncopated.
A myriad of verses uncreated
Will taunt the poet overly-ambitious
To wrestle words that won’t be syncopated.
Those budding stanzas, seemingly propitious
Will taunt the poet overly-ambitious.
What most propels the poet into madness?
Those budding stanzas, seemingly propitious.
Initial jubilation turns to sadness.
What most propels the poet into madness
Eludes aspiring scribes whose hubris binds them.
Initial jubilation turns to sadness.
Who looks too hard for poems never finds them.
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