Leaves and bark make up the dark
that no one ever sees
we shape the wood and pick the fruit
but still don’t know the trees
(tweeted 01/23/2014)
Comfortable bed
on a cold winter day
Duty is calling
as I drift away
Heavy hearted days will pass
leading to the morrow
when apprehension’s conjurings
turn to anguish and to sorrow
Casually killing our limited time
taxes all imaginations
while carried to passion on currents of thought
ready made and unexamined
Thoughts, too many
options abound
I don’t need inspiration
just help finding the ground
Sanity crawls on a tightrope of reason;
fibers of faith
anchored to the unknown
leading to darkness.
Stem to stern and ship to shore
Composing rhyme is not a chore
no plot required, no complex scheming
the magic lies within the meaning
Bootless walk the muddled mess
pebbles prod, thorns prick
a blood sacrifice
mingled droppings of a generation
without distinction –
equal
(first appeared in “The Lyric”, Volume 73, No.1 – Winter 1993)
Poor me, we cry, then wash our hands;
this world of ours makes such demands
and no one knows just where we stand
and so we stand for nothing.
For now we hold, as science shows:
that nothing is and no one knows.
Our course is cast upon the flows
of, from, and back to nothing.
We build our castles by the sea
and conscious of the irony,
ignore the tides of destiny
as if we thought them nothing.
(first appeared in “The Lyric”, Volume 73, No.1 – Winter 1993)
Awake again to tasks and daily ways;
Reluctant rise to foot the well worn soil,
the stomach calls, the spirit set, obeys;
surrenders contemplation for the toil.
Plunged from a slumberous sanctum into moil,
the mind proscribed to nigglings magnifies
each feather-weighted doing to a deed,
each step to leap, each act to enterprise.
The flesh, disdainful, strives to solemnize
the squalid thoughts which witlessly obey;
that void of sovereign value hold the prize
of sustenance for the ensuing day.
The torpid night serves only to restore
sufficient dint to propagate the chore.