I am a monster of my own making;
molded to the mask,
collecting quarters for the carousel,
dying to get off.
Studied in storied academe,
hallowed to entice
in prolix eruditions
though one word would suffice.
(tweeted 02/11/2014)
Ghost God of the dying promise,
Distant tyrant:
Take this my body that is broken by you
and forgive me trespass into shadows of doubt.
for Lisa
I find my love in neither flame nor flower,
but templed in solid stone.
Tempered by time and circumstance;
Glowing in the reflected light of years:
I find my love in strong limbed children;
In stirred air and beating wings;
In eager minds and fledgling passions;
In the pains of new people, real and becoming.
I find my love in incessant dogs barking;
In stubbed toes and heatless conflicts;
In a tumult of trivialities;
In the mundane flows of eventless days.
I find you My Love, changed yet unchanging,
flame to a stone hearth,
a field full of flowers,
a bed, and a home.
I stand here, My Love,
just as lost as you found me,
warted and broken,
but, Nevermore alone.
Black stand on a white field frozen
Distant Sol mocks promise unfulfilled.
Crystal fallen jests reflected
Reject booted traveler and trace.
(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.