A poem for those stuck in traffic:
Trafficking
You are stuck
In traffic
Never quiet realizing
You
Aaaaargh
Traffic
A poem for those stuck in traffic:
Trafficking
You are stuck
In traffic
Never quiet realizing
You
Aaaaargh
Traffic
A six word poem on what poetry is:
Poetry
Words
Word
Know words
No words
I have never been a big fan of normal. “Getting back to normal” strikes me as a somewhat low bar. Every “new” normal seems eerily similar to previous uninspiring states of normal. This sense of mine is similar to the sentiment expressed in the movie, Steel Magnolias: “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.” May we dare to live a life full of wonder, even at great cost to a “normal” life.
Normal Eyes
Just a bunch
Of regular guise
I’ing
What peers
As normal eyes
In listing
The rank
And file scores
Ires
Looking to return
To earlier daze
In a bit of a craze
That grievance of being
Owed fashion
And awe the rage
Perhaps even a furor
They were desperate
For a mythical time
At best
Not so
Sow grate
Inquest for normal
More mine than yore
A true norm ill
They looked into the sole of US
Exhibit won of sow much soiled
Run US, run US
And the alleged ascent to we’ll
Throw awe others
Under the bussed
As condemn nation tired
Full of tread
On me and you
Living under the tales of elephants for gotten
Or living in such an illusive notion
Ass stable as won could ever be
Bequeathing US
On going retro grade
Of all F’s
Efficiency is highly overrated. The abundant life is not well defined by ultra-precise engineering.
Efficient Love
An award no one yearned for:
Most efficient love
Weather child or mate
Strikingly spare
That scant do attitude
Eager for meager
Barren awe
With foreboding forbidding
Know abundance chaste
In accessible bounty
That largesse prize possible
Paid
The minimum
I have had this awareness that any direction we run, we run into the arms of God. Off course, the staggeringly long run peers quite vexing.
To Arms
I was annoyed
By an atheist
And his militancy
Of inept God herd
And God intimated
Quiet pleas
As a dove on won’s shoulder
I am
Well
Pleased
My child
No madder
Even the serpentine route
Awe leading
To arms
Violence begets violence. Violence begs violence. Violence gets violence.
The Problem with Violence
To every axing
There is an equal
And opposite axing
It only takes
A wile
When light and dark clash…
In Sighting a Right
The light shone on
Their misdeeds
ON fool display
OFF to the razes
Tripping and flipping
That awe im-potent switch
Tempting too turn off
Soully to be disconnected
In their desperation
Closing their I’s
Groping that lifeless switch
Soully lashing out
Their dim mines
Effacing the light
More sow like cockroaches
Scuttling in the shadows
Temping to void the light
Flailing miserably
Won buy land
To bye see
Jousting lyin’s in the sand
A horizon
They cannot cross
Sun rise
The inevitable a rival
Round and round
Dark daze and new mournings
Blessedly give
Way too
Radiant futures
Beyond just
Sight
I wrote this poem for the Toledo Museum of Art poetry contest this year. I didn’t win, so my status as an amateur poet is intact. This poem is a love poem beyond the grave, mourning a lost lover.
This is an ekphratic poem, a poem based on a work of art. This is the work of art, of 10 selected by the museum, that I chose to write about:
Here is the Toledo Museum of Art’s description:
Egypt, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18 (about 1479–1298 BCE), Pair of Hand Wands, wood with inlaid wood decoration
Pairs of clappers in the form of human arms and hands were popular musical instruments. They were tied together and played by shaking them so that they clacked together. Also called clap sticks or hand wands, clappers were often tomb gifts because their form and the noise they made were believed to drive away harmful spirits in this life and the next. This pair’s elongated, graceful lines and elegant craftsmanship are typical of New Kingdom Egyptian art.
I’d Give My Write Arm for the Sound of You
What wood I give
To remedy a life without
A body
Of music
That sweet song of your being
Now in that cryptic dwelling
Of eternity’s embrace
Fare well two arms
Given awe that is sow right
And that only left
Rattled
Only hoping to transcend
That perplexing realm
Of one hand clapping
And halve the tomb of our life
Our soul escape
In treating us to be
An instrument
Of ceaseless song
Oh happy day
To be more than
Lyric without note
Are you tapped? There is an inexhaustible reservoir of awe.
Awe is Not Lost
Awe is not lost
Awe is the soul compass
Of true-hearted folks
The antidote
To narrow mined view points
Teeming with succors of all kinds
And throwing balms wildly
In awe directions
Today is another good day to end the U.S.-Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This poem goes out to the Palestinian people.
Unentitle Fight
U.S.-Israeli genocide
Round nein!
The bell
He of the beast
Verses people of awe kinds
Refusing to be boxed
Proffering to dance
What might
Have a ring to it
Preferring weddings
Over funerals
And just
Married to life
Here is a simple poem reflecting on my deinstitutionalization from church about a dozen years a go.
I a Door
I don’t go to church anymore
Church comes to me
Of course, I do find myself
In church on rare occasions
It is just
That I fine
More and more occasions
Are simply rare
And I a door
This morning as I left the house, on a grungy fall day, I almost forgot my usual survey of my beautiful front yard, albeit with denuded trees and a carpet of wet leaves. As I walked away, I remembered, turned left, and over my shoulder I saw a single white rose blooming. The rose blooms this year were as scant as I can recall. Still, this bloom arose, after being touched, by the first snow. In recent years, I have come to believe that in God’s want ads there are innumerable job openings for humans to witness nature, often unwitnessed by human eyes. These job openings are largely unfilled, and these openings re-present countless opportunities for an opening of human hearts. Prophets are arising. May we see the signs and respond with open hearts.
Arose
The land had been snowed
Again
Deep in
The fall
Froze
Still
There a peer
A single white rose
Arose
By any other name
Arose
NOTE: for another layer of meaning, The White Rose was a German resistance movement in Nazi Germany.
The just persist.
Fallen Reign
The reign fell
On the just
And the knot sow just
And might be
What is it
A boat
As the tide razes all
Weather you Noah or not
That which bids
An olive branch
Like goaled
At the end
Of a rainbow
Never agin
Here is a poem about the future, with two competing views; one anchored in both antiquity and eternity, multigenerational — the long view; versus another, characterized by the 30-second ad, 24-hour news cycle, and quarterly earnings reports — the short view. Hope abides and sneaks up on us with creative outbursts, even in the face of short-sighted, self-destructive weighs.
The Future, The Passed
He abode
So far
Into the future
To fix your eye
On him
Would peer
Only as a might
A mote uncrossed
Not worth won’s tension
And to boot
Far in arrears
He wrested
Rooted in times so ancient
What ever
Turn a bout
Would halve a mind to mete
Olden daze
Cleaving the novel
Awe weighs losing out
To a 30-second add
That curser-y lessen
Of the quick and the dead
That witch will
Last
In efface of that unquenchable first
Here is a poem in honor of COP 29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference happening now. The usual suspects, including a fossil-fuel friendly chair and a slew of fossil fuel lobbyists, will fiddle while Rome and all distant provinces burn.
Your Fired
The plan
It on fire
We are fuels
Won and all
Boosters of crude
Polluting heir
Water
And soil
Our earth
Going nuclear
Such a waste
In hour 10,000 year rain
Bought a bout
Buy a hole fracking planet
Mine, mine, mine
Everything except the carbon sync
Extracting that on the money rendition
Of Mother Earth
And awe the wile
Wee are tolled
We have nothing to sphere
But sphere itself
Sow ledges
The master raze
Gloriously economical
Plenty of Jobs
On a planet dying
To give us life
What are we
Missing
Re: generation
In these somewhat psychotic days, some may be tempted to believe that we can act outside of history, or ignore it. Still, I suspect that reality will have its way with us. This may lead to the inertia of history acting akin to the quote: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, but only after exhausting every other possibility.” [attributed in some form to Winston Churchill] I am more hopeful. I see an irreducible human spirit that rises in the face of injustice. The greater the injustice, the greater the fuel for this spark to start a fire in our collective hearts. Then, there is know greater force in the world.
I’ll Have a Side of History
History is often
Like the last kid picked
Fore a team
Its secreted virtue rascality
As serendipitous as fate
Underestimated
Its irreproachable timing eternal
The best on its side
Fulfilling the worthy work of sentries
Fiery generations unmatched
Awe weighs on the right side
A short poem to remind us that awe is not lost.
Bred of Life
Eternity calls
In every moment most kneaded
Bred for ever and ever
Flower and sweetness
Salty tears
Water yielding to life
In tending
The yeast of these
Time gives rise to awe
One small hope in the unfolding Trump regime is that the off-the-charts power-mongering and corruption will result in minions behaving like scorpions in a bottle, turning on one another, perhaps degrading their degrading schemes.
Scorpions in a Bottle
The ultimate con quest
Won wring
Too rule them all
They have
Dissembled together
Dough minions
Of every manor
Their savvy genius rounded up
Their whored of power
Stacked
As giving
As a hill of beings
As the profits speak
What lack he
O death wear
Is thy sting
A morality
Slipping
On barrels of snake oil
A mortality
Sipping
On poison
Its soul weapon
A battle fool of fateful pricks
And all that madders
What race engender
That will
Get me a cross
That finish lyin’
The myth of Icarus is one of hubris. Icarus fashions wings of feathers and wax and flies toward the sun. Untoward to him, the sun melts his wings and he plunges back to earth –for a new sort of flies…
Icarus Flies — The Gathering
As Icarus flies
We wax on
Wee are awe that
Dissembling
Such reverence
Fore all of our droppings
Love is bigger than hate.
Healing Fire
I am naught
Created by my enemies
The most fateful of lessens
I am awe
In the presents
Of my One True Friend
My soul in large
A journey to love true
That healing fire
Never forged by hate