Recently in Poetry Category

Reflections of a Twentieth Century Bard

By JRL on October 1, 2009 11:19 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

After the "Song of Amergin"

I have been a fly on the wall of a corporate meeting
I have been a child lost in snow that drifted roof high
I have been a broke-winged bird, flightless through winter
I have been a prisoner in some Gothic dungeon
I have been a supporter of lost, hopeless causes
I have been a wandering fool, aimless and goal-less
I have been a prodigal son for whom died the fatted calves
I have been a homeless man in cities of great wealth.

I have been a harsh word whispered in a darkened alley
I have been a silver slick carp, no good for the fry pan
I have been a glee-man singer for spare change and train fare
I have been a ragged voice crying in the wildness
I have been a drowsy student of life's strange instructors
I have been a trust fund baby given deceptive means
I have been a reed in the wind blown aside by gale force
I have been a poet stoned with drunk and swollen words.

I have been a teacher of some useful knowledge
I have been a night janitor in the halls of justice
I have been a poor cross-maker, Pharisee and martyr
I have been a young soldier, grown old in the battle
I have been a raging fire made from drenched matches
I have been a quick perceptor without a portfolio
I have been a childhood plowman, tiller of the earth
I have been a knowing victim of victimless crime.

I have been a cold white speck in a snowfall blizzard
I have been a big, loud fish in an empty trout pond
I have been a moving current and the dry of drought
I have been a helpful force to some creative light
I have been a drifting cloud on the face of the sun
I have been a changeling spirit of the moonless night
I have been a watcher of winds that shape the noon sky
I have been a friend of the trees that breathe the earth's air.

Who, more than I, can claim to have been loved?
Who, having also being lost, can with more conviction believe themselves found?
Who else, having for so long lived under a curse of their own making,
Has been more blessed?

29 MAR 2000

The Holy Fool's Lament

By JRL on September 27, 2009 2:23 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
for Pietro

My blood is thinned from summer's passion;
where I once could stand
the chill of winter's disposition,
now I am unmanned
by this untimely season;
and the harvest I once sought
I find now sells for such a price
it won't be quickly bought.

So I who once was drowning
in the glow of love, find drought;
and you, who I thought my soul's twin,
decide to do without
what I believed was mother's milk,
and manna from above:
my life as sow's ear, turned to silk
with the touch of your love.

For years I sought you out, I thought
to win love, like a prize;
but found a bitter-sweet reward:
just laughter, in your eyes,
where I found nothing but regret
for all those wasted years
I spent in search of some ideal
to best both lust, and fear.

Such fantasies may feed and grow
but offer nothing real;
they hide what you already know
in shadows, and conceal
the simple truth as your time wanes
in frivolous pursuit,
and as you near the harvest
leave just rotted, bitter fruit.

So what is love?  What do I know?
I thought myself immune,
but strangely find September
feels alive and much like June;
and you, who I imagined just
one half of my extreme,
have turned into the one I must
both have and hold, and dream.

27 SEP 2009

Ground Zero

By JRL on September 17, 2009 4:13 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

What conversation would you like rejoined,
pretending that no years have intervened
and that the cares we once thought so immense
still weigh in at their same old magnitude,
when those long idle hours spent in talk
with no intent except to measure time
with Prufrock’s gilded set of coffee spoons,
pretending some profundity in words
that seemed so easy then, rolled off the clock
like AWOL soldiers beyond duty’s fence?

What alternate reality would seem
the right place, now, to take up where we left,
imagining somehow the world had stopped
at just that precise moment when we two
in some ungainly ballet both were cast,
commanding neither balance or much grace,
and fumbled blindly at each other’s steps?
The music for that dance has long since stopped.
An awkward silence echoes from the stage
that swallows whole all kinds of might-have-beens.

What conversation that we never had
(at least, aloud in words, in the same room)
needs finishing at this point in our lives?
There is more water underneath that bridge
than fills the seven oceans of the world.
No, if we speak again, let’s talk as friends
who simply compare mileage and confess
no secrets, or regret for past mistakes;
what participles dangle in the mist
are sentences we’ve both served long enough. 

17 SEP 2009

High School Reunion Musical

By JRL on September 14, 2009 8:51 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Someone told me once we never grow
beyond the point we turn the age eighteen:
what insecurities we carried then
still manifest themselves throughout our lives.

That makes those speeches every June
(you know the ones that say life's just begun)
much more than naive lies, and still the truth:
depends on just how much you would believe.

I wonder if it's like the weakling boy
who overcomes his limited physique
by spending endless hours in the gym
to change the image in the mirror,
but never runs quite fast enough to flee
the sickly shadow he would leave behind.

Could be the "eighteen" theory's full of shit;
What would the world be if we never grew
beyond the high school notions that we held
to be so absolute and crystal clear?

A playground laid out on a global scale,
with territories marked in black and white,
a constant "them" and "us" dividing up
the haves from the have-nots, and so forth.

We must evolve.  I'd like to think we do,
although it often takes ten years or more
to come to terms with who we thought we were
(in contrast with what we had yet to prove).
How many of us reach the other side
with anything but memories left alive?

14 SEP 2009


I do not wish to change the world

By JRL on September 11, 2009 8:51 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I do not wish to change the world;
its own design is near enough
some muddled state of constant flux
that nothing I could add or try
would make much difference in the end.

I do not wish to shape or mold
young minds to fit my own intent;
Ye gods!  Imagine them grown up
and emulating my life's work!
Why duplicate such a mistake?

I do not wish to change your mind,
or gain your trust or force your hand;
my own revolt at such nonsense
turns my own stomach into knots;
I can imagine your dismay.

I do not wish to change the world.
I cannot even change my mind
or stay a course for long enough
to make a ripple in a pond;
one moment here, and the next, gone.

11 SEP 2009

Water seeks its own level

By JRL on September 1, 2009 11:47 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

Here's a poem I wrote some time back:

"Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion ---
Hindus, Mohammedans, Brâhmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they
never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Úiva, and
bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Âllâh as well --- the
same Râma with a thousand names. A lake has several ghâts. At one
the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the
Mussalmâns take water in leather bags and call it 'pâni'. At a third
the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal',
but only 'pâni' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One
under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance;
only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man
follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God,
peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."-- Sri Ramakrishna
(1836-1886)

Water seeks its own level,
on a quest to find the sea;
The answers we seek taste of metal,
our understanding like liquid drawn from a well
that finds the hard edges
of knowing, the galvanized pail
holding the essence of our being
in one place, in this world.

What is outside this frame of steel,
this skeleton that time binds to this space?
To where are we going?
From where did we come?

What can we know of answers,
we who will be one day poured from this bucket
into the ocean?

What need is there of questions then,
when we are part of the wave?

And to those who are still on the shore, separate,
how shall we describe
what is gained, what is lost?

21 DEC 2004


Face to Face

By JRL on August 26, 2009 9:34 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
We reconnect through wireless means -
no strings attached, just memories
like wisps of smoke we can't inhale
without a self-accusing stare.

Like ghosts, we shuffle wall to wall
and watch as life unfolds somewhere,
where we could be, on different paths,
some roads less traveled, others not.

We fondly look in retrospect
at days long gone, and former lives;
our innocence, perhaps, our joy -
some part of us we think now lost.

It's just illusion that we weave,
this semblance of the village square
that in an instant may be gone.
It's really just us, standing there.

And what do we have left say?
Not much. We share our politics,
or random thoughts about the world
that make us feel as if we care

beyond this circle in the dust
of wild electrons spinning 'round
that gives us substance in this mist
and makes us seem alive again.

26 AUG 2009

@everyone

By JRL on August 10, 2009 6:39 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
It's all exposed online, you understand:
my life is more or less an open book:
my birth, my education, then my work,
and shared, too, all too soon, sickness and death.

The details that might make my trip unique
are no more poignant, pithy or sublime
than those comprising your own storyline;
if you want juicy gossip, look within.

This fascination with the small details
that keeps us all so spellbound with delight
as constant updates try, in little bites,
to feed our self-important appetites:

where does it end? And can such urgent lives
except in death expect to find much peace?

10 AUG 2009

Working on a Building

By JRL on August 7, 2009 8:39 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
You are what you are because of your past daily habits. Day by day you must make or break your body. You either build it up or tear it down. - Angelo Siciliano (Charles Atlas)
The way we live our lives is not one choice
that made, concludes the match or casts the die
beyond a moment's span or single day.
Like a deep breath once taken, it expires

and needs to be renewed, or else will fail;
and like that ring inscribed "this too shall pass"
that brought a sense of balance to a king:
when happy, knowing there was coming sad,

while in great sadness, finding seeds of joy,
so the decision that we make each day
to sow new life (or increment our death,
as Henry Miller put it so damn well)

determines who we are - not for all time,
but for each precious second of our lives.

07 AUG 2009

Other Colors Besides Black

By JRL on August 5, 2009 10:02 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I often wondered, when I was a goth
(did we have that name back in '85?)
about the downward spiral of the world;
and contemplated shadows, where I thought

the secrets of the universe were kept.
From chiaroscuro, I firmly believed,
a balance quite long-lost could be restored.
But just how deep I thought, I question now;

it could be I was restless, young and bored
with trying to achieve so-called success,
and plotted revolutions in my mind
that would require no real degree of work.

With who I used to be, I'd like to share
a lesson learned from twenty shadowed years:
there are so many colors besides black;
the only limits are imagined ones.

05 AUG 2009

All Entries in Poetry Category

  • Reflections of a Twentieth Century Bard October 1, 2009 11:19 PM: After the "Song of Amergin" I have been a fly on the wall of a corporate meeting I have been a child lost in snow that drifted roof high I have been a broke-winged bird, flightless through winter I...
  • The Holy Fool's Lament September 27, 2009 2:23 PM: for PietroMy blood is thinned from summer's passion;where I once could standthe chill of winter's disposition,now I am unmannedby this untimely season;and the harvest I once soughtI find now sells for such a priceit won't be quickly bought.So I who...
  • Ground Zero September 17, 2009 4:13 PM: What conversation would you like rejoined,pretending that no years have intervenedand that the cares we once thought so immensestill weigh in at their same old magnitude,when those long idle hours spent in talkwith no intent except to measure timewith Prufrock's...
  • High School Reunion Musical September 14, 2009 8:51 AM: Someone told me once we never growbeyond the point we turn the age eighteen:what insecurities we carried thenstill manifest themselves throughout our lives.That makes those speeches every June(you know the ones that say life's just begun)much more than naive lies,...
  • I do not wish to change the world September 11, 2009 8:51 AM: I do not wish to change the world;its own design is near enoughsome muddled state of constant fluxthat nothing I could add or trywould make much difference in the end.I do not wish to shape or moldyoung minds to fit...
  • Water seeks its own level September 1, 2009 11:47 AM: Here's a poem I wrote some time back:"Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion --- Hindus, Mohammedans, Brâhmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called...
  • Face to Face August 26, 2009 9:34 AM: We reconnect through wireless means - no strings attached, just memories like wisps of smoke we can't inhale without a self-accusing stare. Like ghosts, we shuffle wall to wall and watch as life unfolds somewhere, where we could be, on...
  • @everyone August 10, 2009 6:39 PM: It's all exposed online, you understand: my life is more or less an open book: my birth, my education, then my work, and shared, too, all too soon, sickness and death. The details that might make my trip unique are...
  • Working on a Building August 7, 2009 8:39 AM: You are what you are because of your past daily habits. Day by day you must make or break your body. You either build it up or tear it down. - Angelo Siciliano (Charles Atlas) The way we live our...
  • Other Colors Besides Black August 5, 2009 10:02 AM: I often wondered, when I was a goth (did we have that name back in '85?) about the downward spiral of the world; and contemplated shadows, where I thought the secrets of the universe were kept. From chiaroscuro, I firmly...
  • No Time But the Present August 4, 2009 12:40 PM: Time was when I used to write a sonnet a day - for about two years, if you care to look back through the archives here.  I think it's time to kick start that old tradition. You know the saying...
  • There is a wall around a thing May 29, 2009 4:28 PM: There is a wall around a thing that does not know to love that keeps it safe, in some sad way, and far from the great harm experience brings with it when it visits and leaves broken pots and pans,...
  • There is a poem, somewhere, here March 11, 2009 11:25 PM: There is a poem, somewhere, here, behind these words that ramble on and with no seeming purpose try to hint at meaning where there's none. There is a poem, somewhere, here, between ramshackle rows of prose that seem too weak...
  • The Wrong Side January 13, 2009 5:45 PM: We all want to be the victor, to believe that right is always on our side; and to those who would oppose us, any kind of sympathy we would deny. Keeping score, mind on the numbers, so we never lose...
  • Space Between Breath January 2, 2009 10:10 AM: What still remains when words have run their course, and soundless, lay exuberant and spent beyond the realm of sound? What is the source that waits between each breath, self-evident for just the briefest moment, as the lull when one...
  • What Soundtrack December 16, 2008 9:25 AM: If you would write the soundtrack to your life, the background noise for every single hour - those shining moments when you're at your best, as well as when you're sad and dour - what music and what songs would...
  • Arise, New Day December 13, 2008 1:01 AM: Arise, new day, your way much like the last, one footstep forward further from the past; and in your wake leave only settling dust that would try to preserve because it must, or else subside to shadows that soon fade...
  • Blue Monday November 3, 2008 11:12 AM: I've never met a President, I doubt I ever will; In recent years, the only likely one for that was Bill. They never seem to be much like the people that I know: they have more money, that's for sure,...
  • In that brief instant November 1, 2008 10:52 PM: When surety retreats to shadows, tenuous and mewling like a frightened child that in the creeping dark sees monsters and in a fetal shivering ball refuses what assurance reason offers - in that time between the second hand's slow grinding...
  • Beyond Faith and Belief September 15, 2008 8:03 PM: Should you and I want to discuss the ins and outs of our belief (how one way suits and others don't), let's keep it to the point, and brief, and leave those things like faith behind. For faith and reason...
  • Solid Gold December 19, 2007 11:50 PM: Shall I repeat again tonight the songs you heard last night and many nights before, and soulless, mouth the words you sing along, pretending love for money, like a whore? Are these the only tunes worth your applause, a tired...
  • Ehwaz December 10, 2007 5:25 PM: Today's rune: the eight-legged horse that Odin rode to battefields; where god and rider seemed as one great being, neither man nor beast. My own steed? More of Boxer's ilk, George Orwell's noble working brute who would attempt to cure...
  • Like Syd Barrett November 27, 2007 10:25 AM: I feel like Syd Barrett in a fun-house mirror, as if the rest of the world has gone crazy; and what's left of the light has crawled off in a hole where it's becoming bloated and lazy. Like the tale...
  • Better Your Dream Dies Young November 27, 2007 9:10 AM: Better that your dream dies young, its promise as yet unfulfilled, a youthful willow Juliet to your enamored Romeo, than that it live until old age, when riddled through with cancer scars, its cracked voice jaded with regret, it makes...
  • What Good to Grieve November 20, 2007 7:13 AM: What good to grieve a faded hour? The sun has long since filled the sky and led to moments come and gone as filled with life as that passed dawn. Besides, to mourn what has now ceased, too long, is...
  • This Place November 6, 2007 1:43 PM: Everything about this place just tends to bring me down I look into the mirror and see one more hopeless clown The people on the street have a sad tendency to frown Nobody wants to be the only one left...
  • I Wonder How They Do It September 24, 2007 4:29 PM: I wonder how they do it: save their sins for Saturday, when the sirens at their honky-tonks, their claws attached to whiskey-rocks or draft beer cold enough to freeze a witch's tit, sing out the same familiar song. I know...
  • If Words Alone Could Change the World August 19, 2007 2:44 PM: If words alone could change the world the poets would still reign as kings, and those who may rely on swords would spend their time on lesser things. The lure of verse, both blank and rhymed, would tempt young minds...
  • With an Unarmed Foe August 5, 2007 10:35 PM: You call those claws? Withdraw those nubs, and come back when your talons grow; I have no time to make retort against the feeble likes of you. You say the world agrees with you? Well, that just proves the world...
  • Crime and Punishment August 5, 2007 3:04 PM: I would admit a lesser crime if only it were worth my while; but in these days when wish makes fact the simple notoriety of having lived will sentence me. There is no justice in the world when thought alone...
  • On the Next Child Prodigy August 3, 2007 6:08 PM: I don't begrudge a twelve year old their wish to idolize an artist of their own time-frame with the same likes and sense of space that come from being twelve a while. But for adults to seek the same ---...
  • Epiphany July 29, 2007 10:30 AM: Brace yourself. Epiphany does not arrive in slow reveal; long years spent over ancient tomes will like as not have no result. The right idea, when it comes, is more like lightning than the storm: a flash that cracks the...
  • The Dead Room July 24, 2007 6:40 PM: I wonder why you come to hear the blues; there is no recognition in your face of any depth beneath the music's steady pace, nor rhythm to the rare tap of your shoes. While those around you sway and nod...
  • Mailing List July 16, 2007 7:11 AM: Remove me from your mailing list: that one that keeps me well-informed of all the wrongs done in the world; I either should already know these things, if I would give a damn, and having lived quite long enough in...
  • What has the Earth to Do June 20, 2007 12:42 AM: What has the earth to do with air? They seem a most unlikely pair. Just look to the horizon, where they touch for miles, but cross nowhere. What has the sky to do with land? The ground will never understand;...
  • Grounding June 3, 2007 10:55 PM: To find again the solid ground, the pulse beneath the surging song that lends its subharmonic sound to all that hear and sing along; To seek the strings that touch the heart, that plucked, would shake the listening spine and...
  • On Tools May 22, 2007 9:32 PM: What future use will be our tools for building greater monuments, technologies to reach beyond our yesterday capacity, if all that drives tomorrow's will is to create for their own sake more grand machines to take the place of what...
  • Conversation with a Mirror May 22, 2007 2:05 PM: I said, "Before I write another word and send it, helpless, out into the void, I'd like to find a topic less absurd than how the world leaves me only annoyed when I encounter it each passing day; it does...
  • Here is the Crossroads April 26, 2007 12:41 AM: Here is the crossroads where you finally know you're too old to say you'll die young. It's early summer; fall's on the horizon. Your spring has most definitely sprung. It's not about giving up on your wild days, but some...
  • Let Vain Cassandras Moan April 14, 2007 1:37 PM: Let vain Cassandras from their pulpits moan, decrying what velocity the world has chosen for its obvious descent; and in their sermons, demonize each day that dares to start as sunrise shattered dark. They make the Word a flesh that...
  • Rock the Casbah April 10, 2007 11:35 AM: In one sense, as the Casbah rocks, it merely sways on concrete blocks that buried deep beneath the sand give history its strength to stand; and its foundations, built of steel and solid rock, can barely feel the tremors from...
  • Out into the Rain February 11, 2007 10:40 PM: Standing at the window staring out into the rain Past the point of caring who or what may be the blame Innocent and guilty sometimes are one and the same We don't make the rules, and yet we still must...
  • Untitled February 11, 2007 1:33 AM: I don't want to spend another uninspiring hour in a smoke-filled bar pretending that I care about some great rebellion, or the poetry of freedom, dropping names of people that I wish were there. Even if I felt like drinking,...
  • Reunion January 23, 2007 7:56 AM: What did you expect here in the space above my name? The golden boy you never thought I was? Redemption for some lost and lonely cause? Guess you're right to wonder about who and what's to blame From nothing, a...
  • No point in calling it December 27, 2006 11:00 AM: No point in calling it a cryin' shame Suffering in darkness for want of a flame New boss or old boss, pretty much the same Only thing different is a brand new name No point in wallowing in might have...
  • James Brown December 25, 2006 8:16 AM: I cannot say I learned to dance, although at times I was inspired; and with each wrong note, took a chance that in his band, I might get fired. Precision: like a jeweler's saw he cut through space and time...
  • Hymn to Mithras December 24, 2006 10:41 PM: Praise for the sun born on this night Praise for the coming of the light On winter's longest stretch of dark We praise the tiny, faintest spark Praise for the coming of the new Praise for the frost, soon turned...
  • Beyond Hope December 18, 2006 1:09 AM: Abandon Hope, all ye that enter here; forsake that vain and selfish childhood bride to drown her sorrows in a stale warm beer, and unencumbered, dare to step inside. There are no maps, no hackneyed turns of phrase, to guide...
  • The Catacombs of Night December 6, 2006 10:36 PM: for William Blake Lo! I have wrestled angels in the catacombs of night and risen, as if from the dead, bone-weary, at daylight, my sheets soaked through with fevered sweat and every muscle sore, and tufts of mutilated feathers scattered...
  • The First Day November 30, 2006 6:28 AM: for James Taylor If this is the first day of what life remains, who cares if there's sunshine or thunder and rain? Both have their own virtues, each pleasure and pain; though different, a good deal the same. If this...
  • What You Do Not Seek November 27, 2006 2:39 PM: Assuming you don't write your own, whose poetry assumes your voice and would, with no small arrogance, usurp the words that form your world? Assuming that you do not play, whose music fills your waiting ears and would displace the...
  • A Week in LA November 20, 2006 9:10 AM: After almost twenty years to spend a week out in LA and to watch through hotel windows where the rich and famous play (or at least some folks pretending to be worth the time of day, either rock stars in...
  • At the Lakeshore November 5, 2006 8:55 PM: Thoreau spoke of a quiet desperation: a sad affliction borne by other men, whose lives are filled up, not so much with silence but with a never-ending dulling din, the calling card of progress and its engines, whose pulse and...
  • What's the Point? October 8, 2006 8:51 PM: What's the point? I want to ask the Mormons on their bikes, who leave their own nice neighborhoods to share the view they like that they are sure contains the answers to what's wrong with us, and don't mind spending...
  • Damocles October 3, 2006 9:39 AM: If you would have me write of bliss, exclaiming art mere artifice, a simple sham designed to fool the ignorant who fill our schools with some vain hope of what might be: quite useless, a mad symphony that holds no...
  • Ayn Rand September 19, 2006 1:25 PM: So you would change the world and make the roughest edges plain, extend your level down the field, widen and pave each lane, erase what makes a difference between one soul and the next, reward in equal measure with the...
  • Elizabethtown September 19, 2006 12:25 AM: Some kinds of closure only come in story books and movies; real life rarely turns out quite so neat and clean: with one door neatly sliding open as another firmly shuts; such coincidence is rare and far between. To compress...
  • Outside the Box September 8, 2006 11:03 AM: The next idea, the one that rocks, will be born "outside of the box", beyond the thinker's comfort zone, where daring, they have gone alone into the dark and scary mists to reap the untold benefits. But once they get...
  • Time the Devourer September 5, 2006 5:13 PM: Tradition, will your ancient prison walls, behind which all are born and most will die, hold firm against time's fervent battle cry that need not force its soldiers in your halls but deep down in your dungeons simply waits while...
  • What's Left to Do September 1, 2006 11:36 AM: Musing on my poem Numerology in which I posited that at 43, like Elvis, I would stop creating. 'Tis strange how fickle fate transforms a man and turns what standards he would forge in steel to palimpsest, the flimsiest of...
  • The Libertine August 19, 2006 10:54 AM: You cannot win. It seems no matter which way you progress (to seek self-sacrifice for good, or your own happiness), the world will work against you to undo what you have done. It will erode your monuments and interrupt your...
  • Just Like That August 15, 2006 7:59 AM: I wish to communicate. Alas, fate does not desire that we should speak today; instead it blocks our way with fire, which we perceive as brute force. It's not, of course, merely smoke; but feel - its flames do not...
  • Peace is a Verb August 11, 2006 4:49 PM: No passive meal, no rare stuff bird, true peace is not a noun, but verb; inaction, apathy and doubt that whisper are not her. She shouts from rooftops, making foul war shake in fear at her approach. Mistake not mewling...
  • Abandon This Garbage August 11, 2006 10:17 AM: Oh wisdom seeking mendicant travelers, your baggage and burdens are troubling handicaps; they will not help you on your journey. Abandon this garbage by the roadside. If you would find some unforeseen adventure, let drop your jaded world-weary illusions; you...
  • No Surprise This Morning August 4, 2006 10:59 AM: an alba, or aubade, a love song sung at dawn That morning comes again is no surprise; the laws of physics have not been withheld, nor has the motion of the planets, if those laws are merely whims, been held...
  • All Those Who're Lost August 3, 2006 9:16 AM: All those who're lost aren't there from wandering; some are asleep, and dream of squandering times and places they've not been, describing wonders they've not seen. All those who're lost aren't there by accident; some choose confusion, it's self-evident. They...
  • A Million Years August 3, 2006 8:20 AM: Just like we've done for a million years We strike out blindly in the dark in fear. Some use rocks or bombs, that's their choice; me, I use music, my words, my voice. We each know nothing, but take on...
  • The Spell Kit August 1, 2006 7:11 AM: Why bother to meditate, chanting some mantra for years, servant to some potentate guru's smoke and mirrors? You're right to hesitate; what proof describes an answer a fool could appreciate? Only a clever dancer could be seen no hypocrit. Your...
  • U.G. July 31, 2006 5:45 PM: In English, it sounds just the same: a senseless string of words embued with some sense of mystique used to convince and tame you; to teach you follow and not lead; that first impulse is evil. If what you seek...
  • Om Mani Padme Hum July 31, 2006 10:19 AM: Oh, to express in simple words My fervent wish and prayer: Mankind, to find its center space And seek beyond rebirth and death; Not worry that it leaves behind Infinite unfinished possibilities. Peace: that is what we lose Amidst this...
  • With one word aloud July 21, 2006 11:18 AM: With one word aloud, the illusion is broken as the echo fades. So deep, this still well, that a small sound is strengthened and seems so much more. But echoes will fade; and in the gaping silence words do not...
  • Who cries for the gods? July 21, 2006 7:03 AM: for Ramakrishna Who cries for the gods, who watch as their intelligent design is torn and sundered into pieces, reviled and maligned? Who cries for the gods, who listen to the clamour of our voices, each using free will as...
  • The Bluebird of Happiness June 26, 2006 7:32 PM: You can lay down all the money you like on redwood gazebos, those big platform feeders; put out the best blend of customized seed, and he won't show a figment of interest. Cut up fresh fruit and array it on...
  • Doing Nothing June 21, 2006 8:28 AM: Got up before seven, fed the dog and combed my hair, put a pot of coffee on to brew; spent no time deliberating what clothes I would wear: some jeans and an old t-shirt ought to do. Stood out on...
  • Nobody Wants to Hear June 12, 2006 3:59 PM: I could be bitter about all this shit or at least, start to doubt a benevolent universe; whine on in rhyme about storm clouds and sunshine that doesn't come out 'cept to drink up the water. My angst could flower...
  • What Was It Garcia Said? June 8, 2006 8:24 AM: What was it that Garcia said? "There'll always be those in the crowd that want the beat and nothing more": repetitive, and fast and loud, so they can dance. No need for words. Besides, a lyric can erect a barrier...
  • Along for the Ride June 2, 2006 9:18 AM: There are times when I'm determined (or at least, some times I feel) that my life should find its purpose in constructing something real: an edifice in marble, some landmark of stone and steel, so that my passing leaves some...
  • Untitled for a Reason June 1, 2006 6:19 PM: What a record label's looking for I haven't got a clue; it doesn't really matter any more. And who's at number one or rising up to number two? I've stopped pretending that I'm keeping score. I don't expect the radio...
  • By Faith Alone May 19, 2006 12:23 PM: Religion is not the enemy; it is just a tool employed by those who would control and those who seek to rule by any means to make it seem as if this world is just a dream. It's not great...
  • If all my days were whiled May 12, 2006 7:44 AM: If all my days were whiled in hours of leisure, their content by mere whim alone fulfilled, perhaps I would not sense so keen a pleasure as I do when a moment seems to still into a whisper the world's...
  • Test May 10, 2006 11:27 AM: This is a test. I thought it best to speak privately; while the rest of humankind seethes at the breast of Chaos, suckling hot blood from its chest, let our shared words somehow attest to what is possible: let zest...
  • But It Ain't May 5, 2006 1:23 AM: If this were a Christian country by Jehovah's rules, there'd be much more compassion and glad suffering of fools, less hands out full of gimme with mouths full of much obliged, no clear advantage to the rich, less chance of...
  • Almost Famous April 30, 2006 1:33 PM: To be respected by your family, those you like and know, is often not enough acclaim to satisfy, and so we seek to become famous, in this lifetime or the next, a bigger fish than all the rest and so...
  • This is the oyster April 24, 2006 5:40 PM: This is the oyster; why seek for the pearl? There's no escape plan for leaving this world in my religion: no hereafter gold, no burning embers, no cold of Sheol. This is the medicine; why seek a pill to flee...
  • Speaking in Tongues April 24, 2006 8:27 AM: Speak to me in ancient tongues as if in my subconscious mind the threads of some genetic past can be rewound around a lingo neither you nor I now know; or better yet, just make it up as you go...
  • On the Professional Diarist April 23, 2006 2:52 AM: There must be something more to it, some sense behind the scenes, a glimpse of meaning not quite shared, or else my mind's not keen enough to understand the point of merely keeping track of each new day's minutiae; the...
  • You and Me Against the World April 20, 2006 9:14 PM: You and me against the world? Well, damn them folks to hell who think that they're the passioned ones and we've nothing to sell, nor anything worth sharing except grand ideas and talk; I say, let's keep believing in ourselves...
  • This Morning's Song April 11, 2006 10:34 AM: The song I sing this morning is not new. In fact, its birth predates even my own; yet in between the phrases, now and then, it's me, and not the tune, that you'll hear groan. Why is this melody upon...
  • Big Fish April 9, 2006 11:53 AM: What makes up a community, if not those common threads that make us not such strangers and more interested, instead, in how the other sees the world, what makes a good friend tick. To share the things that shape your...
  • Honest Silence April 8, 2006 11:41 AM: What is there left to talk about? The lines have all been drawn, and leave us little common ground; not much to dwell upon. Why squirm in silence here together, bound by social whim to say not what is on...
  • Your Own Words April 7, 2006 11:07 AM: What do I care? They're only words, flung out in speech like careless pearls; it's not as if they can raise boils or lay an endless, babbling curse. Oh, wait; that's not entirely true. For in the Celtic lands, the...
  • Cottonmouth April 6, 2006 11:34 PM: My girlfriend saw it first: against the railing that runs along the length of the back porch, a greyish shadow slipping from the steps, behind the potted plants toward the light. As it began to turn toward the back door...
  • The Songs That Filled My Boyhood April 5, 2006 1:59 PM: The songs that filled my boyhood time are gone, their melodies have faded with the years; and all my vain attempts to sing along have left only their skeletons, and tears. Mere shadows take their place, as mummers' tunes, their...
  • Confucious March 21, 2006 5:16 PM: The words that rend my soul's speech are my own; they are not borrowed from another's lines. From someone else's field, of their seeds sown, come not the fruits due me at harvest time. To posit otherwise is to admit...
  • The Fickle Hand of Fate February 15, 2006 11:54 AM: How fickle fate doles out its random hand, the faces of the cards down on the felt unknown and spiteful of the best laid plans, now little use once your lot has been dealt! You work against the odds to...
  • Don't Say a Word February 10, 2006 12:06 PM: Don't say a word; let the silence between us deepen and swallow us whole; forget who was in control, who had the more meaningful role. Don't say a word; let not speaking remind us of what can be better unsaid;...
  • Insomnia Redux January 27, 2006 11:19 AM: Would that this night provide some small respite, sweet sleep instead of wisps of restless dream; but like a spring o'er-wound and pulled too tight, my mind finds no repose. Each small sound seems a thunderclap that echoes in the...
  • No Useful Illusions December 4, 2005 9:04 AM: What useful illusions we once had are gone: that governments serve, that the lowliest pawns with slow forward motion may yet become kings. How quickly it seems that the simplest things become complicated and mired in deceit, and minor successes...
  • Hallows 2005 October 30, 2005 10:27 AM: Tonight, the veil between the worlds is thin and is as sheer as gossamer. To touch its fabric is to let the shadows in, and find one's means of light simply a crutch that guides a mere footstep or two...
  • Hallows 1997 October 30, 2005 10:14 AM: a remembrance The flames lick against the side of a rusted drum; Something rustles behind the apple trees, And a dog runs barking into the lowering dark, Joyously fierce as its sound echoes against The walnut stand along the creek....
  • Untitled October 18, 2005 1:31 PM: an amphigory She flung away rapscallion locks, two dozen rare embroidered socks of carded wool from royal flocks as priceless as the chicken pox for separating poofs from jocks and as her jaw was full of rocks said, "if good...
  • Not Much of Everything October 18, 2005 2:33 AM: What is belief except a means to reach beyond the limits safe within our grasp to learn from the unknown what it may teach? If in that fertile darkness, courage fails, as well as our illusions of defense, what is...
  • The Moon Dancing October 16, 2005 11:18 PM: The moon is swollen full tonight, her belly stretched out in the light; that glow ascribed to pregnant maids reflects down through the tall pines' shade and with a wash of purple blue includes the woods' edge in my view....
  • Allness of Everything October 15, 2005 8:06 AM: in alcaics In seeking out the allness of everything (a journey full of critical posturing that makes our baggage less intrusive) listening silently guides each footfall. Each minute's chat, each garrulous dialogue, that nervous banter drowning the emptiness of what...
  • A Different Sunrise October 14, 2005 11:33 AM: an alba What light may break through the scrub trees that line the well-groomed yard at dawn is thin and pale, its weight degrees less than it when it lingers on the lower depths, the southern end, below the Orleans...
  • Petitioning October 13, 2005 10:40 PM: an ae freilighe The gods may grant petitions to endless years of prayer; not lay too strict conditions; in that granting, be fair; but it is not sedition to think them often cruel, seeing naught but perdition in their lessons...
  • Untitled October 10, 2005 12:40 AM: If you asked a Buddhist monk who fled the monastery as it burned down to the ground if he would miss it very much, I think he might reply "Some mornings, in the winter, purple clouds would split the sky...
  • Kali and Shiva October 9, 2005 10:59 AM: A single shelf sits untouched by the rubble, its contents unmolested by the storm; while mold grows from the walls like razor stubble, and walls and ceilings crumble beyond form. Below, the room is nothing but destruction, appliances and desks...
  • The Storms We Name October 9, 2005 8:40 AM: an acrostic H elpless in the laughing face of elemental change U nloosed as a pointed reminder that we each exist, R eally, at the mercy of the Mother's loving hands, the R ight extending blessing, while the left removes...
  • An Assessment of the Situation October 6, 2005 9:27 PM: The telephone is ringing; The assessor's on the line. He wants to avoid meeting us, and asks us if that's fine. In essence, he wants us to lie and say his job is done; He's three hours from New Orleans...
  • For Bukowski October 4, 2005 6:38 PM: Believe it ... poetry can heal wounds; of course, an awkward, ill-set bone will sometimes need to be re-cracked, and soft illusions that so gently cradle us to bind the flesh beneath, must go. And often, language is so poor...
  • No Shaman Left to Heal Our Tribe October 3, 2005 3:21 PM: for Jim Morrison Come, dig the grave, but not too deep; the eighties were a shallow time. We spent a decade just to learn how to maintain appearance's sake and delve with questions, off-the-cuff, in cocktail conversation bluffs. Come, dig...
  • The Wheels of Progress October 3, 2005 12:23 AM: When ground to standstill, mired, besmirched, their cog-end mesh begun to rust, the wheels of progress can but lurch. Their motion barely moves the dust; and each gear's inch assaults the ear with tortured squeaks and sudden stalls. Behind all...
  • New Orleans September 26, 2005 9:20 PM: Dear America: The day after Katrina passed by New Orleans and the reporters at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street, in the goddamn sacred French Quarter, were saying "New Orleans has been spared" I knew it would come to...
  • After the Flood September 21, 2005 11:05 PM: The things by which we measure our success: accumulations from long years of toil, the pride of equity in an address, and our precious illusions. How soon spoiled, in just a moment's passing, are these goods, respectability's crush torn away....
  • What Remains is Greater August 27, 2005 10:54 PM: It matters not how much the wind may blow, nor if the seas should rise up through the floor; the anchor of my craft is sunk below, and I am to this spot moored evermore. Should this fierce season flail...
  • Cast my stars as void of course August 25, 2005 6:19 PM: recast in iambic pentameter Cast my future stars as void of course; reduce to ash these ragged charts and maps, and let the sails take from the restless wind what strength they will. I will not feign I care to...
  • Set my stars as void of course August 25, 2005 8:37 AM: Set my stars as void of course; reduce to ash these charts and maps, and let the sails take from the wind what strength they will. I do not care to know what line the sextant proves, nor where the...
  • The Eyes August 24, 2005 6:45 PM: Watch the eyes: they reflect scars that long since faded from the flesh still mark the hard survivor's face with phantom traces, and though less pronounced with each new moment's span can in some lights, and moods, reveal the inner...
  • On Heartbreak August 22, 2005 10:56 PM: It's been a busy week. I've lost a cat, a tooth and a pound or two in the heat. It breaks my heart to think of you out there in pain; I hope you, too, likewise consider how I feel...
  • Before the Last Visit to the Vet August 10, 2005 10:36 AM: The smell of the sick-house lingers where the medicines are mixed; even fresh washed clothes and fingers tend to keep the reek of it. The taste of food is changed, its scent turned sour and stale, reducing appetites to nil...
  • A Sense of Place August 2, 2005 10:26 PM: Six years, the longest I have ever been in one spot without moving out and on, and still this place does not possess my bones the way it would if I had come of age, or taken my first steps,...
  • Lughnassad August 1, 2005 9:04 PM: Summer's bent and turned to gray, his heat begins to wend; in these dog days of decline his smolder finds its end. Now the lad with darkened locks, his heart born full of ice, begins again to wax in strength...
  • Critical Path July 31, 2005 9:24 AM: for R. Buckminster Fuller July is gone, and the pecans have now begun to set on the old tree along the bayou; sometimes, we forget the simple things that mark the seasons. We've no need of clocks or calendars. Whatever...
  • What Happens If July 29, 2005 9:37 AM: What happens if, as a martyr in training, you learn self-abandonment, lose fear of death, imagine your sacrifice each waking moment, practice your from-the-flames speech in the mirror, give not a thought to your present or future, trust that your...
  • What price a pawn July 28, 2005 11:50 PM: What price paid by a pawn who makes, if merely by sheer luck or chance, its way through fields strewn by mistakes in focused, single step advance to the far end of what it knows, where all the trappings of...
  • Art of the Midwest July 28, 2005 10:00 AM: I understand the Midwest: there is no substitute for work, labor being the sacred art that transcends even grief. What is madness, but belief that toil will not resolve conflict, and an aversion to the sweat through which the Holy...
  • Onrefni Setnad Taeper July 27, 2005 3:37 PM: (subliminally, to repeat Dante's Inferno) I am an arctic gypsy come hither to enjoy the warm, crackling fires of Hell. I have ferried across the Mississippi with a hooded man; he had a record deal and told me he once...
  • The Ten Percent Solution July 27, 2005 9:49 AM: Lobotomy perhaps provides the clues: that with what meager portion of the brain society encourages us to use and education bothers us to train, we think, and therefore are, so far reduced from what potential might be in the whole...
  • Against The Grain July 26, 2005 1:04 PM: If knots formed in the wood have turned the grain in a maze that wanders no continued line nor runs a cogent phrase, then those who go against it are not veering from a norm, but rather seeking patterns in...
  • Death of a Circus Lion July 25, 2005 9:54 AM: His speech was almost poetry; I say almost, because to claim such subtle acts of sophistry as conscious art is to enflame the ire of critics, who exist with their sole purpose to decry encroachment on their world as lies,...
  • Human Nature July 23, 2005 12:59 AM: Why must "human nature" be considered some mad blasphemy, an otherwise repulsive state save for its chance to teach us fate and providence are not without a sense of humor, lest we doubt; and if not heresy gone wild, the...
  • Follow July 23, 2005 12:31 AM: Listen in the dark, and follow where my voice leads on, away, through the woods beyond the hollow where the cheerful sparrows play on into the mist that thickens where the Spanish moss hangs low on the spreading live oak...
  • Weak Blood July 21, 2005 10:15 PM: The blood that courses through my veins has been diluted; I can sense its former potency at times: remembering my father's strength, my great-grand sire's blind wandering (which was itself a pale claret compared to further back in time when...
  • As if the hazel mud July 20, 2005 6:53 PM: As if the hazel mud its edges flecked with dull green and salt-stain, cracked and peeling along the summer dry edges of the viaduct that ran its length, a brittle concrete spine, down through the creosote valley from cinder block...
  • Stars at Night July 20, 2005 5:51 PM: a sestina To look out at the stars at night against a distant tapestry of endless black, that seems to spread beyond our fickle sense of time and stretch the limits of our sense to breaking, is to feed a...
  • Moving to America July 19, 2005 11:20 PM: When right-wing zealots take control and change the living here, in bonfires roasting unfit souls with smoke that never clears, to forgo the auto-da-fe I'm sure will be required, where can a person choose to move and still remain inspired?...
  • Careful What You Ask For July 17, 2005 9:24 AM: Do you really want theocracy, to thin or blur the line between what makes us get along, and what God had in mind? That means you'll have to tell the truth, and never get divorced; make no income from interest...
  • The Mockingbird July 15, 2005 10:38 AM: I have heard the mockingbird's own personal song: late at night when other fowl have found their nests, the tune comes sweet and low, passed like a hot plate between two diners at an all-night chop house, whose whispers barely...
  • The Camel in the Room July 12, 2005 10:40 PM: Tonight, I answered questions from a survey-taking girl who wished to know where I weighed in on God's place in the world. The purpose for the questions seemed to me a bit unclear; more fodder for pro-Christian ranting or control,...
  • Instrument of God July 12, 2005 8:37 AM: You call yourself an instrument of God, selected to seek vengeance for some wrong; I wonder, do you ever think it odd that retribution should be your sole song, that God, who has a symphony of life to call upon...
  • The Blackout July 11, 2005 6:25 PM: The streets are filled with idle, itching hands, their owners on the prowl in vain pursuit of some pastime to fill the vacant hours in darkened rooms enswamped with summer heat. Without their cellphones, TV sets and games, and fast-food...
  • If I Should Choose July 11, 2005 8:43 AM: If I should choose to force myself to write despite the lack of something new to say, would any notice much change in the way the words embrace as equals dark and light? And if compressed into some hackneyed form...
  • Volume is no substitute July 3, 2005 10:44 PM: Volume is no substitute for power; It's not the loudest shouts that prove most true. These sounds that shake foundations may undo in minutes what took builders countless hours, but mere feats of destruction can't compete with the small, quiet...
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg June 29, 2005 11:52 PM: The true ascetic does not ask for things to compensate them for some perceived lack; and yet, each vow of abstinence weaves strings of favors that they fancy will attract the warm benevolence of unseen might, a glance from some...
  • Cause Without a Rebel June 28, 2005 3:50 PM: I have no cause to champion that's worthy of a flag, bedecked with symbols meant to stir like-minded souls to arms; no psycho-babbling sycophants pore through my work to find some mystic key that might unlock their esoteric core. if...
  • The Chalk Lines June 27, 2005 10:51 PM: The lines were drawn some time ago; they framed the fallen corpse where it was found to be expired and removed, in due course. Its owner left it vacant there, having no further need of its method of transport, or...
  • Sometimes a phrase June 24, 2005 8:50 AM: Sometimes a phrase, or single word, will prompt a poem. How absurd to think that there is some great plan on my part; so few understand how unlike following a chart this process is. There is no start or end...
  • Stop all the clocks June 24, 2005 7:05 AM: Stop all the clocks! The hours must halt their slow and steady marching on; let all lay fallow in default until this fickle mood is gone. Stop all the movement of the sun and stars against a sombre sky; let...
  • My once sweet voice June 23, 2005 6:58 PM: My once sweet voice, so innocent and full of strength and power is now reduced to rasp and hum, its range half what it was. It rumbles, where it once so glibly glissed; the pure head tone has sunk into...
  • Each moment is a threshold June 22, 2005 9:41 PM: Each moment is a threshold hinged upon an ancient door; we swing between two rooms: the future, and what's come before. Experience, the lubricant that smooths the rust and squeaks, we start to use, and learn to hoard, before we...
  • Season's Crossroads June 21, 2005 7:27 PM: for Pete Ham Wouldn't know it from the weather, but the summer's almost gone. Those lazy early days have faded, though the swelter lingers on; and the memory of the schoolyard has begun to slip away as if lessons barely...
  • So Much for Science June 20, 2005 11:25 PM: Pollock's? No, but the artist aped his work The art of living well, some pundits quip, is equal parts audacity and luck; while others posit a stiff upper lip and careful breeding lift us from the muck. The hedonist claims...
  • Midsummer's Night June 20, 2005 10:35 AM: Again the axis ceases its slow spin, and slides across the rachet to reverse; the day and night become each other's twin, and spheres align across the universe. In this time, when the veil between the worlds is thin and...
  • I closed my eyes just for a wink June 18, 2005 8:52 PM: I closed my eyes for just a wink, it seemed, to find two hours past; and in the space of that mere blink, the sky, dull grey and overcast had cleared into an inky blue. The tepid post-rain afternoon had...
  • The summer in New Orleans melts June 17, 2005 9:56 AM: The summer in New Orleans melts ambition from your bones; and inspires dreams of northern climes, of much more temperate zones where flowers last a day or two before they start to wilt, and the ground does not suck ravenous...
  • Howard Jones June 16, 2005 10:02 PM: So many inspirations have escaped, slipped through the cracks, their golden finish tarnished when confronted with the facts Some let their fame get to them, others watched it slip away, often so caught up in business that they never learned...
  • If you would make a difference June 15, 2005 3:04 AM: So many look around the globe and say, "How can I start to help in what small way I can, and find work with a heart?" They look to spread their peace abroad, and be more well received than in...
  • Laughter of the gods June 14, 2005 2:18 PM: If you would hear the gods gambol and laugh, their rumbling chuckles echo through the land, and tickle divine humor, pick a path based on a well-conceived and thought out plan. You need not start out on it. Not one...
  • Ginger Freed from Wall Singing June 13, 2005 7:58 AM: Won't you me the dance out of reaching your space into nothing close where longing breeds its sorrow armor (amour)? Drum talks your babel tonguing instinct-burnt incessancy; naturalized immortalifications reduced to venial chancery in the cold light of reminder. My...
  • The sky was Maxfield Parrish blue June 11, 2005 12:44 PM: The sky was Maxfield Parrish blue with some clouds daubed in for show, a mix of mauve and lavender, light gray and dirty yellow. One could imagine, at the lake, slyphs slipping from their homes to sport with shy and...
  • Glowing in the Afterhurt June 10, 2005 5:52 PM: Once I gilted lilies in the hope of yet in spite and even though and still because of it there wasn't much of either then (things unknown after this now, like lips surrounding ashless breathing, hands that seemed to fit...
  • Against the entropy of time June 10, 2005 1:01 AM: Against the entropy of time, no wall is strong enough to stand and remain whole. Though guaranteed a lifetime, it will fall, reduced to dust and rubble; and the knoll which it divides will also wear away, in its old...
  • At the far end of the canyon June 9, 2005 6:17 PM: At the far end of the canyon where the road fades into dust, and the remnants of old wagon trains have dissolved into rust, where the touch of high society has left no lasting mark, and no streetlight marks your...
  • New myths are required June 9, 2005 9:48 AM: There's just so much that you can take as karmic payment for mistakes before you start to wonder and imagine that you understand the link from cause to each effect: that every action or neglect results in a changed universe...
  • On Discussing John Searle June 8, 2005 11:02 AM: The problem with your kind of thought, he said, is that it often leads to idleness; and what could be productive time, instead is spent in useless ponder, more or less, on how the world's become the way it is,...
  • Hypocritical Mass June 8, 2005 12:01 AM: Yes, I have been a hypocrite: talked a good game, but never played; and facing challenge, I have quit the field and left teammates dismayed. I've shouted sermons down the street on practices I'd never tried and often, told new...
  • When history's sad lessons fail June 7, 2005 12:09 AM: When history's sad lessons fail to find their place in memory's halls and social constructs name their grail progress alone, foundations fall. Progress to where, and at what cost? The road to ruin remains paved, while freedom's edifice is lost...
  • What fools would try to wrest a nation's fate June 6, 2005 3:44 PM: What fools would try to wrest a nation's fate from tyranny imposed by those with wealth who presuppose as theirs the right to rule because none dare to meet them face-to-face, who in religion's name defy what gods they claim...
  • Thus fails poetry June 5, 2005 12:57 AM: "I gotta use words to talk to you." -- T.S. Eliot What can I show you in mere words requiring some shared frame, a reference we both use to describe a common ground only imagined that in the vanity of...
  • The voice you hear June 4, 2005 5:21 PM: The voice you hear is not my voice; lost in the sound of your own making, these words were new-forged long before the human throat began to hum, and then began to form the shapes of bringing-into-being charms. Before the...
  • Back to the basics June 3, 2005 10:09 PM: Back to the basics: down that trail bringing us from the ocean's foam where we shared space with fish and snail; back past Europe, far beyond Rome, before we started keeping track or had the means to tally score. If...
  • The shadow of greatness June 3, 2005 11:43 AM: I was born, have grown old, and someday I will die In the shadow of greatness named by other men. In that murky darkness I've been raised and schooled, my dreams cast in contrast against a great them. My peers,...
  • Socrates June 2, 2005 2:48 PM: Each grain of sand that populates the endless span of shore seems to be some small answer, yet implies that there is more to knowing than to learn by rote some formulas or rules; and when compared to the wide...
  • Let the great bells resound June 1, 2005 10:52 PM: The endless poise of would-be suitors waiting in the wings who watch in silence for some signal that Beauty's watchman brings The darkened tower above the chasm where maidservants kneel in service to some kind of madness Beauty seems to...
  • A June night like a fat man at a bus stop June 1, 2005 10:18 PM: The fetid dark sits on the house like a fat man at the bus stop, sweat pooled on the plastic seat too narrow for his sturdy frame, and the night jasmine's heavy scent assaults the senses, cloying sweet, like the...
  • We met by chance, our wires were crossed May 30, 2005 10:23 PM: for Starlight Dances We met by chance, our wires were crossed in some freak Internet exchange; but in the years that came before we'd laid the groundwork separately for karma, destiny or fate to bind the ends of ropes thought...
  • In seventeen and forty one May 29, 2005 6:02 PM: In seventeen and forty one, my family reached these shores; each generation since that time has fought this country's wars. Against the French, and then the Britons, then in Union blue; the Spanish, Mexican and Natives, when each call came...
  • The hands that write these words tell lies May 28, 2005 12:45 AM: The hands that write these words tell lies; their range of symbols does not jibe with the instructions they receive and must translate from eye and ear through circuits fixed through years of use to see and hear in certain...
  • With what will you refill the well May 27, 2005 2:21 PM: With what will you refill the well once there is nothing left to seep through the rough stones and hardened clay and they are dry and filmed with dust? And the great thirst that must be slaked else inspiration, too,...
  • The Swarm May 26, 2005 9:11 PM: Like whirling dervishes they congregate around the bright lit porches and streetlamps, their bodies hurling like mad wax-winged clouds that seek where water meets with tender wood. Against their onslaught, darkened houses crouch low to the earth, hoping their bones...
  • River Road May 26, 2005 2:49 PM: Down at the end of river road the houses show off concrete knees, with skirts drawn just above the mud that creeps up through the Augustine beginning early June. Some rivers, when they start, seem nothing like their parent ocean's...
  • Preparation for the journey May 24, 2005 7:22 AM: What is required of me, that you will listen and subsequently think on what I've said? No matter how inane a task, my mission will be to fulfill that desire, instead of simply guessing what you like to read then...
  • Whence the morning comes May 23, 2005 11:31 AM: All brave words pale to whimpered, mewling sighs; great structures crumble to their timber's dust; aged soldiers' shouts turn into babies' cries, their heroism's bread gnawed to the crust. Proud governments dissemble into gangs; philosophers' grand speeches become babbles; elaborate...
  • Today at Shoneys I observed May 22, 2005 1:14 PM: Today at Shoneys I observed the lemmings at the breakfast bar: fresh scrubbed from church and sanctified, their patience thin, their manner rude. And that seemed odd; for were I bound to meet my maker, in his house, I'd tread...
  • The spheres of thought that tangents bring May 20, 2005 2:22 PM: The spheres of thought that tangents bring in touch with mine are lessening, perhaps in spite of my attempts to cross each bridge, and burn each fence so that the world seems more to me a web of connectivity. It...
  • the thin kings of aboutness May 20, 2005 10:15 AM: From Part I backward broken pushed against the known, each awaiting defamation, two armies fought and fled their thin kings waiting down among the rushes forward spoken harsh against the wind, each a summons hoarse men whispered plans and expectations...
  • Cantos This May 19, 2005 10:36 AM: That Pound should from the castle walls on high weight his Cantos with bricks, and with great gusto and abandon hurl these gems into the fosse so that the Philistines encamped and overnight drawn nigh should fall prey to such...
  • jazzum backclash May 16, 2005 11:14 PM: bitwing bedbug housefly arcnet kurt's looseleaf tea rolled convenient hard times coming four and more 's miles and coleman, hat stove in screen door strained looking for peaches can't, recall, died in the poorhouse out-of-come forsooth and spittle mood john...
  • I Don't Do Slam May 16, 2005 10:47 PM: Now when I say I don't do slam it doesn't mean that I don't dig the meth-euphoric drenal high that comes when words escape at Mach and you roll like the Candy Man with those sweet treats to clear the...
  • What good is art May 16, 2005 9:46 AM: What good is art if it does not instruct, or for our "better angels" cast new wings beyond utilitarian design, reminding us that beauty without form is doomed, under the sheer weight of itself to force its rigid framing to...
  • Folly's Promenade May 15, 2005 4:21 PM: What folly perpetrated in my youth, before thoughts of mortality began to permeate my eager thirst for truth and close the width of my attention span, has wrought its retribution over time and haunts me on occasion? What old song...
  • They grow up fast May 14, 2005 8:17 PM: They grow up fast; in just a short month's span the smallest seed becomes a tall, wild stalk grown high enough to look down on a man. But that time does not fly, despite the talk philosophers will write in...
  • Friday the Thirteenth May 13, 2005 7:49 AM: Are you afraid the universe might some be conspiring, that the unseen, neglected soul of the whole world is tiring of folks whose hands say gimme while their mouths say much obliged, all the while with backs too stiff to...
  • The locust choir at midnight May 13, 2005 1:18 AM: The locust choir at midnight ends rehearsal when the night larks begin to bustle 'round; and even the great roaches find dispersal preferable when mockingbirds abound. And so, at half past twelve, I sit in darkness, not worried over creeping,...
  • Bipartisan Blues May 12, 2005 8:50 AM: The fascist right ... the commie left ... the accusations fly, with neither side, in truth, much worried 'bout the little guy; they do not represent him, even though that's what they claim, 'cause behind all their rhetoric, they're pretty...
  • A Bio Poem May 11, 2005 11:45 AM: John poet fool romantic student soul who lives in New Orleans (through the summer months, too) a lover of ancient trees, wise cats and organic music who notices as the seasons start to change who feels the slow advance of...
  • Eulogy on a Blank Canvas May 11, 2005 11:15 AM: I was born; that's not quite news, nor is the sequence of events that followed closely there behind of much import, or consequence: like Isaac, most of my short life falls into sets of seven years, some uphill climbs, some...
  • Take heart, ye wayworn pilgrims May 10, 2005 11:25 AM: Take heart, ye wayworn pilgrims on the road to finding out, who've braved the elements of fear, delusion, pride and doubt, and found on your long journey not a sole epiphany except that destinations often are illusory. Take heart, ye...
  • If no one listens May 10, 2005 9:28 AM: If no one listens what's the point of lying? It takes less effort just to speak the truth; and any action taken worth denying will more than likely come to little use. If no ones pays attention for the echo...
  • No one stole the moon May 9, 2005 9:50 AM: No one stole the moon from us by force. Instead, they bade us sleep; in that little death our memory faded, and our Mother's song (not the sing-song lullabies or product placing jingle-jangle from an artificial moonlight like an android...
  • The Roots Must Lead May 8, 2005 7:22 PM: The roots must lead us further down; it does no good to taste the fruit unless we first have knelt in shadows there among the rotting leaves. The kneeling first, and then the crawl along the coursing, mottled bark that...
  • Such Times Are These May 8, 2005 10:25 AM: Such times are these that rich men gloat to turn great woods to creosote and laugh to see the world take note as style takes substance by the throat. Such times are these that poor men work their fingers fleshless...
  • Ambrose Bierce May 7, 2005 10:59 AM: Despite the bitterness that hits the tongue when you first taste his clever barbs of prose, and one's initial gumption to suppose his wit just tiny pearls amidst some dung, there is in Bierce an underlying faith in humankind, despite...
  • Spring Cleaning May 7, 2005 8:55 AM: Today spring cleaning must begin for real: let winter's dull and hibernating dust find ends of brooms; quick, scour away the rust to let the nearing sunlight glint reveal the sparkled surface that has long been marred by candles and...
  • Rabelais May 6, 2005 9:22 AM: I would un-Crowley Rabelais to taste, unplagiarized the simple, yet sarcastic truths that Aleister disguised: that man, if left the sole device of acting with free will would, after some adjustment, neither harm, debase or kill but would instead seek...
  • On Bards of Old May 4, 2005 10:42 AM: Did bards of old, I wonder, ever tire of rooting through their souls for a new verse in order to instruct, praise or inspire through their connection with the universe, and after twenty years of "learn by rote", requiring mastery...
  • When Twilight Pales May 3, 2005 3:47 PM: When twilight pales your umber locks to grey and lines the apples of your cheeks with care, takes the wind from your merry laugh, so gay, and makes your step less sturdy on the stair, remember this: I loved you...
  • On Beauty May 3, 2005 9:45 AM: Beauty is youth's currency; and those who have it spend without a care for what may come, as if it will not end. The doors of hearts and shops alike are open to its wants, and offer endless credit to...
  • Tailormade May 2, 2005 3:30 PM: It may be that the swath through life I cut runs down a different seam than I once thought would turn into a finished garment; what great pattern looked so perfect when I bought it, now seems out of style...
  • Intimations of Idiocy May 1, 2005 8:34 PM: From early childhood until now I've spent my life immersed in earnest pantomime of games adults will feign to play: the forging of relationships through love, business and war; the chaos that somehow surprises all when facades fail and underneath,...
  • The Politics of Deconstruction April 30, 2005 6:41 PM: A moment, more or less, of deconstruction: by which I mean to delve into the soul that strives to separate life from destruction and yet maintain some semblance of the whole, to claim by sacred right the single kernel, the...
  • Beltane 2005 April 29, 2005 11:43 PM: What I have left to strike a spark is just a book of grayed and dusty matches; not much good at dispelling dark when the flint is reduced from ancient scratches where once I sought to catch a fire against...
  • My Wheelbarrow is Broken April 28, 2005 4:20 PM: so much depends on an audience that resents a two drink minimum so much depends on people who don't support reality TV so much depends on someone who listens so it's worth lying so much depends on removing education as...
  • Gratitude April 28, 2005 11:14 AM: Thank you for not giving me the Powerball numbers from the astral plane; for postponing that move to the Florida Keys at least another decade; for the psoriasis that precluded my career as a playboy Lothario; for the hesitation, that...
  • Who Says That Poetry Dare Not April 28, 2005 9:25 AM: Who says that poetry dare not describe, except in abstract, the signs of the times, when modern culture abounds with sound bytes from cinema, like Puzo's line that all business is personal, and we hang with pride by electron pins...
  • The Loss of Art in School April 28, 2005 8:37 AM: There is no good in writing it, for no one cares to read; no point in baking word-filled pies, there's no one here to feed. There is no point in singing it, for we have all gone deaf; besides, no...
  • I Want to Tell You Something April 26, 2005 11:47 AM: I want to tell you something in a few short locking lines; you may find the concept shocking, or reject it, but that's fine. You may not think it a poem, for it doesn't show a thing; it does not...
  • Let Words Escape April 25, 2005 11:06 PM: Rescind your tortured sentences; let words escape like AWOL soldiers past the fence, like sullen rocks that would grow wings like birds and fly out into fresh experience. Rethink your injured poems; let each line cascade in a cacophony of...
  • A Sense of Touch April 23, 2005 8:02 PM: Reach down to touch the waiting earth that there beneath your feet, alive, in constant movement hurls through space and yet seems solid in the place where through your bones, like vibrant roots its energy expands and shoots, infusing marrow,...
  • What is the Secret Song? April 20, 2005 11:19 PM: What is secret song that the whole world hums underneath its breath, too soft to hear unless you sit in silence, in the dark and listen as intently as you can? And when you hear it once, why it is...
  • Words Burst the Thirteen Open April 14, 2005 10:12 PM: "I have nothing to say and I am saying it; that is poetry." -- Thirteen Words, John Cage What it is or was mulled over like cheap wine we drank although we didn't know it and so we called our...
  • Society's Man April 13, 2005 5:04 PM: Society, your dream would have me beg for pittance from a cruel employer's hand, and from my knees downward, not use my legs, preferring that I genuflect, not stand, to act as servant, bound to divine whim that your appointed...
  • Let Those Who Would Reform April 12, 2005 9:39 PM: Let those who would reform the world desist their feeble mewlings at the citadel that those they choose to fight built to resist more legions than the gods themselves could quell. Let others beat to useless, bloody shreds their fist-clenched...
  • The Doldrums April 11, 2005 5:06 PM: Now to the Doldrums we have come, our sails gone limp, weighed down and still, and not a breath of wind is left to draw from old Poseidon's lungs. The brackish air insults what brawn we strain to heave against...
  • Finding Neverland April 8, 2005 12:10 AM: 'Tis said there lurks a boy inside each man, whose unhealed wounds from childhood form a part of how he goes about when it is time to find the man inside the young boy's heart, whose grandiose bravado and fierce...
  • No More Sad Weepings of Regret April 6, 2005 6:48 PM: No more sad weepings of regret for could have beens and not quite yets, for rituals left incomplete for locked doors facing empty streets for words lost in a tempest's rage for missteps on an unlit stage for ancient wounds...
  • Galileo April 5, 2005 1:23 AM: The stars are fixed; they do not move. Instead, what we call firmament is just a shifting lens that's bent to suit the seasons. To approve or disapprove such things is vain and futile; our whole history, that we would...
  • An Ostara Blessing March 20, 2005 11:10 PM: Today the dark begins at last to fade, the Winter's fulcrum balanced with the Spring. Once great and mighty shadows turn mere shade, and green returns to color growing things. Rejoice! The world is born again from seed. It cracks...
  • Against a Greater Evil Than the Dark March 15, 2005 4:28 PM: I do not fear what terror comes by night and would with malice trouble fitful sleep; such bugaboos may cause a moment's fright, but fade in cowardice as daylight creeps. More brazen ne'er-do-wells parade by day, and mask their ill...
  • When They Come for Us, Who Will Protest? March 7, 2005 10:57 PM: Against such foes as ignorance and greed what good are merely human flesh and bone? In which fierce battles waged to rule the soul of a proud nation shall the victor be its best and brightest minds, its stoutest hearts,...
  • The Flute March 7, 2005 8:35 AM: To think your way the only way or see your God alone is to have the world as a flute and play a monotone Now, it is music, to be sure, that constant single drone, but there is more to...
  • Recrimination March 4, 2005 2:19 AM: I could dredge up every wrong and each intentioned slight to catalog the way the world has hurt me, or just might and in that laundry list of ills imagined, or in fact, find solace in a victim's role to...
  • That Subtlety Escapes Me March 1, 2005 9:52 PM: Philosophically, I've walked the wrong side of the tracks for quite some time and in a chasm that's grown bigger I have passed ridiculous into sublime but the fundamental differences between us haven't really crossed my mind you on one...
  • At the Wishing Well February 26, 2005 4:08 PM: I wish that I could still believe the lines that feed the young and nourish childhood dreams, the reassurance everything is fine despite the raging chaos it may seem. I wish the world would confirm to my will when I...
  • The Thread That Holds February 24, 2005 12:50 AM: The thread that holds the edges of the fabric that forms the warp and woof that is our life is tenuous at best, so thin and fragile. The tapestry we take so much for granted, whose boundaries extend to memory's...
  • Dirty Water February 23, 2005 3:03 AM: When I try to convince someone that my way is better than theirs, I don't stand there and tell them their glass is dirty, and as a result they're drinking dirty water. I just stand quietly, drinking my clear water...
  • Goodnight for Gonzo February 21, 2005 1:17 AM: for Hunter S. Thompson A life in isolation breeds its own brand of malaise, that the respected classes just ignore and seek instead on worthless causes to heap shame or praise, with their good sense, naming such moods a bore....
  • A Path of Wildness February 18, 2005 9:03 AM: I chose to walk a path of wildness; though these modern city streets are paved and seem to revel in a blindness that believes the urban sprawl has saved us from what nature could remind us: somewhere beneath all this...
  • Deconstruction February 17, 2005 11:00 AM: I will never deconstruct another poem in search of hidden metaphor, by line eviscerating some writer's creation to satisfy some professor of mine. These exercises do not help the reader connect to what is said, or truly why in given...
  • A Moment for Peace February 16, 2005 11:55 PM: I'd find some peace if I just had more time; quite often now, this notion comes to me. Not as a nagging fault, but more sublime, suggesting an impossibility. But peace is built on just a second's span and in...
  • A Witch's Daughter February 14, 2005 11:34 PM: I watch my daughter grow. She finds the patriarchy's walls, once comforting and so secure, now quickly closing in; and the consumer culture, bred in bright and shiny malls, begins to question her reluctance to wallow in sin. The icons,...
  • Valentine February 14, 2005 11:14 AM: If we rely on calendars and ad men to prompt us into thinking of our love, and on one day a year make feeble gestures to compensate that love for our neglect (the endless days of noncommunication, illusions of control...
  • Shakespeare in Love February 14, 2005 1:56 AM: The flame the muse ignites inside the artist, who would in service wish themselves consumed, their dreams the fuel that feeds this beauty's fire - how bright are even sparks from this great pyre! Against such light what chance has...
  • Jimmy Smith February 9, 2005 9:07 PM: I read the news over at Jill's Poetry Hut about Jimmy Smith. As a keyboardist myself, I have a space in my heart for Jimmy --- both because he was absolutely inspirational, and because listening to him convinced me that...
  • Immersion February 7, 2005 11:51 PM: How long have I been down, immersed, a Dunker left beneath the wave whose new birth was to wash away my meaningless and lost before? And whose strong hands upon my head still hold me under, when they swore to...
  • The Heart of Beauty February 7, 2005 12:23 AM: When Beauty stands alone at last upon the wretched reefs of time and watches as her suitors sink beyond the pale horizon line where tied to masts of providence they've closed their senses to her charms and set their sextants...
  • The Shelter of Righteousness February 5, 2005 11:55 PM: What good was in the world has gone if we proclaim with innocence that justice has escaped our grasp while our hands show no sign of fight, and at the end of stiffened arms held at our sides are soft...
  • Mardi Gras Mumble February 5, 2005 7:53 PM: I never have been a big fan of loud, drunken crowds. Even when I am feeling loud and drunk, being surrounded by potentially out-of-control people gives me the willies. And this is the time of year in New Orleans when...
  • For Stephen Stills February 4, 2005 1:00 AM: What a field day for the heat A thousand people in the streets Singing songs, and a-carrying signs Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"* We have become so polarized. The lines are drawn so black and thick between each side,...
  • A Different Path February 3, 2005 12:18 AM: Sometimes, I wonder: if I'd walked a different path (the one, like Frost's, well-traveled and defined, perhaps more suited to my demograph but nonetheless a road that I declined) and put my energy into some goal, a measure pleasing to...
  • Imbolc February 1, 2005 9:19 PM: As the world wakes up from Winter's slumber, she starts to shake the sodden snow that lies heavy on her cloak of gray and umber. After the long months of silence, she sighs a slow breath of warmth into the...
  • After Our Summer is Gone January 31, 2005 4:39 PM: Just because we stop, the world does not see fit to up and quit: although we think our present season the focus of the universe. Just because our silicon has returned back to native dust, and what we've turned with...
  • The Seeker's Lament January 27, 2005 11:26 PM: For forty years I've sought some kind of truth and come up empty-handed, more or less. What dreams I held like treasures in my youth have lost their gleam; my hands, their tenderness. The journey has not gone as I...
  • For Starlight Born with Robbie Burns January 26, 2005 11:43 AM: for Starlight Dances Although some celebrate today the Scotsman's favorite bard, my day is elsewise occupied and I shall find it hard to think of he whose "Auld Lang Syne" will ring out through the night. For this day someone...
  • An End to Parables January 24, 2005 9:39 PM: I've spent a life in parables, disguising my ideas in costumes and strange metaphors deliberately unclear and so perhaps convinced the world that I'm a harmless quack, imagining just chimeras with no spine in their backs. But recently, while looking...
  • More on Sanity and Madness January 23, 2005 2:01 AM: One could argue, I suppose, that there is a hint of madness to be found in EVERY family tree. And for those that exhibit no overt sign of it, I suggest that itself is the madness. Who could imagine their...
  • A School of Truth January 22, 2005 10:15 PM: The world is full of empty headed fools --- their courses set by half truths and whole lies --- who trust their leaders, and obey the rules, and bow to every bright new flag that flies. To cry "Alas!" that...
  • A Dirge for the Left Wing January 22, 2005 12:45 AM: So we've inaugurated him the Jingo Kid, ol' Cocaine Slim to serve again as our great chief. Despite the obvious belief of many folks that he's the spawn of Satan. Soon he will be gone, and who will fill his...
  • On Adding New Friends January 22, 2005 12:27 AM: Sometimes I feel there's not enough ink and spare electrons can't be found to pull out from the ether what I think, so I pull in all the excess wood around and burn away the wheatless chaff in giant billowed...
  • If I Were, When I Was, What I Am January 21, 2005 5:51 PM: If I were still a drinking man, I'd say I need a shot; but as my self-made realm is dry I think I'd better not. If I were still procuring weed, I'd want to roll a joint; but all I've...
  • Activism January 21, 2005 11:48 AM: I'm reading tompaine.com and searching for common sense. I have said before that if you're in a band, and you don't think you're at least as good as the Rolling Stones (or whoever your particular idol is), then you might...
  • To Those Who Would Have Use of My Time January 20, 2005 9:25 PM: Aleister Crowley once said, and I liberally paraphrase, that if you love life you do not waste your time, for that is the primary measure applied against it. I dedicate this poem to telemarketers, spammers, door-to-door salesmen (of either tangible...
  • On Milton and Dante January 20, 2005 6:17 PM: To each their own: let others speak of hells where self-damnation wreaks eternal havoc on the mind and soul; its torments let their thoughts embrace, imagining some devil's face. I will not heed such useless folderol. It should suffice that...
  • Questioning January 17, 2005 6:59 PM: The exercise this week relates to the poetic foot the dactyl, which is basically a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. A typical waltz pattern, you could say. Here's the example I used, with successive stanzas in dactylic monometer,...
  • Oh Mother Help Me January 16, 2005 12:36 PM: For some reason this morning I woke up thinking of the hymn "Sweet Hour of Prayer" --- in particular the wonderful bluegrass version done by the Osbourne Brothers. And I thought to myself, "Self, why is it that there are...
  • On Paying for the Privilege January 16, 2005 1:43 AM: Suppose the price were for a stamp? Would you refuse to pay, if knowing without postage you had no method to say to friends in far-flung places (quite impractical to meet) the things that occupied your mind, your heart, the...
  • Samadhi January 13, 2005 5:15 PM: Fumbling to ecstacy One nerve cell at a time Approaching some nirvana Piecemeal, by the inch, sublime At the end of fingertips Extended like a drawl Until the whole skin breathes in each moment's alcohol From the toes along the...
  • A Pathless Land January 11, 2005 10:41 PM: I have not found the answers seeking truth, nor even formed the questions halfway right; the mysteries that tempted me in youth are still in shrouded mists hidden from sight. The path under my feet begins and ends a single...
  • The Food (for Thought) of the Gods January 10, 2005 10:32 AM: Who decides what lives, what dies, based on more than the needs of some, but on what is best for the entire world so balance can be maintained? Who thinks they have the right to choose that some should flourish...
  • Where Am I Bound? January 8, 2005 8:11 AM: hymnal verse Where am I bound, my feet underneath me touching the earth just one step at a time? When I have found my purpose for living will it be worth what I left far behind? What is the sound...
  • Sisyphus January 7, 2005 2:30 AM: At each new dawning of the day, our shackles turned to dust, we rise from bed and check the door in case it's turned to rust; and finding perhaps a loose hinge or screws worn down and stripped, we throw...
  • Thinking of Gurdijieff January 6, 2005 12:28 AM: Right now we're cruising at a constant speed, although the scenes outside the window blur; each fleeting breath a entire universe, a moment pressed between to come and gone. It seems as though we're standing at dead still, the center...
  • Stirring the Pot, Part 2 January 5, 2005 2:58 AM: As if the little things were not enough: those trivialities that chafe and burn like tinder when it's dried and raspy rough, that seem so insignificant you spurn the notion that beyond them is the truth. It's just that they...
  • Stirring the Pot January 3, 2005 8:53 PM: As you delve deeper into who you are quite often you touch things that make you ill --- those tendencies and habits that so far you've managed to ignore. Until you still the chaos that engulfs your conscious mind and...
  • New Year's Eve 2004 December 31, 2004 10:24 PM: I may resolve to change my ways this year, exchange old habits for ones I've not tried. But there's no point in much of that, I fear, for one's true nature cannot be denied. Perhaps I'll vow to focus more...
  • Artie Shaw December 30, 2004 9:23 PM: By the time I got to it, the clarinet was odd; a quaint small instrument for guys who never got the girls (even the ones who played and sat in the same orchestra rows day and day, year after year),...
  • Feast During Famine December 30, 2004 10:18 AM: When Obiwan Kenobi felt the end of Alderaan it was as if a hole appeared and swallowed, to a man, the lifeforce of each precious soul existing 'til that time and twisted, perhaps frayed, the cord of which we form...
  • Early Morning December 29, 2004 8:54 AM: There is something liberating about waking up early. Not too early, mind you. But earlier than you need to be awake; and if you're lucky, early enough to see the last of the night disappear in the whitewash of the...
  • Imagining December 28, 2004 3:19 PM: for John Lennon Too much of what the world has been, and is, and still might be, has as its limits what we call impossibility. We reign imagination in and relegate its course to doomsday visions, worst-case scenes, and dissipate...
  • Ranting on Poetics December 28, 2004 12:06 PM: I will not write for other poets. They exist to ridicule each other, and failing that, to share inside jokes on what words are or aren't clich on poems written in metered speech on lines that rhyme, even if well...
  • After a Line in Rumi December 27, 2004 3:37 PM: Between the acts on the great stage the green room swells with life; like ocean waves the movement never stops. Each spent performer, bathed in sweat, absorbed into their entourage, glows with the energy of the crowd. Around the curtain's...
  • Yule Log 2004 December 25, 2004 9:59 PM: The times when goodwill, peace and love are praised are rare indeed; and rarer still those instances when thought translates to deed. So in such seasons where these things are found, take heart, rejoice, and with compassion, grace and honor...
  • Snow in New Orleans December 25, 2004 2:58 PM: It started out as hail this morning, but has turned to snow Which happened last here in New Orleans fifteen years go Those who came south for sunny climes are in for quite a shock To see the trees decked...
  • Mother Father Breathing December 22, 2004 1:59 AM: With each breath, opposites are reconciled: like the unconscious seeping under the door that the river makes as it rises during the night, then at first light ebbs slowly away as the sun's heat pulls it into its glowing bosom....
  • Om December 20, 2004 10:09 PM: What is the sound that echoes in the ears when all is silent and the earth, asleep, leaves off its boisterous clamor and harangue, its endless waves of wild, chaotic speech, and in a mute and restful slumber dreams? The...
  • There are no words December 20, 2004 12:26 AM: There are no words to capture this exquisite moment of pure bliss between the grasp and letting go between the thought and need to know There are no words that can express the soft caressing tenderness of just a second's...
  • On Reaching Forty in a Week December 16, 2004 3:17 PM: In a week I will be forty. If my mother's right it's time to get my act together and find more delight in doing what needs to be done to build something to show for two score spent in dissipation...
  • Song for Vidya December 14, 2004 2:35 PM: Sometimes, a word can have a myriad of meanings. Take "vidya" for example, which in Sanskrit means knowledge, when spelled with a small 'v', or denotes knowledge leading to liberation, i.e. to the realization of Ultimate Reality, when spelled with...
  • Earthseasick December 13, 2004 9:50 PM: Tolkein's world of fabled creatures did not speak to me of my own sense of purpose, or responsibility and so its strange translation onto film I did not mind; except the Ents and Bombadil, who Jackson left behind. But Earthsea,...
  • A Grain of Salt December 13, 2004 3:26 PM: When grandma fried the eggs, she used the salt so liberally its savor burnt the tongue; and so my father grew to hate the taste, eschewing through his life their bitter edge. It seems to me this metaphor applies to...
  • Joy to the World (a different version) December 13, 2004 1:55 PM: Joy in the world! The time is come! Let earth reject all kings. Let ev'ry heart give itself room, and with all nature sing, and with all nature sing, And with, and with all nature sing. Joy in the world!...
  • Counterpoint: Domestic Strife and Miles '64 December 10, 2004 10:13 PM: A flurry of words assaults the ear as she storms back in the room, alto voice filling the space left by the withering blast of the horn; the false lull breaks as the drum, relentless, kicks forward the time, and...
  • Antonin Artaud December 9, 2004 11:05 PM: There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. -- Antonin Artaud (1895-1948) The play's the...
  • How the Brain Lost its Brawn December 8, 2004 11:15 PM: for Rudyard Kipling There was an idea that grew in a brain --- not a clean break, but rather a troubling sprain. It swelled up and shut off the centers of speech, thus remaining hidden; and just beyond reach it...
  • Remembering July in New Orleans December 8, 2004 10:49 PM: The minutes drag and slow to just a crawl, their tired legs turned rubber, and their hands, so used to crisp precision, mime a drawl that stretches seconds out like rubber bands. Each sound becomes a dopplered wave, each sigh...
  • At Dawn When I Awoke December 7, 2004 9:01 AM: At dawn, when I awoke, the rain was but a mist that damped the lawn; and then its whitewash strength increased to rinse the night, 'til it was gone. Its purpose served, it too then waned, as greys began to...
  • Morning Resolve December 7, 2004 6:14 AM: This morning I shall try to set my sights against the hypocrite that dwells inside me, giving pause to any who would praise my cause. I seek him out, this two-faced toad whose inner turmoil oft explodes in fits of...
  • Sometimes in Fits of Restless Pique December 6, 2004 3:29 PM: Sometimes, in fits of restless pique I lose the will to even speak and listening to voices lie reduces me to tears; I cry not for their souls in peril, no, but for a world that makes it so worthwhile...
  • Parenting 101 December 5, 2004 1:29 PM: Parenting teaches, like nothing else did that you pay for the bullshit you pull as a kid the invoices rendered by children who ask for clemency, extended curfews, and cash...
  • Blow Thou, Winter Wind December 4, 2004 3:48 AM: Blow thou, winter wind, on my shutters and doors, knock down happy scenes outside department stores, and lay your hand over the acres of trees picked before their prime and chopped off at the knees. Set loose your ice knife...
  • Two Murders December 4, 2004 3:07 AM: Two murders I witnessed in opposite trees across the canal, voicing cacophony; a trial of wills between territories resulting in blackened skies, as the light breeze of morning and rain brought a chill to my knees. Not often such numbers...
  • A Tale of Two Saints December 1, 2004 12:00 PM: Two saints of diametric views one rainy Sunday morn, did choose to spend some time in long debate on gods and men and life and fate; each sought to prove his deity more just and great (such vanity) imagining the...
  • A Tree in Winter December 1, 2004 1:09 AM: When in the winter, I shall stand a bare tree tall on frozen land there may be some who choose to rake among the leaves left in my wake and into separate piles by hue divide these skeletons. But who...
  • The Ride Home November 26, 2004 12:56 AM: Scattered like jewels tossed out across a black crushed velvet plush electric fueled stars winking against an endless backdrop of night their pulsing engines cycling with an urgent rasp their transmissions settled into high ratio sedation controls set to automatic...
  • Thankfull November 23, 2004 11:06 PM: There are so many little things that make up life's stretched years; and pausing now, to list them, I find my payments in arrears for moments that have come and gone, each adding to my store of seeming insignificance that...
  • The Reins November 21, 2004 8:51 PM: The hand that grips so tightly at the reins, its fingers numb with effort after time, will endure bruises, callouses and sprains so long as it still feels the tugging line that links it to life's pulsing, straining steeds as...
  • Here-itic August 25, 2004 10:14 AM: Here. This is the sound of the world becoming whole: one breath at a time. Here. This is the way that the world becomes awake: one eye at a time. Here. This is the place where birth and death coexist:...
  • Numerology August 19, 2004 11:02 AM: When I reach the age of Elvis crucified Two years and small change from now I shall have been 33 years a missionary: singing love songs to the deaf; painting pictures for the blind; copying manuscript parts to hand out...
  • And the children who think that summer ends August 19, 2004 7:45 AM: and the children who think that summer ends and somehow school and learning resume again who do not yet realize the lessons and the parents who think their fall begun and somehow school and learning do not apply to those...
  • On Auspicious Times August 17, 2004 2:06 PM: I wonder at the most auspicious times that by some random system are proclaimed and why those correspondences we find ourselves at odds with should take all the blame The moon, for instance, in its wane and wax; The seasons,...
  • No Small Talk Left August 17, 2004 1:48 PM: It takes perhaps at most an entire day depending on the company and scene, but at some point there's nothing left to say and words become superfluous, obscene. It's not because the topics have run dry, or even that some...
  • Last Night's Storm August 10, 2004 9:49 AM: Last night a storm rolled slowly in the thunder muffled by the air so heavy, like a mortar's crack or heavy rifle silenced with a potato at its barrel end, wrapped in layers of gauze; it could only slowly make...
  • Before Attending Miss Teen Louisiana Training August 8, 2004 10:04 AM: We do not want to go and sit for three long hours of this shit. We do not think it well-spent time to learn to walk the judging line or show your beauty, just skin deep to leeches, dilettantes and...
  • A Haiku August 5, 2004 6:32 PM: The tap left running, wasting water and money; all claim it evil. they watch it dripping, blame who turned it, and cry "How wrong! How shameful!" No one moves to change the sad scene; their sole action is indignation. Yet...
  • Don't Believe the Hype August 4, 2004 10:48 AM: The world is suffering and pain or so the Buddhists say but with control of mind and flesh for some, it goes away Not for the tree, or rock or mouse does this travail desist; nay, 'tis for man, and...
  • All Things Zero August 3, 2004 10:02 AM: after reading, again, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael What is the point to the great war that we have waged three thousand years? Have we discovered any more than better ways to produce gears? The revolution that gave birth to so-called luxury...
  • undertown July 30, 2004 9:10 AM: for Memphis in the undertown around the middle earthen jars the senseless struggle: i shall be released from this before the current pulls me undertown, around the rooting rockets way before the dawn of timing, when our cultured throats scream...
  • Physician, Heal Thyself July 20, 2004 1:52 PM: for Jim Morrison, who I very liberally paraphrase and augment: Why are songs and poems important? Because songs and poems are the basis by which culture is passed from generation to generation. No one sits at their child's bedside and...
  • No Critique Requested July 16, 2004 5:37 PM: So many poets trace, or seek to trace the root of their art back in time, but just so far; and would attempt to judge all verse to suit their own agendas. Doing this, they scar just the veneer, the...
  • Message in a Bottle July 10, 2004 10:23 PM: If you read this, you take something made of flesh and bone, a piece of time and space and breath not quite a gift, or loan or even money down upon some future equal trade, but more, one part of...
  • Notes from Icarus July 10, 2004 11:40 AM: for James Joyce Daedalus, my father, tried to fashion me for wings but I, who treasured heresy, had no use for the things or for the cliff that he had labored at for many years to leave for me a...
  • The Eagle at the Tree July 9, 2004 10:57 AM: Now, watch the eagle perched upon the limb; his eyes, that seem to peer into the soul, take in the troubled world that waits below him and see beyond illusions of control. How like that noble bird we seek for...
  • God is a Lonely Whore July 7, 2004 12:03 PM: Thinking of Dante, thanks to fool_in_spirit, I dug through the archives and pulled out one of my favorite older poems on the subject of Love. There is a Persian story that posits that Lucifer loved Jehovah above all things. Lucifer...
  • there is a poem July 7, 2004 12:22 AM: there is a poem that i will never write down; words cannot hold it. there is a poem that cannot be recited; it escapes like breath. there is a poem in every simple movement; it is verse, set free. there...
  • Independence Day July 6, 2004 12:27 PM: I heard the sounds last night of war outside my window and front door, wild shells and streaks of fire and light; and I was troubled at the sight. No thought of where the sparks might land entered the minds...
  • The Red Shoes July 3, 2004 12:39 AM: On Turner Classic Movies this evening, one of my favorite films of all time ---- one that I've seen so many times (probably over 100, actually) that I've got most of the dialogue memorized: My two favorite moments, that pretty...
  • A New Orleans Villanelle June 29, 2004 7:27 PM: At the request of nemo49, here is a villanelle that theoretically also provides some impressions of New Orleans. Although I have to admit, feeling rather Tom Waitsy at the moment, the picture I've chosen to put in the Viewmaster for...
  • A Meditation Haiku June 29, 2004 11:06 AM: Take a slow breath. Don't hold it long; let it go. See, there is more air. Take a good, long look; Don't scan the scene too quickly. See, there is so much. Take a deep swallow. Don't rush it; chew...
  • Untitled June 28, 2004 7:20 AM: Freedom of speech doesn't do any good If no one has time to stop and listen; Not that anyone actually could Listen, with their mouths also open. So I will stop talking, at least for a while, and let everyone...
  • Celsius 488.33 June 25, 2004 11:57 PM: What is the point at which the conscience burns and thus consumes the mind with thoughts to act, that in its darkest recess for truth yearns to separate illusions from the facts? And the externals that provide the fuel, that...
  • A Single Word June 24, 2004 10:58 AM: If I could in one word describe my road, without digression through its tangent routes or cataloging each and every node that might be seen were I to map it out, a single thing that clearly would detail both how...
  • Box Haiku June 22, 2004 4:46 PM: Inside the small box That is our experience There is nothing new: The folded edges Let in small amounts of light To read old news by. But the lid is loose --- A gentle push opens it; Look, there is...
  • Concerning Past and Present Loves June 22, 2004 12:26 AM: Concerning K. I cannot say it came as much surprise There always was a kind of fuzz that lingered in her eyes And anyway, the games you play get serious enough Without the threat of psychopathy breaking all your stuff...
  • Father's Day June 21, 2004 10:53 AM: Ultimatums are absurd, like "I will not write one more word until those reading clap and say, 'Bravo!' and 'Watch the genius play!'" The Sufis had it right, I think: "Don't name wells from which you won't drink"; and yet,...
  • A Litha Blessing June 19, 2004 12:15 AM: The stripling lad born weak at Beltane's fire now stands, and draws his measure proud and tall; he takes the throne with passion and desire, and bids the fading shadows to withdraw. Upon this longest day, he reigns supreme, the...
  • What It Isn't June 17, 2004 7:00 PM: It's not about learning to draw a clearer picture of the ruins It's not about taking a sledge hammer to the ivied hallowed halls It's not about the trash you can talk about those who disagree It's not about undercovering...
  • Patti Smith June 17, 2004 11:26 AM: I will blaspheme to instruct if those still listening can hear: the pretense of this world is fucked beyond repair; that much is clear. I will replay classic moments in a whirl of light and sound; relive near death's self-wrought...
  • Oversimplification #40237A June 15, 2004 4:39 PM: Religions are formed every day Each meant to last, each fades away To be of use, each offers some Instruction on the life to come The best address in simple ways a set of questions we all raise: Why we...
  • A Different Mirror June 15, 2004 3:58 PM: I was raised on tales of princes, kings and dragon's hordes; the books they filled engulfed my world with sights that to this day affect me deeply. I can hear the swords (both those of plastic from my youth, and...
  • A Different Revolution June 15, 2004 12:23 AM: Despite what you may read in books, no revolution brews in noisy bars or quiet cafes among agreeing friends who decide the status quo is flawed, and pay their dues producing pamphlets that describe the means to reach some end....
  • A Different Kind of Shore June 14, 2004 11:48 PM: When one looks out past the breaking waves at ocean's end those across the sea seem much less remote connected by this expanse of constant movement. Away from the sea In a great endless valley, peering at the edge of...
  • Ray Charles: Eyesight From the Blind June 11, 2004 8:58 AM: In one of his early 70s comedy routines, Flip Wilson imagined a conversation between Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain (and I paraphrase, as the album Cowboys and Colored People is long out of print and my vinyl is...
  • The Light of America June 9, 2004 10:54 PM: Pondering John Kerry's use of Langston Hughes to convey a message of sorts, I thought I would write a poem focusing on what I think Kerry's message should be. America, your shadow casts a lengthy darkness where it should serve...
  • The View You Choose June 6, 2004 10:29 PM: Having just seen the new Harry Potter film, I was contemplating the underlying message I find in JK Rowling's work. No, it's not some dark Satanic point that seeks to overthrow the basic power structure of the Christo-centric universe. Not...
  • Clouds (Nuages) June 4, 2004 12:34 AM: Watch the sky slowly unfold in an array of hues across the edges of the world touching every single thing underneath for only just a moment, and then move altering its entire pattern enough to blur and shift the whole...
  • Tradition and the Individual Talent June 3, 2004 1:36 PM: for T.S. Eliot When Icarus took flight with home-made wings he sought to rise above, not divine laws, but listening to how the eagle sings attempted to reach past the aeropause that culture places on its young when born to...
  • Alone Again June 3, 2004 10:00 AM: Alone again or so it seems and yet, my street of broken dreams goes on and on The moon has kissed the sun goodbye and yet hello, a kiss with which to build a dream upon Childhood wanderings in lands...
  • Dreams and Light June 2, 2004 12:36 PM: Each day I wake, my head crammed full of dreams that reach into my conscious life unasked, defining how I perceive each new task by tearing at reality's worn seams. From dawn to dusk they push and pull my mind...
  • A Meditation on St. Sebastian May 29, 2004 1:14 PM: What is the secret hidden behind the veiled innuendo that hangs its tapestries of heavy corded cloth on these rotting temple walls? I pierce your flesh with countless arrows, yet you fail to die; beheaded, in a pool of cloying...
  • The Wall May 28, 2004 9:00 AM: There is something in a family that doesn't like a wall inside the boundary it constructs, its face against the world, that thin veneer of solidarity presented to conceal or pander to the social mores ranking its esteem. Behind the...
  • A Tendency to Madness May 27, 2004 11:30 PM: There is a touch of madness in my blood; but not a malady of harmful need, more like grasping out for things that last despite all proof that just illusion stays. My German, Swiss and Irish stock is sound -...
  • Late May at Twilight May 27, 2004 11:00 PM: The night is late arriving yet again; and in the day that lingers past its time it casts tentative shadows, brushed in hues of lavender and faded rose and blue, while twilight, holding back its unsure breath as if it...
  • The Black Druids May 26, 2004 10:50 AM: At seven ten this morning as the night gave way to dawn a band of three of black druids* gathered out on my front lawn I heard them last night singing in the dead calm, loud and clear; but did...
  • Summer Quintet May 26, 2004 7:23 AM: The beastly summer months are creeping in; I can sense their hot breath and lolling tongues like a pit bull lurking behind a cypress fence waiting for the wood to rot away so it can lunge into my peaceful spring...
  • Pleasure City May 25, 2004 11:22 PM: Canto I Next stop, the driver said, smiling through cracked wicked lips, Pleasure City - we huddled, prenatal, wondering - even in the suburbs the legends grew, spread by the Party Planners, the malcontent underbelly of the American Experience, bastard...
  • Chandelier's Left Wink and Blinding May 25, 2004 8:44 PM: ceiling now in staring anguish once the eyes I found and lost last few moments caught myself and wound my winding sheet about it. words are not the thing for speaking - truth in little hardened bitters shows itself as...
  • A Line Has Two Sides May 25, 2004 3:19 PM: We sit & stare across the line, we stare & sit across the line Our words drawn as sacred weapons, our symbols drawn as ancient hexes, Ever at the ready should the need For our defense or quick attack arise....
  • Martyr Without a Cause May 24, 2004 10:41 AM: Waken, would-be martyrs seeking causes to in an instant devote life and limb, and cling half-drowned along the upturned raft of culture that leaking, seeks the bottom of the quay. The words that might be spoken now are silenced; upon...
  • Playing the Blues Again May 20, 2004 10:04 PM: When you play the blues, at some point, you've got to decide. Whether to play around the issue, like Charlie Parker, flitting in and out just hinting at the melody, giving subtle suggestions on the point you're trying to make...
  • An Hour Gone Past Midnight May 19, 2004 11:56 AM: An hour gone past midnight; the songbirds try out new trills: sparrow, robin, mockingbird, wren, finch and whip-or-whill all whistle at their favorite tunes now that the traffic's pace has slowed to stopping. The pale moon reflects in pools of...
  • Lullaby May 17, 2004 11:03 AM: Sleep on, new world --- your time is yet to come; and in that pall of death, forget what was, what is, or merely seems, and build the future from your dreams. Sleep on, mankind, rebuild your strength; prostrate, laid...
  • Wagner's House on Lake Lucerne May 16, 2004 10:58 AM: Away from the bustle of the lakefront trade across the wide expanse of clouded blue on a small knot of land pushed out into the bay behind a copse of trees down the gravel lane - the house sits small...
  • Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba May 15, 2004 12:09 AM: As Elba instructed Napoleon, all men ARE islands; some are just in better climates. -- John Litzenberg, from The Secret Undertown Ministry Some things exist to turn perceptions inside out; their presence tends to shift and rend to shreds the...
  • Two Poets Lament, Part II May 10, 2004 9:24 PM: II Perhaps the world is full of verse that fails, inspiring none to act as heroes should; and in frustration, lesser poets rail against the confine and form of the good, their self-aggrandized talents gone to waste that they alone...
  • William Butler Yeats May 8, 2004 2:05 AM: With William Butler Yeats I see a striking parallel: of politics and prosody, a marriage made in hell; each new idea casting an elusive, mastering spell with only moments in between for time and space to gel and being armed...
  • Dada May 8, 2004 12:35 AM: Art for art's sake? Some mad Protestant Hell: Give glory to gods too quick dethroned, the crowds that crowned them, discharged early and now, gone home. Their purpose found too soon, before they grew strong. Without any message, pure art...
  • Town and Country May 7, 2004 10:50 PM: Town I would to some far-flung county go except for the threat of winter snow and loss of things to occupy these tangent thoughts that fill my mind for in some quiet, rural place where you know every name, and...
  • Two Poets Lament, Part I May 7, 2004 10:04 PM: for W.B. Yeats Some silken strains of angst-encrusted verse or mystic message wrapped in words to woo designed to part the patron from their purse, or charm one's snakes...what can these small things do? An audience that can be misdirected...
  • a wisp of purple clouded sky May 6, 2004 8:33 PM: The now expectant moon, hid by a wisp of purple clouded sky bathes all in dappled glints of light that stand on open ground this night. And those whose lives are passing by, a wisp of purple clouded sky, imagine...
  • Earth and Wood May 5, 2004 10:42 AM: We are not lost here in these woods, nor are they lost in us; if you listen, still, for just a moment the sensation of roots, searching for moisture in this often parched land, pushing away the organic substance that...
  • The Other Shoe Drops May 4, 2004 10:39 PM: My mother, who turns seventy next year, four days from now is driving from LA, alone across almost two thousand miles (she plans between ten and twelve miles a day) to visit us in New Orleans -- she says, for...
  • My Generation Waits May 2, 2004 1:12 PM: They do not call us Boomers, born too late to wear that name, and Generation X we're not having slipped into life a bit too soon Each generation bides its time Seeking its voice and words to say But in...
  • Zen and the Art of Arc Welding May 1, 2004 6:57 PM: Split ends of clock's tick and flee from the circle of power where union is meet in a cooper's wheel, hard and hot like fire from welding's arc and concentrated blue flame. It's not so much the trip, he says, ...
  • W.M.D. April 29, 2004 11:51 PM: wealthy men decide worldwide military dependency whitehouse motives dubious war means death without meaningful direction wholesale media duplicity wanton mercenary demonstrations willful misinformation dissemination wrongful misuse doctrine winner molded demographics warped mission definition wholly moronic defense whitewashed mind denial well...
  • America, I know your secret April 29, 2004 4:28 PM: America, I know your secret: There is no deep intellectual struggle fermenting in your collective mind; that's for the coasts to sort out amongst themselves, with their isolationist disdain for solidarity thinking that beyond the Holland Tunnel, above the Causeway...
  • New Orleans: Imagine It Educated April 28, 2004 9:01 AM: Their America is seventy-percent against them, but they do not know, these kids in New Orleans their ebony faces eager or sullen or lost in some other world lugging heavy booksacks on their narrow shoulders facing teachers tired of trying...
  • While Reading of Ginsberg's Life April 27, 2004 10:40 AM: To wake while reading William Blake to taste of life in dreamlike doses flexing the sinews of the mind in the fight against some status quo that lumbers, like a Clydesdale pair to drag a dying culture's broken-wheeled cart along...
  • One Moment at a Time April 26, 2004 11:13 AM: Every moment has its special message. -- from Bowl of Saki, Hazrat Inayat Khan Up until three a.m. defining what will be required of each to play their part how they are held accountable for each production number making up...
  • Building Around a Thing April 23, 2004 1:39 AM: When I am working on a problemI never think about beauty.I only think abouthow to solve the problem.But when I have finished;if the solution is not beautiful;I know it is wrong.-- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) "I know it when I see...
  • Herding Cats April 16, 2004 10:35 AM: a gloss in the form of a quintilla Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), A Midsummer Nights Dream (1595-6) The poets speak of love, and...
  • The Squirrels April 16, 2004 8:39 AM: free verse The squirrels have gone on strike; I can hear them chattering, each one voicing their dislike. The gist is not flattering. Yesterday we had the trees removed planted too close to the house, against the back fence, that...
  • Common Grounds April 15, 2004 1:25 AM: a forensic poem "The one thing I want is to be understood," she yelled as she slammed the door. I yelled back, "Good!" Now looking in hindsight, I know that I should have tried to defuse the melee, if I...
  • Our Children's Lives April 15, 2004 12:51 AM: a villanelle Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives, that won't respond to reason or attempts to understand the me-o-centric universe that is our children's lives. A place where having grown ourselves, we've proved we can survive although...
  • Homestead Elegy April 14, 2004 9:53 PM: a quintilla A quarter mile back down the lane paved with loose stone and bits of brick past three tall trees that still remain, after ten years, almost the same though at their bases weeds grow thick, a wood frame...
  • Simplicity April 14, 2004 10:46 AM: englyn cyrch Simple things make me content: knowing where my money's spent, poems written, letters sent, feeling good the rent's been paid, evenings without things to do, working 'til the work is through, reading a good book or two 'neath...
  • The Press Conference April 13, 2004 8:41 PM: a descort No outrage, just amused (perhaps its because I can't stand the sound of his voice) It reminds me of a song by Robyn Hitchcock "He's the president of Europe and he's talking to the dead / They're the...
  • Can This Thing Fly? April 13, 2004 3:47 PM: a series of septenary stanzas It's doubtful that democracy's dense doyens can reclaim the country's core without creating more sorrow and shame, to count coup on the status quo, entrenched in apathy, seems like the wisest way to go, at...
  • Wretched Thoughts April 13, 2004 3:11 PM: deibhidhe Most days I don't mind the mess that fills my fancy, doubtless in its mad mire growing grand plans my desires demand; But today, the turmoil seeks to wreck my poor reason's speech; and turn to tares the flowers...
  • A Meeting is no Substitute for Progress April 13, 2004 12:35 PM: cywydd llosgyrnog So much to do, and time so tight that one would think to do things right the first time might be thought wise; but it's a finger pointing game, no one willing to take the blame. Things stay...
  • Eliot's Month, Not Mine April 13, 2004 12:25 AM: cywydd deuair hyrion April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. -- T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land Again the winds are playing like knives, and...
  • The Lesson of the Sirens April 12, 2004 2:23 AM: I cannot hear the sirens' song my ears have been clogged for too long with endless drivel, mindless stuff; but I can see them well enough. Their mouths are moving, and it's tough to lip read, but I still can...
  • Night Rain April 11, 2004 11:57 PM: cywydd deuair fyrion Awake by chance, I watched a flicker in the dark clouds growing quicker. Drawn, I watched this fleeting wonder: the dull sound of distant thunder; the dreamlike build of slow suspense in too calm air still warm...
  • The Circling April 11, 2004 11:27 PM: cyrch a chwta The past is now dead and gone, its Doppler echo a song that fades and yet lingers on, palimpsest written upon then erased with each new dawn born as a wobbly legged faun yet grown each night...
  • Easter by Telephone April 11, 2004 10:15 PM: cyhydedd naw ban In California after eating they called up to offer a greeting, their plates filled with beans and broccoli ours with roast beef and mashed potatoes. We passed the telephone back and forth, discussing children and work; of...
  • Musings on Holy days April 11, 2004 3:47 PM: common measure My house is not a Christian home; I serve much older gods. So there are times this world and I would seem to be at odds. I do not mean the world, per se, the growing, greening life;...
  • The Garden Seat April 10, 2004 4:08 PM: cyhydedd hir A quiet place to sit, think what I see fit, and watch the birds flit around the yard. Not so much to seek (a crumb, so to speak) to make each work week that much less hard. And...
  • Saturday's Child April 10, 2004 12:12 PM: a curtal sonnet This morning, when I rose from bed, the street was all abustle with the weekend's chores. Fresh coffee brewed, I filled my favorite mug and sipping slowly, found the flavor sweet. The cat was chasing lizards 'round...
  • Decoration Day April 10, 2004 3:27 AM: a complaint or lamentation Bang the drum and sound the horn Wash and press the uniforms From each window flags are flown Now the troops at last come home Proud young sons and daughters, too Freedom's torch they've borne for...
  • Untitled April 9, 2004 10:39 AM: in common measure (common measure) If there is method in this madness by which I compose there ought to be at least one moment when that sense is shown (short measure) That's not the case; when words come out, they...
  • Ananda April 9, 2004 1:00 AM: colgyrnach The question that I have is this: If ignorance is such great bliss, then why are we sad, dwelling on the bad in a mad state of pissed? It seems to me we are confusing bliss with something we...
  • Self-Damnation April 8, 2004 8:41 PM: casbairdne With words, my sentence fulfill: The weak willed soul seeks to fail, its too frail form doomed to fall before bringing home the grail. Too true; the trials and tests that beset the searcher last past the point where...
  • The Sacred in All Things April 8, 2004 1:05 PM: a carole or carol Let all the world rejoice and sing To see the sacred in all things The universe in varied forms, And diverse structures, sets the norms With every death, life is reborn   Let all the world rejoice...
  • Television April 8, 2004 11:45 AM: a canzone Canto I. The News To watch the TV news is to discover That there is nothing new under the sun: a movie star found with a younger lover, convenience store held up by man with gun, insurgents kill...
  • The Presence of Love April 6, 2004 6:59 PM: a cancione I cannot say I know love the way some would say they do; I might not recognize it passing on the avenue. In a bleak and somber alley on some cold and rainy night some amour may say,...
  • An Unannounced Change of Syllabus April 6, 2004 3:21 PM: a byr a thoddaid There is no test today in class; it's been called off, and you all pass. The lessons it addressed are tired and old, I'm told - no more required. But someday, classes might start up again;...
  • To Progress April 6, 2004 10:38 AM: a bucolic, of sorts In memory of Christena Ann Litzenberg (1817-1909) To those who wish the past returned and simple life brought back in fashion, a relationship with the land renewed and the blight of urban living shunned, a hundred...
  • The Pen and the Sword April 6, 2004 9:58 AM: a bref double Speak to me, if you linger at the trough and hesitant to take a drink, hang back while others have their fill and more besides, expecting none will challenge their self-right. I give to you a gift...
  • An April Morning April 6, 2004 8:59 AM: anglo-saxon prosody complete with bob and wheel The sky was shot with grays and greens, and clinging clouds that hung low; from the west, the wind was slight against my face that April night      when first      I found I'd lost...
  • A Blessing for the Road April 4, 2004 11:09 AM: benison or blessing I've asked much from the universe Expecting, like a child, That forces outside my control, Untamed, feral and wild Would take a hand, and mold my life In ordered, simple ways. Such is the expectation Of most...
  • The Shallow Water April 4, 2004 1:52 AM: a poem in blank verse Again, the conversation turned to fate; and as the group was interested, to chance, the lines of battle drawn between the ones who thought the world predestined yet misshaped and those who found perfection or...
  • Against the Cynic April 4, 2004 12:35 AM: a double refrain ballade The cynic's eye sees wreck, despair, the order torn asunder; and finds delight in citing where the world has lost its wonder, his focus on the thunder in soft and gentle rain, and how each stupid...
  • The Pebble and the Wall April 3, 2004 12:37 AM: a ballade A pebble leaned against a towering wall (at least that's how it first appeared to me) just barely seen beyond the shadow's fall, not much more than a speck of loose debris, looking like it had been carelessly...
  • What Dreams Remain April 2, 2004 12:35 AM: a balada When I was young I sought to find The furthest reaches of the mind Now at the edge of the abyss I find it's simple things I miss There is no comfort in the mist That once I...
  • Not New, Not the World, and Not Order April 2, 2004 12:10 AM: an exercise in anagram I'd just as lief pretend to know, Like Aristotle, where to file each thing; But to seek more knowledge than I need On this subject is to pursue evil ends. For life arranges on its own...
  • On Her Sleeping Form April 1, 2004 10:43 PM: an awdl gywydd She's sleeping there on the chaise, on her face a gentle look; dreaming no doubt of flowers, and quiet hours with a book. Her eyes are closed, her heart eased, and I am pleased that she rests;...
  • Foolscap and Old Rice April 1, 2004 10:26 PM: Alas, my head is bruised and hurt My hands are filled with ash and dirt The fire has gone out in the sink And there is not enough to drink Perhaps the sun has lost its flare, But as for...
  • Speak Low April 1, 2004 9:31 PM: an alcaic If someone listens intently, patiently for something beyond audible sensation each moment becomes sacred silence embracing the hearer into being If someone watches quietly, carefully for something behind visible perceptions each vista becomes secret beauty embracing the viewer...
  • And Still Another April 1, 2004 12:02 AM: an alba, or aubade Before the first ray of morning sun comes over the muttering lips of the sleeping world (like the last soft warm breath of a restful sleep is released from the tight grasp of that little death)...
  • Advice for the Road April 1, 2004 12:01 AM: the Irish form ae freislighe The path that we're traveling has today only begun. So don't start unraveling, don't think the whole race is run. To enjoy the adventure, we'll take time with what we see, cast away old indentures...
  • Self-Similarity April 1, 2004 12:01 AM: Well, it's that time again. Time to revisit, in alphabetical order, the poetic forms as identified in Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. Starting with today's poem, we'll visit all the traditional verse forms, starting with...
  • Untitled March 30, 2004 11:23 PM: the French lai How many heartfelt vows have crossed my lips now, broken by wrongs I allow and the petty rows spoken with swords forged from plows, seeking sacred cow's tokens in the dark days since the first subtle hints...
  • The Dogwood March 29, 2004 11:59 PM: She with fond memories of elders now gone, & I with my own youth to call back to mind, bought a ten gallon dogwood last year, late in spring (& though maybe later than some would advise for a tree...
  • Random Thoughts March 26, 2004 1:42 AM: Following the trip trap tripe of the day With a mentholated cigarette and a soda Letting the ringing in my ears From endless hours in conference calls Die dammit die so slowly as the night settles Raindrops in my ears,...
  • Obscenity and Free Speech March 22, 2004 3:29 PM: Instead of letting each of us choose what we want to watch and hear, Congress is moving quickly to require large fines on "indecent" content. This economic censorship would dramatically infringe on the First Amendment and would hinder the diversity...
  • I Once Folded Space and Time March 19, 2004 1:17 AM: I once folded space and time and made it from Memphis to Jackson in less than two hours by imagining myself lifting the road folding the blacktop making sure the lines met up letting them blur together into one keeping...
  • moving edward, a wall said longing March 18, 2004 1:13 PM: Delaying the inevitable writing of another daily poem by digging into the archives. This one is from my "ee cummings meets gertrude stein" period. The title refers to, if you can believe it, the Prince Edward's abdication of the throne...
  • New Orleans Spring March 17, 2004 1:08 AM: Once New Orleans weather starts to warm it becomes quite bearable in shirt sleeves to linger under the carport at night enjoying a cigarette in the dark while the light scent of jasmine fills the air and the bustle on...
  • Kinship March 16, 2004 6:39 PM: If just one word I write or say, some thought I manage to convey in describing my frame of mind or experience in this life touches even one other mind then I have truly accomplished what I set out trying...
  • Jury of My Peers March 15, 2004 10:12 AM: Peer: a person who is an equal in social standing, rank, age, etc., example: to be tried by one's peers [ETYMOLOGY: 14th Century: from Old French per, from Latin par equal] The Fiction of a jury of my peers: To...
  • Peer Critique March 14, 2004 10:27 AM: How does peer critique really work? You present something of yours to your peers. They are inspired by your effort to try to produce something of similar or better quality of their own. How they react to what you've done,...
  • Hearsay March 13, 2004 10:34 PM: If they should tell you all the world is full of evil, and there's nothing without sin, that life's bitter extent is but a test to grind away transgression from the heart, the better to prepare your way elsewhere, or...
  • Of Human Bondage March 12, 2004 11:08 PM: Sometimes, the human race acts so advanced, its possibilities seem without end; and almost every minute, some new thing is brought into the world by our mere thought. And yet, our evolution is not done (it cannot be, or else...
  • Awake at Dawn March 11, 2004 10:10 PM: I find myself in recent days at dawn, a time of morning I've not seen for years, and in that space where darkness soon is gone a soft, yet vibrant energy appears. I used to be enchanted by the night,...
  • Fool's Gold March 10, 2004 12:10 PM: I have tried to live my life each moment, Let my imagination run its course; and sought for truth, to find it, not to own it, or make it fit my notions using force. But there are times when I...
  • Beyond the Boundary March 9, 2004 1:49 PM: Of all the little things that seem to matter And petty squabbles that divide our time in episodes of silence between chatter and spaces marking off what's left behind the biggest part of what remains unspoken is that which each...
  • On TS Eliot February 3, 2004 1:55 PM: I've read you, T.S. Eliot, and one thing I don't get is why between such lovely lines you're such a pompous twit while sharing arcane references lost on non-scholar types you wail and moan the loss of myth with poncey,...
  • The disembodied politic January 28, 2004 9:01 AM: Sometimes I wish it wasn't so that I'm a Democrat Perhaps if things were different it wouldn't come to that But as it is I often wish the slate could be swept clean And then I wouldn't have to choose...
  • An Anchor of Alexandrine January 25, 2004 9:01 PM: the Alexandrine stanza The moments of each day are quickly past And are not found again once spent and gone; Still, life is spent in search of things that last A founding stone to build one's world upon. Each soul...
  • The weather again January 9, 2004 1:20 AM: It's raining and the air is cold, the skies are dark and gray There's not a speck of sunshine on this January day And not a smile or cheerful word is spoken or displayed Sometimes the world is like that,...
  • Eroica January 2, 2004 2:55 AM: Allegro con brio And so another year has come and gone. In that span, has any touch of greatness found me, or have I just been marking time, waiting for a something that hasn't yet? Marcia funebre (Adagio assai) So...
  • The Speed of Now December 8, 2003 10:19 AM: for LJ user ldy The axis of the world will stay its course, And with it our velocity remains A constant, knowing time but not remorse. The humming center holds to its refrain And with its gentle song eases the...
  • To Love Without Words is to Lie to Life December 7, 2003 5:30 PM: for Andrew J. Thomas In this unspoken space where lovers, mute, Imagine beyond thought a world to come They come to rest upon the hardest truth: Faced with a simple word they are struck dumb, And know to speak of...
  • Blacksmithing December 4, 2003 12:19 AM: for LJ user occipitaldruid Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Village Blacksmith If you would have your...
  • The Hawk (Seabhac) December 3, 2003 6:49 PM: for LJ user gurdonark A flash of gray against the sun and cloud, then swift and sure he plummets to his prey; Above the warp and woof he watches, proud, examining the context of our way. The puzzle is the...
  • There Is No Mundane December 3, 2003 12:59 AM: for LJ user novapsyche The clock will stop that human hands must wind; its mechanized contrivances will fail, and in those precious seconds between time the boundary between the worlds is frail: on one side, secret lands where shadows pale,...
  • How Fragile Is This World December 2, 2003 3:47 PM: for LJ user i_dread How delicate the web that occupies us, spider-like, in our attempts to mend and build this world before the binding dries. We toil from waking to each day's end, constructing fragile lanterns for our light that...
  • New Love December 2, 2003 3:18 PM: for LJ user dougs: Each love, when new, burns with a lusty fire; it feeds on what it finds without regret, and warms the soul upon a glowing pyre, not thinking on those things not happened yet. Wrapped in the...
  • Poetry On Demand December 1, 2003 5:50 PM: why can't i clean the palette with a wide stroke of the pen, and then when the tabla is inky black use a beam of light to form new words that leave their silver traces in the fading mist of...
  • My religion October 23, 2003 11:06 PM: Beyond the walls of any church, between the lines in ancient texts, behind the crumbled, cracking walls I have sought the gods of this place. Before others were imported, if they came with those who traveled (and sometimes I doubt...
  • Morning on the Levee October 12, 2003 1:10 PM: Along the edge of the levee, atop the slow hill slanting up against the bank of the canal there is a worn down path of grass that leads from just nearby my house to where the water meets the lake....
  • Short Subject October 5, 2003 11:32 PM: So much to say With words, and yet Each one is edged With some regret That says, I will But soon forgets And then, at night Wakes in a sweat From dreams of things not happened yet And spends the...
  • Discord and Strife September 23, 2003 1:53 PM: Who planted these hurtful seeds of discord, Mixing them among the bits of wheat grain, Laying a hex on land that can afford No such burden, for it has never lain Fallow, having imposed upon it no Seventh year stretch,...
  • Release September 19, 2003 11:12 PM: Sometimes you smell trouble coming Hinted on the breeze The final fragile feather That can bring you to your knees Sometimes you can sense it coming When the pressure builds, your ears start drumming Sometimes you can tell the future...
  • Untitled poem September 12, 2003 12:07 AM: It's so hard to focus on the subtleties of life Often times the fountain pen is like a carving knife On clandestine maneuvers in the dark soul of the night Without anesthesia or a sense of wrong and right Once...
  • 9/11 Remembered September 11, 2003 5:39 PM: Another nine eleven comes and slips through afternoon Not a single house on my block flies a flag or sings a tune There seems to be no notice or remembrance of the day That two years back began the work...
  • Bob Dylan September 11, 2003 2:27 PM: There is something boiling on the stove's gas-driven flame Coffee, tea or chai, to me they taste about the same My cup overfloweth, and I won't say whose to blame Each of us has demons that we must conquer and...
  • Here is Where I Am September 10, 2003 10:16 PM: Could have been famous, so I've always said Those Hollywood notions still mess with my head Should be free of them by now, I suppose Just takes accepting the life that I chose Paths come together, and then they diverge...
  • Questions of Love September 10, 2003 3:24 PM: Call it bad timing, a season of doubt Days turn to months while you figure it out Some expectations are better as dreams Reality's never as clear as it seems Call it poor judgement from weak evidence You'll find a...
  • Like the World Does Not Know September 9, 2003 9:08 PM: If all the world would find you lacking grace and see in every thought and act some fault, behind the smile that lights up your sweet face discovering some dark and bitter vault, if some belittle and would treat you...
  • Primary Colors September 9, 2003 9:42 AM: You can't trust the politicians But they're really not to blame 'Cause we give them what they work with Handing over without shame All the best of our intentions And worst of our desires All the evils we won't mention...
  • Through Hurricane Glasses September 9, 2003 12:34 AM: Maybe this one is about storms, but I doubt it. It's more likely to be about those people around us who seem so wild and free, little caring about the effect the great maelstrom of their existence has on others...
  • Mightier Than the Sword September 7, 2003 10:11 PM: My pen and paper 'gainst your sword and shield We both draw blood on the same battlefield It's a war of ideas, and some of them proud None of them dare speak their motives out loud My own revolution turned...
  • Nothing of the Fall September 7, 2003 1:57 PM: Spring doesn't know summer It's just risen from the dead After all that time in winter It would rather play instead Spring doesn't know summer But it gets there anyway Every stormy April morning Leads to afternoon in May But...
  • Half a Score September 3, 2003 1:28 PM: This decade slipped by faster than the ones before The moments made of smaller, finer stuff The days turn into months, each year turns into four And often there just doesn't seem to be enough Time to keep in focus...
  • Plan B is the Reality of Plan A September 2, 2003 12:28 PM: Sometimes, I wonder if the choices made in the heat of the moment, out of my head, by comparison to some plan would have played out differently if I'd chosen that plan instead. While in some way that structure might...
  • Minutiae August 30, 2003 1:08 AM: inspired by reading William Wordsworth There are so many minutes in a day that it may not seem much to waste a few; yet these small fragments, worthless as they may seem, once they are exhausted, life is through. They...
  • Hell is to the North August 29, 2003 3:47 PM: They say the way is often well-paved and leads down along the map. But I have wondered, lying listening to the constant rain, about the benefits of concrete and steel until it dawns on me. The say that Mecca is...
  • Insomnia August 29, 2003 1:21 AM: at one a.m., when sleep won't come and my thoughts ramble, loose in my head like marbles in a tin can, the night air still oppressive and thick under the carport where my cigarettes call out their siren's song, silence...
  • Me and My Shadow August 28, 2003 7:30 PM: Inside me is a shadow That waits for days like these: When small things blossom into catastrophes, its seems to swallow up the sunshine, and linger, like a fog there on the steps beside me as my feet slowly move...
  • The Dust That Settles Between Sculptures August 28, 2003 6:08 PM: When you think of all the time spent constructing a life, each scene cast in its fragile plaster mold and then carefully chiselled and sanded away so the finished piece can find its own path in the world out there...
  • After Reading Robert Burns August 28, 2003 11:55 AM: after Robert Burns for Starlight Dances, born on Burns Night My love is like a red, red rose that blooms one day in spring; its beauty fills the world with awe and wonder, but the thing itself will fade and...
  • This is the soft hoarse whisper of these times August 27, 2003 10:14 PM: This is the soft hoarse whisper of these times: its cup full of succulent summer grape no longer laced with Being's false treason, the braces of its skull bone corset bent, unloosened to the warm, wet wind that seeps across...
  • Why Some Sources Are Better Received August 26, 2003 11:16 PM: An Allegorical Response to Christian Exhortations and Concerns We stand together on the shore, you and I, watching the night sky. We both agree we are land-bound and each pines to know the sea. In our hands we can hold...
  • Anapestics August 26, 2003 8:38 AM: Continuing the discussion regarding rhythm, here's my latest exercise result - taking an increasing number of feet with the anapest foot (da da DUM) in progressive stanzas: When the world is so full that it fails to react to the...
  • Confession of Faith August 25, 2003 9:33 PM: This is my confession of faith: That which is real is wholly real and fills even the gaps between what I think seems to be real and what I am incapable of imagining it might be. To divide one thing...
  • August in New Orleans August 25, 2003 9:18 AM: I guess there are SOME advantages to having to get up at 5:30 to take your daughter to swim team practice. Offhand, however, only being able to see clearly (due to both the fog in the air and the fog...
  • Sisyphus August 24, 2003 3:33 PM: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d'homme. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. "The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart swell. Sisyphus must be regarded as happy." -- Albert Camus Each...
  • Highway Blues August 24, 2003 1:48 AM: I hear the highway calling, but I will not catch a ride; Where I'm bound and where roads lead never seem to coincide. For interstates link places that are pretty much the same, and each draw certain travelers, like moths...
  • Who's Who and What's What August 23, 2003 4:57 PM: For many years, my father's name Followed Rich Little's in the book "Who's Who in America"; and There were times I wondered aloud Whether it might have been better To be a different man's son. Only a few lines of...
  • The Crepe Myrtle August 23, 2003 3:09 PM: To see the stump there in the yard, Its edges barely higher than the grass, You'd never know the tree that made A stand in that spot for so long. You might, when seeing flowered sprouts From that dead trunk,...
  • Changing the World August 22, 2003 5:40 AM: If I say I want to change the world without asking first its permission without asking the right questions without first accepting my limitations without wondering about my own role without looking beyond my own hard science without recognizing the...
  • Overtone August 21, 2003 11:23 PM: Back in the 90's, when I was exploring the way things sounded and how that affected the meaning of a thing, I experimented quite a bit with alliteration. Here's probably the best example from that titillating time, that explores the...
  • The Width of a Circle August 21, 2003 8:49 PM: perfect rhyme Each thing that starts must have an end For every wax there is a wend near rhyme And once begun moves to its finish; every birth has bury in it. eye rhyme As the moon face cycles through...
  • Post Apocalyptic Is An Oxymoron August 21, 2003 3:09 PM: aimed at Chuck Palahnuik My world is not so grim and stark nor my sea so wrought with foam and rage that I must seek for guidance in the words of an alleged seer for today that paints the times...
  • This is the Way August 21, 2003 1:00 PM: This is the way the world is: Drunk, strung out on the euphoric smack Of its own illusions of history Sucking down the bitter pills Like tapioca pearls stuck in the bottom of bubble tea Strained through flavored watered-down sugar...
  • Declining an RSVP August 20, 2003 9:20 PM: We have killed two decades with our lives; Clocks and pocket-watches, notebooks and meetings have spoken to us in the language of Ur, a Babylonian-Chaldean moonmist frenzy of words and tired metaphors. In twenty years you'd think I might've found...
  • Of the People August 20, 2003 11:06 AM: They call themselves Republicans or Democrats and formerly, styled themselves Whigs or Tories; but it doesn't take imagination to figure that they bend like willows in the wind, and change their stories to suit the temper of times, and fan...
  • Homeschooling, Part 2 August 19, 2003 1:04 PM: Before you take your child's education into your own hands think about what you are qualified to teach, and what formal education rarely provides textbooks on: tolerance of the intolerant equality before the law appreciation for the little things rendering...
  • Homeschooling, Part 1 August 19, 2003 11:22 AM: Every young child is home schooled you are teaching your children something watching TV reality, escaping in drink cheating on your taxes, refusing to think for yourself letting the little things get you down not leaving a tip for a...
  • New Orleans Summer Portrait August 18, 2003 7:43 PM: The heavy August air sits like an insolent child sulking under the carport where the breeze can't get to it, if it even tried to do so down the fractured street that no longer even pretends to be the straight...
  • Somewhere Along the County Line August 18, 2003 10:55 AM: Let's take a detour off the interstate --- The roads are straight and intersect endless rows of soybeans, seed corn and winter wheat. Besides, if we get lost, and spend our evening the only lights on this road perhaps we'll...
  • In Memphis August 18, 2003 1:25 AM: In Memphis, where the gypsies come to hide their dead in earth and I too seeking burial for past mistakes learned the blues hoping to hide my sense of misdirection like Elvis there along Madison Avenue two blocks from the...
  • Death of a Family Farm August 17, 2003 10:13 PM: The Amish said they'd raze the barn for scrap; the other buildings nature would unbuild. As for the rest of it, all useless crap, new owners can do with it what they will. When we moved there, my father tried...
  • Iambs and Trochees August 17, 2003 4:15 PM: This week (and for the next few weeks) the emphasis is on rhythm. The exercise was to write a poem using iambic feet, with each successive stanza adding an additional foot (first stanza, monometer, last stanza, heptameter). IAMBICS: Until the...
  • A Boston Busker's Tale August 17, 2003 1:13 PM: I sang a song for sixpence in the streets of Harvard Square Like Tracy Chapman did -- I needed food But you need some extravangance to make your money there Most likely, all you'll earn is attitude I tried it...
  • The Letter August 17, 2003 1:04 AM: A recent discussion on the triolet reminded me of a poem I wrote in 2002 after a brief interaction with the folks at The International Library of Poetry: a triolet The letter informed me I'd won an award For a...
  • Inheritance August 16, 2003 1:57 AM: for Robert Leroy Litzenberg (1928-1993) My father was a Gemini. To some that may serve or suffice to explain him; and to deny it as a factor is a lie. For those signed twins are often twice as hard to...
  • Retrospect August 16, 2003 1:04 AM: How clear the lens of retrospect illuminates the distant past, and brings in focus now, so fast, foolish acts we'd rather neglect. It is not always a kindness, this sharpness of review; one can easily misconstrue an earlier bliss as...
  • Old Pottage August 15, 2003 10:38 PM: While you still have your youth is the time to find out your version of the truth; as you age, fear and doubt can crack the careful clay of all your work and play. Then in a heaping pile of...
  • In Boston August 15, 2003 7:35 PM: In Boston, where I cut my teeth on the raw meat of delusion, and watched myself in disbelief live penniless out on the street, my college days found conclusion. There on the green line, Brookline bound, I took a job...
  • Morphology August 15, 2003 1:54 PM: Listen! It murmurs softly underneath the constant ebb and flow of dulling noise like brackish water seeps into a clear crystal pond, its briny fingers reaching from a sea that constantly must expand. In that muffled shape of sound sheathed...
  • The Hero's Face August 15, 2003 12:55 AM: Old myths teach us to see great gods each equipped with a thousand arms and eyes facing all ways, seeing all directions at once. Each hero has my face, and yours too; what we find good in ourselves is there...
  • Turning August 14, 2003 10:26 PM: I was thinking this evening about Starlight Dances and Mars Tokyo - the latter's empty nest and the former's soon to be emptying one. I wrote this poem for them, and all the other parents on my friends list. She...
  • Small Things August 14, 2003 7:12 PM: I There is no better thing, I guess, than to believe that my good thoughts take wing without a by-your-leave and find their way to where they are needed the most; that way, I do not care if they remember...
  • The Poetry Reading August 14, 2003 10:51 AM: Three hours into a heated discussion on how entropy is unavoidable in most applications of modern philosophy having drunk down to the bitter dregs black coffee laced with chicory seed and double shots of expired yesterday creamer hand calloused from...
  • Dreams from California August 14, 2003 1:53 AM: for Tasha talking about america growing old while we watched: between lying and sleeping (during which thrown about like helpless pillows we wrestled our thoughts about each other and pinned them to words) in the ashtray the ghosts of our...
  • Significance August 13, 2003 12:31 AM: What makes me more significant than a full-grown elephant or tiny crawling ant or a blooming potted plant help me, for I really can't figure out what makes me more gives me rights worth fighting for earns me wasteful things...
  • Birthday Wishes to an Attorney August 12, 2003 2:01 PM: In my youth I sought for truth, and studied law and sense bringing to bear my youthful air, but no experience and now, much later, perhaps fate, or some wild freak of chance finds me still seeking, although creaking, in...
  • The Parable of the Mustard Seed August 12, 2003 11:42 AM: PONTIUS: "Against you, I have great legions arrayed. Your brothers even call out for your death; yet you smile and do not waste your breath with pleading, or seem in the least dismayed. I hold the power to end your...
  • Rilke August 10, 2003 2:41 PM: Where did you find the most inspiration, as each line cut like a diamond-edged drill through layers of effluvia that still the seeking heart? Was it your frustration with a cold and unfeeling world, that sought to silence any expression...
  • The Confession of Revenge August 10, 2003 12:48 PM: rime royal, or Chaucerian stanza There is no good in a war of revenge, which at best requires its combatants cold while for its public approval depends upon hot blood if it is to be sold (and hue and cry,...
  • Space Between Breath August 8, 2003 12:39 AM: This life is but a whir of endless dreams made into concrete that never cures, and set against a mad rush of marching time that blurs each second into the next. Its seemingly solid instances are but illusions; under scrutiny...
  • Sometimes We Forget August 2, 2003 2:04 PM: The world is often close around, its taste upon our breath filling our dreams with noble schemes of unknown width and depth. It gives us of its bounty and leaves us deep in a debt that we must somehow then...
  • Choosing Your Battles July 31, 2003 1:34 PM: for LJ user stephanielynch When the middle of the road is muddy slick so that the vehicles of truth get mired, 'Tis then the vultures gather there to pick among the helpless and the uninspired. The wheels of progress spin...
  • For Allen Ginsberg July 30, 2003 10:30 AM: I can hear you breathing, America Will you catch up with me Dangling your embittered and jealous umbilicus Asking Who among you when your child asks for bread Will hand him a grenade? It's not some dark sin that hides...
  • The Parable of the Sower July 28, 2003 1:59 PM: Sometimes, I think that I have borne a lot of resentment, and fought against the world believing to lead with your fist uncurled meant weakness, and what you deserved, you got. I lived as if my troubles were the most...
  • War and Peace July 23, 2003 1:00 PM: If you are angry about violence, hate the war-mongers who destroy and kill, use guilt as a weapon for innocence, you may think to win, but you never will. Because these tools that you use are the same that you...
  • On Living and Dying July 22, 2003 3:28 PM: for Sogyal Rinpoche and Dylan Thomas Go forth gentle into that coming night, for a new world to come, the old must give way Know this: there is no dying of the light. Though we may grasp at things still...
  • Pursuing Happiness July 22, 2003 12:50 PM: Pursuit is chasing after, without loving to run - not enjoying the wind whipping through your hair, almost forgetting the purpose the race has begun - just looking for something, you know not where. Seeking is visiting a thing where...
  • Roadside Attractions July 17, 2003 11:38 AM: But who cries for God? -- Ramakrishna If you see the Buddha by the roadside, stop, and ask him how his day is going, inquire if perhaps he might need a ride ... if you do not, there's no way...
  • The Virtual World July 17, 2003 12:40 AM: So much pain and sorrow, so little joy! It seems to me the world is full enough with ugliness and the things that annoy and irritate - why carry all that stuff with you in a place where you can...
  • Right Action July 16, 2003 12:47 PM: Into the crumbling chasm we fall, past expectations and preconception where rational mind's great gift, perception turns out to be not too much use at all; and the comforting thoughts of our blindness (great faith in dogmatic institutions giving us...
  • Greeting Christian Ladies July 15, 2003 12:21 AM: a pantoum Hello, I told the ladies at the gate: Come in, I'd like to hear of your good news. But first, and on this I'll hear no debate, I'd like to offer some good news to you. You'll need...
  • Slicing the Apple July 14, 2003 9:43 PM: Encountered at LJ user arisbe's place ... much like the Burroughs Cut-Up Generator found elsewhere on the 'Net, but this one doesn't interject Burrough's words into your own, simply cuts up your journal entries and combines them in random ways....
  • La Vita Nuova July 14, 2003 5:11 PM: for Pietro For whom has Love so undone you? I, smiling, would look at them and say nothing. -- Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova Ah, could I be quite so fully undone by that which being shown me made me...
  • On Having an Affect July 14, 2003 11:38 AM: Sometimes, I wish it took only these words; like a simple spell cast out in the sky that turned hard, jagged rocks to gentle birds, gave the stubborn wingless the will to fly. But "fish gotta swim, and birds gotta...
  • Full Moon July 13, 2003 1:09 AM: There is a soft glow to the world tonight, and the dark, dim lit streets, beseiged with rain these past three weeks, shimmer silver and bright while the clouds are wispy and on the wane. For a brief moment, between...
  • Finding the Ocean (Again) July 11, 2003 12:54 PM: I have looked for long hours across the bay, sensing in the coming dawn some great sign; after my simple chores are done each day, when each minute spent does not seem so fine, along the windswept shore I roam,...
  • Finding the Ocean July 10, 2003 11:57 AM: I have lingered long by the endless shore, voice lost to the surf, that infinite shift that pulls itself from the littered ocean floor and upon which my thoughts float free and drift; for many years I saw only the...
  • La Matri, La Filia, La Spirita Sancta July 9, 2003 1:04 PM: She lies hidden there beneath the surface where waiting in silence she gives no sign; then all of a sudden, without warning, she comes, and just as soon is gone again. When the quiet mood of dawn has lifted and...
  • A Balmy Night in New Orleans July 8, 2003 11:46 PM: The moon is as full tonight as my heart; it hangs low in the sky, brimming with light that cascades in dimming circles that start to lose their focus in the wet hot night. Only half filled, and yet it...
  • A Sangha of Two July 8, 2003 12:00 PM: Life is suffering disappointment good bullshit not a noun. for Starlight Dances The things that you love are a part of me, each butterfly that brings a laughing smile; Our community grows large because we share every moment and each...
  • Your Father's Son July 7, 2003 7:11 PM: Most men come here broken, but you appear undefiled despite the years you must have spent out roaming in the wild; and when I asked you for your name, you offered up naught but a smile. No, you are not...
  • Chuang Tzu July 6, 2003 1:00 PM: Sometimes, life is simple, clean and pure lines like the woodcuts in my edition of Chuang Tzu; there is a sense of stillness that permeates the busy scenes of action, that slices right through the day's busy-ness and yet is...
  • Hanging Prayer Flags July 6, 2003 12:28 PM: You can't hang those outside our house, she said, looking at the string of fifteen small flags that I carefully unrolled and held out, stretched to full arms length across my big chest - it will look like an all-night...
  • Declaring Independence July 4, 2003 8:11 PM: Now, don't get me wrong - declaring your independence, staking a visible claim for your emancipation, raising your individual voice to separate yourself from the faceless crowd, seeking to differentiate yourself from the chains of slavery of any kind by...
  • Quoting Nihilists and Naysayers July 3, 2003 12:52 AM: So often, it seems when we look for things to quote, we search for those negative, capricious, self-debasing, or cynical quips that reinforce our own limited, limiting world view, words of wisdom from the "great thinkers" of the past, who...
  • Something or Another Thing June 30, 2003 11:41 AM: Trying to catch a thought to write it down, despite years of serious effort, seems sometimes, so pointless; and though I may clown and gambol with these words that come like dreams I realize they are not concrete things. Perhaps...
  • Orange June 29, 2003 10:32 PM: For some reason, perhaps that I've been thinking lately about the Dalai Lama and other assorted ocher, saffron and maroon robed individuals, I thought of this poem today. I wrote it in a fit of inspiration at a Poetry reading...
  • Enlightenment June 26, 2003 10:29 AM: The guru appears when the student is ready, at other times, they pass by un-noticed; only when the thirst for truth is steady can one drink from the cup of the lotus. Because to discern the saint from fool one...
  • Quiet June 23, 2003 10:07 AM: Listen ... Beyond the bustle of the nearby cross-street Beyond the hum of the pulsing air conditioners Beyond the rustle of the tree leaves Beyond the chirping of the birds Beyond the soft murmur of humming insects Beyond the gentle...
  • A Shared Vision June 21, 2003 7:50 AM: What I see is there for every eye; it does not hide that well, it seems to me - for although present in a clouded sky, it is shielded quite ineffectively. Beyond the veiled illusions it exists and waits, expectant,...
  • The Uses of this World June 18, 2003 8:09 AM: Is it any wonder that the world has turned to shit in the minds of those who find in it no sacred benefit who think the earth is only temporary living space, a proving ground for humans on their way...
  • Sparks June 17, 2003 10:07 PM: There it is again: That ever so small motion of a random thought. It flits through my mind Like a fragile butterfly: Melting in the hand, it leaves only dust that stains my clumsy fingers, and then, poof, is gone....
  • Untitled Sonnet May 31, 2003 9:48 AM: If I never saw another morning sky nor waked to hear the sparrows on the lawn, if roses gave no scent when I walked by and all the butterflies were dead and gone, there still would be their memory in...
  • Thoughts on Armed Conflict May 23, 2003 4:56 PM: A curtal sonnet If there exists a cause to take up arms, while breath survives some live to find it just, and seek to purify themselves in blood, forsaking for the fray their fields and farms to wage war on...
  • Being Poetic May 20, 2003 1:42 AM: To be quoted by a thousand scholars, used as a prop for some hopeless causes, while earning enough to feed my old cat bringing in those endless stipend dollars; the rewards of my royalty clauses helping me to grow sassy,...
  • Describing Sound to the Deaf May 19, 2003 10:40 AM: It is more than simply a vibration, a finite number of beats across time that enter the senses to resonate and seek to move against the immobile; there is a color and taste to it, too, that fills the mouth...
  • By Candlelight May 16, 2003 9:34 PM: I am one lone voice that is silently and slowly whispering a song that echoes so faintly fading in the cool air in a flicker of time. Like the side of a candle at the edge of your vision, the...
  • The Coming of Summer May 14, 2003 11:39 PM: The air is starting to gain water weight - it sweats like a fat man there at the gate and leaves hints of moisture with its warm touch; under its heavy hand, it is too much work to even sit...
  • Nada Brahma May 10, 2003 11:21 PM: A ghazal When there is nothing left the senses but sound Even the silence between us will make that sound. Each breath we take reverberates past our ears And fills the empty space with cascades of sound. There is no...
  • Anticipation May 9, 2003 1:59 PM: Even the moon is full with it; last night she hung expectant, just showing past half through her pregnancy, a pale shimmered light that peeped through the clouds like a wobbling calf between the legs of its watchful mother. Under...
  • A Beltane Blessing May 1, 2003 1:28 PM: There is a fire inside you that must not Be extinguished. From its heart comes the spark that lights your life. Once gone, it can't be bought - and you will have left only the cold dark. It is this...
  • The Parable of the Butterfly April 22, 2003 11:46 AM: We start so miniscule No more than a speck of dust Smaller than the edge of a fingernail Hidden in the shadow of a leaf One nameless egg among thousands Soft, vulnerable and almost translucent And as soon as we...
  • Ostara April 20, 2003 11:29 AM: That lingering scent on the morning breeze, light and fragrant as it skips across the lawn, there like a hint of soft mist in the trees; it plays on the senses and then is gone as each new blossom opens...
  • Tending a Garden April 19, 2003 11:58 PM: The soul is a garden that needs tending: deadheads to be snipped away, trees to trim, stray weeds to remove, fence that needs mending, measuring, minding each tendril and limb. Yet what will thrive, and what withers and dies, regardless...
  • Talking Loud and Saying Nothing April 14, 2003 10:15 AM: Sink your teeth into a worn-out concept like it was an old piece of shoe leather worry it constantly, 'til its precepts are soaked with saliva and turned to rubber in the clamped vise of your tenacious jaws; suck the...
  • The Bird in the Hand April 11, 2003 5:34 PM: If you can release what is your grasp letting those cramped fingers stretch out and loose, while strained muscles relax in a soft gasp after long years of negligent misuse, and just watch contented as what you thought so essential...
  • Prânâyâma April 4, 2003 1:01 PM: Inhale Where am I in all of this confusion? If I pause and take a moment to breathe, letting go of this veil of illusion [that separates (like two different leaves along two slim branches that stretch their way in...
  • Singing Lessons March 31, 2003 9:49 AM: If you want to learn to sing learn to breathe below the neck let the air fill your belly do not tense the throat and chest when you let loose the sound if it buzzes only in your head it...
  • Praying for the Living March 31, 2003 9:18 AM: Everything that draws breath will some day stop; No eternal life past the here and now will cause anything to live forever. Each new day brings another to an end. The sun is not infinitely shining; like us, it too...
  • Desert Storms and the Battle of Anghiari March 27, 2003 5:25 PM: "Tell me if anything has ever been achieved; tell me." -- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks No winding caravans, trailing behind the despoiling route of a conqueror, have had to slow in their lumbering tracks to scatter their spoor against detection,...
  • The Calms of Capricorn March 24, 2003 1:42 PM: Only five degrees to the north or south, shifted just slightly from this present course (here where the still air hangs in the mouth and even expelled shows no sign of force) and the trip would have been much different,...
  • Choices March 19, 2003 9:45 AM: THE SINGLE clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other. -- Carl Sandburg, Choose, 1916 Neither my acts or words will stop this war; when...
  • After a Spring Rain March 14, 2003 12:11 AM: There at the edge of a wide green meadow, set back just out of sight of a side road under the cloak of an old oak's shadow, where the bramble vines creep out from the wood and the fragrant wildflowers...
  • Lost Love March 10, 2003 9:34 PM: for LJ user ferahga Where in this crazy world do I begin? It's curious, how these things come to pass; sometimes, the line you tread is oh so thin, but you don't see it, and you fall on your ass....
  • The Writing Life March 9, 2003 11:48 PM: For the bi-polar artist the two modes are work and sleep versus work without sleep; sometimes, a creative thought explodes in a big bang, and other times, it creeps up and catches you there quite by surprise. Each mode has...
  • Bosses March 9, 2003 11:50 AM: for LJ user ravengirl Most people rise in organizations through political postures and moving up slowly, not causing much sensation. They never reach the top roost by proving their superiors wrong, or by doing too much of anything except smiling...
  • Job Fulfillment March 9, 2003 11:28 AM: for LJ user draggingmuppets When I worked for my dad, he used to say that a paycheck was its own incentive; well, I guess one can look at it that way, but I prefer something more inventive. Sure, I like...
  • Discontinued Specials March 9, 2003 10:52 AM: Through no fault of my own (bad lines of code, or an LJ glitch beyond my control) you fast assumed that I purposely showed you the door, reduced your once leading role to a bit player, just another friend. But...
  • Losing a Good Friend March 8, 2003 11:31 PM: for LJ user cathla143 I found I knew you, and then you were gone; they seem too brief, the paths that we wandered, and though in my memory you live on it feels like so many days were squandered. The...
  • Marriage and Weddings March 8, 2003 11:13 PM: for LJ user flirtykatiegurl Each circle shared is a chance for new growth; in the union of two souls a life is born, and for those who truly respect their troth a precious and delicate bond is formed. Great adventure...
  • Peace March 8, 2003 6:24 PM: for Ed Book This one may be the hardest to write yet, because words are not what make a thing so; and sometimes, it is easy to forget this fact, and think the world cannot just go on praying (which...
  • India March 8, 2003 5:46 PM: for LJ user indiancutie Along its brown muddy banks, the Ganges traces the lifeline of an ancient palm; the left hand of Brahma, whose phalanges grasp the waking world in a dreaming calm; there is nothing his breath does not...
  • The Giant Squid March 8, 2003 3:30 PM: for LJ user sara_wolfe Beware the Kraken, great beast of the seas that brings grown sailors as one to their knees; it strikes without warning at things afloat and makes kindling from the grandest of boats. Its tentacles latch to...
  • Violence March 8, 2003 2:57 PM: for LJ user nutmeggie True power isn't intimidation nor does it manifest itself by fear; lashing out doesn't help a situation, nor make a solution any more clear. Might has never really made a cause right, only forced gentler souls...
  • Why the Lady is a Tramp March 8, 2003 2:18 PM: for Pietro In a comedy of errors, mistakes are often seen as lessons of great worth, and the small things, the accidents of birth can determine where the plot line takes us. Sometimes, when two paths must separate we find...
  • Raising a Teenage Daughter March 8, 2003 2:13 PM: for LJ user stormispirit Get used to it - you will never be right. She will find, no matter how you try, some notion of yours to quickly defy and will long to be out of your keen sight. You...
  • A Pond in the Forest March 8, 2003 1:18 PM: for LJ user anoisblue If through the brambles you carefully file, deep in the dark wood a clearing is found. Away from the outside bustle and sound, hidden 'neath the canopy a long while, there a still pool of cool...
  • The Pairing of Waterfowl March 8, 2003 12:19 PM: for LJ user seamusd They may pass restrictions on public shows of affection as spring weather appears; even as the snow melts and the ice floes recede, their frozen hearts play on our fears, telling the world only of love's...
  • Integrity March 8, 2003 11:45 AM: for Pietro Even the high road floods in times like these, and one who distains those who learn to swim still pretends the water lapping at their knees won't soon splash up to soil their halo's brim. Never mind that...
  • White Rhinoceros March 7, 2003 6:44 PM: for poet dan Ground into a powder, that massive horn is much prized as an aphrodisiac; but the pale creature to whom it is born uses it for a different attack. Against the backdrop of the setting sun his silhouette...
  • The Universe March 7, 2003 4:34 PM: for LJ user ldy For those who praise abstinence, the big bang seems quite an obscene and vulgar notion - that the entire world would just simply hang together, making circular motions without a divine rudder seems absurd. But the...
  • Cancer March 7, 2003 3:17 PM: for Verian Thomas There are times when new growth is a bad thing. When that dark shadow creeps into your life, touching healthy cells with its withering hand, defying the surgeon's careful knife as it gains momentum and saps your...
  • A Willow Tree March 7, 2003 10:43 AM: for LJ user stephanielynch Bending down to touch the path at my feet, do you shed your warm tears for me and mine, letting the bitter salt blend with the sweet fragrance of the surrounding oak and pine? What sad...
  • Patrick's Sainthood March 7, 2003 9:47 AM: for LJ user estersin I won't march in your drunken green parades, nor think of your name when I spy clover; I'm tired of these cruel lies and the charades - it won't be my eyes your wool pulls over....
  • Getting Older March 7, 2003 9:05 AM: for LJ user dougs Maybe it gets a bit harder to rise At dawn after a few pints late at night, And those few pounds get harder to disguise, Making a climb up the stairs no delight. Maybe your ears...
  • The Harlem Renaissance March 6, 2003 10:02 PM: for LJ user gurdonark You could hear it through the night at Minton's, winding around some old tune of the man's, pushing the envelope, sound just hinting at more changes than the ear could stand, biting back at the harsh...
  • The Lambda Acceleration of the Universe March 6, 2003 9:06 PM: for LJ user nix_7c0 You may think it a bit of lunacy, but great minds spend a lot of time talking of single theories, some conspiracy that runs the universe. Some, like Hawking claim it's a beneficent force, with plans...
  • Renunciation March 6, 2003 9:47 AM: So for forty days and nights sacrifice you get a taste of dying to the flesh a process wherein you learn the great price of your worldly pleasures, and so refresh your tired soul through purging and denial, by setting...
  • Coffee Spoons March 5, 2003 12:08 AM: "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons ..." The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot Little by little, life goes on Minute after minute, and then it's gone A brief bit of essence to work...
  • Repetition March 4, 2003 9:02 PM: How many times do I need to reach out, without reaching, into the universe that waits, patiently, through my doubt and some overwhelming sense, a perverse need to communicate? In my weak hands no infinite secrets are ever revealed, and...
  • On the Wasteland March 3, 2003 8:35 AM: So the old world is gone, let a new one replace it The world is already dead; that figment of existence that you knew in the past, the places well-remembered, those fond scenes where the history of an ancient folk...
  • Temporality March 2, 2003 10:54 PM: Fast, how fast the time goes by! It seems like last year was a but a moment or two, then fell off into some gaping chasm. I tell you, it was only mere seconds of fleeting shadow, no more than...
  • Breaking Silence March 1, 2003 11:31 PM: It takes but a moment of deliberate breath, a fleeting few seconds of intentional movement, and the fragile cocoon of this world is shattered, its tiny fragments of coherency thrown out into a wild, mad self-righteous cacophony of filled-in spaces...
  • On Reading Advertisements March 1, 2003 12:20 PM: There is a world out there in printed words that I encounter on some occasions, filled with notions that seem very absurd, using the bold language of persuasion to convince me to ignore reality and buy into the illusions they...
  • Ten Mile February 28, 2003 10:15 AM: Isaac Bonewits, Scott Cunningham, Eminem and me, all born in the same general vicinity: the suburbs of Detroit, 'round Royal Oak; which of the four of us is the bigger joke? 28 FEB 2003...
  • After a Line in Eliot February 28, 2003 9:26 AM: In the halls the people come and go, wishing I were Michelangelo; but things are not always as perfect as his David would lead you to believe. Some days, after too much cheap wine and dreadful harp Music even the...
  • Holiday Weekends February 28, 2003 8:45 AM: I guess you know that you are getting old when the quieter the time, the better, and it's not quite as much fun being bold; you'd rather wake quietly to let her sleep in for a change. To just be...
  • The Underground February 27, 2003 8:26 PM: for Johnny Cash So I guess it would be something complex, with a different perspective and view, more than just a reaction or reflex, some knee-jerk response that simply brings you back to the same old emotional edge, feeding on...
  • Early Childhood Development February 27, 2003 10:24 AM: Well, you are going to grow up someday, so there are a few things you need to learn: why free love has a price most cannot pay, why it is more work to plant than to burn, why the world...
  • The Neighborhood February 27, 2003 9:25 AM: in memory of Fred "Mister" Rogers There used to be a family-owned store right there, on the corner where the bus stops; and when I was a kid, they sold much more than bubble-gum, candy and lollipops. It was like...
  • Another Rainy Day February 26, 2003 10:35 AM: The gutters are filled and the streets overflowing The raindrops keep falling, the winds keep on blowing And just when it will stop, there's no way of knowing So batten the hatches, and prepare for rowing The skies are dark...
  • A Tavern in Spring February 25, 2003 9:00 AM: Where have the dancing ladies gone, those fair and merry maids, that once so sweetly filled the air? Too soon, their laughter fades. (It must be spring that bids them go and seek for other haunts; once winter's grip has...
  • The Road to Find Out February 25, 2003 8:02 AM: For some reason, this morning thinking about Ian Anderson and Cat Stevens (did they ever collaborate>) On the road to find out, did you stop to lose your way and play upon your fiddle for the breaking of the day...
  • The First Time February 25, 2003 7:32 AM: I can clearly remember the first time: there it was, in the back of the closet, the case a little dusty. Not too sure exactly what it was, I carefully lifted it free of the stored winter clothes (breathing in...
  • Philosophers in General February 24, 2003 11:36 AM: I suppose it should be quite obvious at least to a pompous erudite snob that spending one's whole life oblivious can turn into a full-time, all day job. But still, some profess and philosophize non-stop, bent on proving that a...
  • The Burning Times February 23, 2003 8:54 AM: It did not start with a single matchstrike, or bonfires blazing brightly in the night; it began with thinking they did not like the fact that they might not be in the right about everything; and so found kindling that...
  • The Wrong Answer February 23, 2003 7:27 AM: How many, when they think of right-wing strong-arm tactics of national emergencies requiring increased security of leaders not elected by the vote of opposition candidates denounced as non-patriotic of speeches that appeal to the lowest common denominator of the discouragement...
  • The Right Question February 22, 2003 2:45 PM: Inspired by a section of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael An animal in a cage does not spend its time rehashing how it got to be in that sad place, reliving the moments from its glorious prime; but often a puzzled look...
  • The Blustering Wind February 22, 2003 2:17 PM: For two days now non-stop the rain flows, while the world waits patient for the sun; and still the wind against the window blows. No one is out at parades or picture shows; In this dreadful weather, no Mardi Gras...
  • Writing Every Day February 22, 2003 11:38 AM: The mind is a muscle, and not a gland that simply filters things inward and out; each conscious movement of a writing hand flexes more than the arm's tendons; No doubt with each new thought a synapse finds action, and...
  • Sleeping In February 22, 2003 11:15 AM: There are some that make you feel guilt and shame about those few extra hours in your bed on a stray Saturday morning, eyes red after a late night and work-week; they blame you for the world not being up...
  • May the Teacher's Role Be Lessoning February 21, 2003 12:18 PM: A recent discussion in a friend's journal made me think of a poem I wrote a few years back in response to a thread on a pagan discussion board related to "why doesn't someone teach me NOW what I want...
  • Songs for the Deaf February 21, 2003 12:59 AM: I seem to be fascinated, as of late, by the myth of Odysseus, particularly with his interaction (or adamant lack thereof) with the Sirens. In the book The Third Ear: On Listening to the World, one of the ideas put...
  • The Off-Season February 20, 2003 11:07 AM: When I was going to school in Boston, one of the adventures I experienced was rehearsing and then playing a gig with the Bloodfarmers in NYC (actually, it was an "Acid Core Festival" held in October of 1991 at the...
  • Life Beyond the Tunnel February 20, 2003 10:48 AM: I want to tell you there is whole new world beyond the concrete labyrinth that walls in what you know; the snaking paths that curl you so tightly in their grip as night falls, keeping you safe and secure in...
  • A Few Lines Composed Nowhere Near an Abbey February 20, 2003 10:00 AM: There is a Mary every few doors down the block; in a small creche under the trees or tight up against the house, overgrown with wire grass or chicory to her knees of cheap cast plaster, whiter than bleached bone....
  • Enough Crying Are Everywhere People February 19, 2003 8:50 AM: an acrostic, of sorts Population perpetrates paranormal piecemeal poppycock pollution pornography. Posterior politics police pollen poltergeists, producing portable priest polygraphs pushing Plato purity. Extremist existential elephantiasis egos elevate egrarian elation, eclipsing elliptical ergonomic energy. Exception ends ecclesiastical evolution, exacerbating eternal...
  • Making Your Own Road February 19, 2003 8:29 AM: Exercise: take a line from an existing poem and write a new poem based on that line. The line I chose was from Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. Two roads converged in a yellow wood (and neither of them...
  • Oh Bard, Come Sing! February 18, 2003 8:58 PM: My last poem of the day reminded me, in its rallying cry to the world's poets and singers, of a piece that I wrote shortly after the 9/11 tragedy. I am a Druid by religion, a Musician by vocation, a...
  • The Siren's Song February 18, 2003 4:13 PM: Like Odysseus, our great commander in chief (who likes his reports and his facts just in brief) has ordered himself lashed and tied to the mast, and in the ears of his councilors, wax plugs made fast so he can...
  • Random Musings February 18, 2003 10:34 AM: At the volta of the delta stuck in indecision's swelter I released the muse and felt her slip away Though I thought my words would melt her as they tumbled, helter-skelter, she instead preferred a shelter from the fray And...
  • The Wind in the Willows February 18, 2003 8:37 AM: This week's assignment at the LJ community "Writing 101" was to use at least 7 of the following 10 words (alphabetical, chaos, tool belt, bloviate, crux, sinner, marshmallow, dramatic, tissue, sympathetic) in a piece of writing. Seems like a very...
  • Evil February 17, 2003 7:10 PM: Evil, if it is, lives behind the walls in a murky shadow world of self-doubt (who, after all, cannot truthfully make at least a good guess about what is right?) and waits for those who ask 'Why shouldn't I?' but...
  • Thirteen O'Clock (and All's Well) February 16, 2003 11:19 PM: Ok, so maybe it's a VERY strange question...but does anyone but me think that a re-interpretation of George Orwell's 1984, as a play written in entirely in iambic pentameter (much like Shakespeare's retelling of the Tragedie of Hamlett King of...
  • Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized February 16, 2003 1:52 PM: This piece is called "Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized" because despite what our so-called leaders of technology and communications may tell you, the chances are slim that your quality of life will be enhanced by further dependence on a...
  • Listening to the World February 16, 2003 10:25 AM: Out there at the end of a modem wire we are traveling at the speed of now, and despite our differences, still somehow we can make connections, if we desire. There are so many voices in this world that one...
  • What It's Worth February 15, 2003 11:32 AM: Songs don't promote activity by their content. Violence in Music doesn't necessarily increase violence in society. In the history of the world, there have been more love songs written than any other kind combined. If songs could have changed the...
  • No New Texas February 14, 2003 11:23 AM: I had a dream our president (a former Texas resident) unleashed an unseen precedent and canceled his world war. Although it was much criticized, he woke one day and realized that bombs exploding in the skies were not what he...
  • Being American February 14, 2003 10:59 AM: So, I'm un-American? Maybe it's true. I'm un-American, how about you? I believe in progress, and free speech, too; In equal rights for strangers - you? I will not support war red, white or blue - but will defend my...
  • True Love February 14, 2003 8:46 AM: here's one specifically for Valentine's Day, for Starlight Dances: When you walk into a room, my head turns to watch as you approach; I never grow tired of seeing your face, and I know each one of your expressions. My...
  • Stating the Obvious February 14, 2003 8:31 AM: Night will tend to fall at the end of each day - Only a few see such a thing as a threat. Men with something to hide direct your attention Overseas, where the enemy is an easy target, flailing Rhetoric...
  • The Law of Three February 13, 2003 12:24 PM: Put something out there, it comes back threefold (at least that's the lesson that Wiccans are told), but that's not quite physics, and ain't karma, neither, at least as defined by most Hindu believers For karma is action, like physics...
  • Observance February 12, 2003 9:21 AM: It is so fragile our tenuous grip on life, this vision we use this vision we use: we see only the surface with our eyes open with our eyes open there is so much beyond sight that remains unseen that...
  • Morning Dew February 11, 2003 8:57 AM: On a cold morning, like this one has turned out to be, it crunches lightly underfoot, the crisp grass tines bending to earth with each soft step, wetting shoes with a coating of earth-cloud-moisture. It glazes the car's windshield, seeming...
  • On the Sonnet February 10, 2003 11:11 AM: A simple set of fourteen locking lines, so deceptively easy to flesh out, like an arrangement of flowering vines carefully ordered and then pruned; no doubt like any small thing, limited in scope, providing only a distillation of an image,...
  • Playing the Blues February 8, 2003 11:27 PM: If you let it up from your tiptoes, vibrating, tingling there along your spine, and wait patiently as it slowly grows gathering strength from your soul, like a vine drinking in the marrow of your being, not letting your mind...
  • Metamorphosis February 7, 2003 8:55 AM: What happens to the forming butterfly stuck fast inside its cage of flesh and bone when the long months and years go slowly by, and unlike its siblings, who have all grown wings and completely left those old cocoons behind,...
  • Exposure February 6, 2003 9:37 AM: In reality, we all stand naked and alone on the dark edge of a cliff; if sometimes, fearlessness cannot be faked, that is not shameful. It is not as if we are the only fools who shiver when faced with...
  • Finding the Inner Core February 6, 2003 8:36 AM: It is never quite what you expected (after all, there are no maps or guidebooks) in that place inside where resurrected illusions are hiding in each dark nook; What they taught you regarding self-knowledge (the meaning of a man, our...
  • A Morning Walk February 5, 2003 9:57 AM: It was bitter cold there along the shore as we took our exercise this morning, the icy wind making our half hour seem more than endless. As rainclouds began forming we kept our steady pace while turning back, watching as...
  • Chiaroscuro February 4, 2003 9:08 PM: Nothing holds a shape without its shadow, that place at the edge where the lines are rough, and sharp defined shapes blur in a limbo made of innuendo and the small stuff that, in shades of gray, fills up silent...
  • Personal Responsibility February 4, 2003 8:38 AM: Where we are right now is the end result of all the choices made throughout our days; and while we blame the universe, the fault is mostly our own. The universe pays in the same currency we freely spend (often...
  • Having What You Want, Wanting What You Have February 3, 2003 9:44 AM: Having What You Want There is so much stuff out there in the world; an endless flow of new things to acquire can occupy one's thoughts until they swirl in a mad jumble, or build a great spire out of...
  • Festival of the Seeds February 2, 2003 2:16 AM: In our house, we refer to February 1st (Candlemas, Imbolc, Oimlec, etc.) as the Festival of the Seeds. It is the day when spring first begins, when the world initially begins its thaw after the long months of winter, and...
  • Ritual February 2, 2003 12:33 AM: There are some that say a routine is stale, a repetition of empty action that mimics true motion, one that pales when compared to the instant reaction of the soul to each moment as it comes, fleeting and ephemeral as...
  • Howling January 31, 2003 10:14 AM: I have seen the great minds of my own mad generation, lost there on the long road to find-out, trolling in a dry wasteland of television idols and false dawns; of lingering doubts on the new world order, lolling aimlessly...
  • Silence January 31, 2003 4:54 AM: When so much of one's world revolves around the search for the inner essence of things, an attempt to hear the personal sound or true song of being, what often brings the most clear and vibrant indication of something vital...
  • Instant Gratification January 30, 2003 10:55 AM: Yes, these are the times that try a man's soul, when platitudes from saints and holy books seem flat and stale, the semblance of control blurs hopelessly each way a person looks, and a sense of overwhelming, dire need (mixed...
  • After the Opening of La Fiesta January 30, 2003 12:32 AM: This poem was written after hearing of the adventures of two friends from the local bar who attended a gala opening for a new Mexican restaurant in town. Free Sauza shot glasses, appetizers, and margaritas were consumed in abundance. Laughing...
  • Polar Extremes January 29, 2003 6:39 PM: One of my favorite Robert Service poems describes perfectly the state of ADD. It's called The Men That Don't Fit In. After reading the bio of one of my new friends, , who stated that the word bi-polar was too...
  • Compassion January 29, 2003 8:29 AM: There are still some strange people in this world who demonstrate compassion for others, based not on a need for recognition or because some reward has been promised; An act of compassion is not a task completed to meet some...
  • Resistance January 28, 2003 9:29 AM: If there is a principle in my life that stands behind any visible act or serves to motivate in times of strife, it is this very simple and small fact: I have been given many things to keep, some of...
  • A Cup of Lotus Tea January 27, 2003 11:35 AM: Sitting quietly under the carport in the still crispness of the morning air listening to the sparrows chirp and play there on the light-frost covered lawn, their day's sport unspoiled by this unseasonable cold, watching the sky, made sharp and...
  • Procrastination January 27, 2003 8:45 AM: If I put those parts of me I distain away in a box, where they can hide from the world, if I just do not decide their resolution, I can avoid pain and needling from their sharp little jabs. Their...
  • The Ordinary January 26, 2003 12:00 AM: Far below the surface of the waking world, there lies a still and sleeping giant, a slow unconscious vision of making that exists beyond the mad defiant whirlwind of apparent thought and vision; before the dawn it stands, self-reliant and...
  • Educating for Revolution January 25, 2003 1:46 PM: A couple of links I just followed and read from my friend rialian's journal, particularly those that led to the website of Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality, prompted me to start thinking anew about two of...
  • Birthdays January 25, 2003 11:44 AM: Happy Birthday to Starlight Dances! Things to do today: Take Star out to dinner and thoroughly break our diet :) Call Star's mom and give her congratulations on having given birth to Star :) Do all the dishes, laundry and...
  • A Hard Freeze January 24, 2003 11:44 PM: When the temperature drops with the sun, there is a stillness that comes on the world: like a blanket of crystal on the lawn that mutes out even the low sound of breath, or a layer of gauze, chilled and...
  • Changes in Mood January 24, 2003 3:25 PM: Sometimes, it seems like the world is awash in a dark, foul murky liquid that seeks a height just above the chin, and tastes bad to boot; at times like these, when nothing goes according to plan, or requires no...
  • The American Dream January 23, 2003 9:18 AM: In spite of the obstacles, to advance and claim your dream, a great prize worth winning; to inspire the world with a song and dance and send all of those nay-sayers spinning. For this noble purpose alone I quest, to...
  • Hidden Beauty January 22, 2003 9:14 AM: Looking out from behind the holly bush as the early morning fog gently lifts, watching the gauzed-tinted light softly push its way into the air like a shy mist, one can almost forget the waking world, with its constant focus...
  • Her Sleeping Form January 21, 2003 1:27 AM: It's one in the morning; only the cat and I are still awake at this late hour. It (cat) sleeps during the daylight so that when no one is watching it can devour the remnants of an evening meal, making...
  • Dieting January 20, 2003 10:24 AM: After two days of eating much less food (and believe me, missing it a great deal) watching others scarf down rich stuff - how rude! without giving a thought to how I feel it seems to me that so many...
  • One Too Many Unified January 20, 2003 12:09 AM: When I was living in Memphis, some friend of mine who knew I was a poet mentioned that fact to an African-American preacher friend of hers. The upshot was that this gentleman asked me for a poem about Martin Luther...
  • Writing for Children January 19, 2003 3:25 AM: To put it so it appeals to the young, weave a world that is perfectly inviting and despite a deep first-rate commitment to adventure and wond'rous mystery still manage to inject a few lessons; the trick, I believe, is to...
  • Nonsense January 19, 2003 3:03 AM: Again, perhaps if there were but a way, 'tho as it is maybe it's just as well: for when your tongue is tripped with come what may quite thereupon one never can quite tell. And then, between the whatsit and...
  • Being Thirty Eight January 18, 2003 2:25 AM: Now that I am thirty eight (just this month) it's probably time I got my thing in gear; or at least to some extent, figured out what role it is I tried out for, since it's obvious at this point...
  • Failure January 16, 2003 10:43 PM: for Starlight Dances They say you never know until you try, that risking failure is the way to win; well, I have failed a great number of things - and I am sure that I'll do so again. I cannot...
  • Literal Interpretation January 16, 2003 10:26 PM: To be or not to be, that is the question: and if we are to be regarded seriously, as humans, placed upon this earth to live according to our stated frame of mind, it surely makes no sense to place...
  • Routine January 15, 2003 8:41 AM: To compose a new poem every day (as a way to clear away the cobwebs cast in sleep, that seem to often obstruct the door that swings freely between the worlds of my reality and fantasy; or at least to...
  • Religion January 14, 2003 4:44 PM: Seems like I've been in a bit of a downward spiral lately: dark themes, disjointed thoughts, cold nights and bitter winds. But it is merely one side of the coin. This afternoon I feel absolutely Whitmanesque (although he too had...
  • Fragmentation January 14, 2003 1:59 PM: Like bits of quartz and dissolving sandstone that slip slowly through tired and bent fingers, the world can separate and shift, quite prone to entropy; what energy lingers just seems to founder, without direction, while shreds of meaning flail into...
  • Mistakes January 13, 2003 12:40 AM: Of all the big mistakes my parents made in their own lives, and then subsequently tried to steer me clear of, most pale and fade next to the whopper that evidently (at least now in my own experience) is impossible...
  • Journeys and Destinations January 12, 2003 12:20 PM: My house says to me, "do not leave me, for here dwells your past." And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future." And I say to both my house and the road, "I...
  • Time January 12, 2003 10:51 AM: For some, the moments pass and they are gone, lost in some unending chasm of space that leaves only frail wisps that linger on in memories that fleetingly can be traced, and the ever-arching line of past days stretches beyond...
  • Family January 12, 2003 9:40 AM: Sometimes, it's hard to exactly define the difference in density of blood and water; often, it is a blurred line that wends its way through a desert of crud, and like the Sufi story of the stream that, at the...
  • Sleep January 11, 2003 12:48 PM: How many strange nights have I spent awake, only to move through the next whole day dull, like a somnambulist who heedless, takes mad walks through the world of dreams, softly lulled through some forgettable conversation by a bright chimera...
  • Listening January 10, 2003 3:58 PM: There is, deep under the dull roar of life, beneath the mad world's wild cacophony, hidden in between the rhythmic heartbeats of progress, ever advancing onward, a small quiet voice that softly whispers, so fragile that even a feather breeze...
  • Mediocrity January 9, 2003 1:56 PM: I had spent more than a thousand rough hours, distaining the coward's wax in my ears; instead, forcing myself as each note soured to find some beauty in each sound that neared - even the ravening gluttonous song of the...
  • Haiku for the Holidays January 8, 2003 4:12 PM: Long lines and cramped flights, bland food tasting like warm crap: holiday travel. Meeting family, all dwelling on past actions; skin deep interest. More useless gifts, and hours wasted in small talk; No relaxation. So rude and hurried. Must keep...
  • Disconnection January 8, 2003 9:23 AM: In that too brief moment when the old leaf, released from the now hibernating branch, finds itself adrift on an air current, floating in limbo between sky and earth, doubt may raise its ugly head and whisper, urging secret fears...
  • Returning January 5, 2003 10:54 AM: Ah, my friends, it is good to be home. After a week in southern Californika (which at times seemed like a colony on a far distant planet) in a strange granola world, New Orleans seems like a Mecca for all...
  • Anesthesia December 27, 2002 3:58 PM: There is a balm that soothes the troubled mind, a cool blanket of fog that brings relief anesthetizing what pain it can find; a warm embrace that you can hide beneath. It liberates the ear from hurtful noise, dulls the...
  • Temporality December 26, 2002 7:50 AM: On such a tenuous and fragile thread, the tender stuff with which mad dreams are sewn, are woven all the notions of the head; their pattern held by faith and will alone. Each gentle tendril attached by a whim and...
  • Waking Early December 25, 2002 8:16 AM: In the early hours of morning, the dawn barely come upon the still sleeping world, there is a quiet peace that lays upon the earth; and before its axis has hurled the sleeping planet into warm sunlight, when the last...
  • Immobilization December 24, 2002 8:47 AM: Sunday, about two in the afternoon, I was walking out of the bedroom after assisting Star with some of the Yule dinner preparations, and I was struck with a strange pain from the middle of my lower back to just...
  • Visiting California December 22, 2002 11:16 AM: Even when I was living there, entrenched in the bustle of its chaotic skirts, finding not much hope - mostly evidence that the entire world had gone mad, or worse - the west coast seemed a little bit surreal; And...
  • The Vessel December 21, 2002 10:19 PM: Sometimes it seems that the brittle clay vessel used to carry the clear water from inspiration's well is so fragile, flawed and useless, such an ill-suited thing; the priceless, sacred fluid it transports accents each error, highlights weaknesses that the...
  • Song for Today December 21, 2002 1:16 PM: To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour -- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence I sing a song for...
  • The Holly and the Oak December 20, 2002 11:05 AM: As the days wane short to midwinter's night and the Holly King, crowned at Samhain, rules a darkened world in shadows without light, the cold earth hibernates, waiting for Yule. In the deep fetid sleep of seeming death the spirit...
  • Midwinter's Night December 19, 2002 10:47 PM: The eve of the Yule holidays, the winter solstice, and a full moon tonight to boot (the Oak moon, if you gather that type of information). This evening I am thinking about the presence and absence of light in the...
  • The Price of Freedom December 19, 2002 5:10 PM: As a preface, I would like to say that my family has fought in every conflict this country has ever engaged in, from the French-and-Indian War to the Operation Desert Storm. We are among the Daughters of the American Revolution,...
  • Entropy December 19, 2002 11:41 AM: The walls may rot, collapse, be crushed or fall, but new dimensions are formed at each fold; while these temporal illusions may pall, our grasp will always far exceed our hold. Brick and bone and flesh may turn to dust,...
  • Don Quixote December 19, 2002 9:07 AM: In the shadow realm of the practical, a foolish notion often seems so grand: and every errant knight that takes a stand against the wind, not so intractable that their quest for simple truth comes to nil, believes in the...
  • Perceived Endings December 18, 2002 3:52 PM: OK, so perhaps its a bit morbid. But reading the poem "from the deceased" in the funeral program this afternoon made me think that it would be better to write it down beforehand, so that nobody else would usurp my...
  • Death and Kindness December 18, 2002 9:51 AM: ... so now, after seven years of bad luck - after that sudden crippling twist of fate, when all the shit he threw just turned to muck, just when you thought things weren't going so great in a second or...
  • Existence December 17, 2002 8:15 PM: To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. - Oscar Wilde Under the subcutaneous layer, like the plasma-filled pulsing artery, its subtle rhythm barely visible to the non-discriminating viewer life flows, filling the...
  • Addiction December 17, 2002 1:06 PM: The search for intelligent life on earth, for purpose and meaning behind the veils, to find out what each hour of breath is worth, and learn something from each of my travails, To want what I have, not have what...
  • Signs of Life December 17, 2002 8:53 AM: There are some who write endless streams of words, describing the minutiae with detail that just boggles the imagination; and every so often, epiphanies result, for me, just from reading the stuff. But the writer shows no visible sign of...
  • The Doors of Perception December 16, 2002 9:07 PM: This is journal entry based on a prompt from Random Acts of Journaling. The Doors of Perception There is a door of aged and splintered oak, its paint is faded, old and worn by rain; the battered lock still grips,...
  • A Call Out of the Blue December 16, 2002 11:17 AM: Out of the clear blue, a telephone call sent my mind wandering off in free fall; an old friend, from high school, a long time gone, whose voice I had oft reflected upon got my number, it seems; called to...
  • Nothing At All December 16, 2002 9:30 AM: Just thinking of nothing, and all that leaves between the empty spaces of being; for it is the nothing that one believes that oft separates knowing from seeing. And in that great nothing exist all things, the small and the...
  • A New Study on Music and Memory ... December 15, 2002 10:47 PM: or why that stupid song gets stuck in your head...a very interesting bit of new research from Dartmouth College: Music, Memory and the Brain In other news, we have a wonderful little (5-1/2') Scotch Pine tree now nestled in the...
  • Blues for the Sun December 14, 2002 12:30 PM: a blues sonnet Oh, how the winter wind does howl and moan The winter wind, I hear it howl and moan And turn the warm sunshine as cold as stone The morning sky is clouded up with rain Covered over...
  • Sonnets of Osiris December 13, 2002 12:43 AM: I As winter extends its grip on the land, clutching with long alabaster fingers and leaving remnants of a leprous hand where its frigid probing touch still lingers, deep in the cold soil, where the dormant root, its life spark...
  • The Madness of King George December 12, 2002 11:45 PM: A couple of days ago, someone on my friends list posted an article about our current president that suggested that his "simple country boy" schtick was an act, that he was not a witless rube, but something a bit more...
  • Ode to the Cantos December 12, 2002 9:38 AM: Ah, to be Ezra Pound for a day; to compose an intensely complex and almost unintelligible series of poems fueled by an unwavering desire to be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misled. Ah, for the Cantos, those bright shining things, that late...
  • Paradox Lost December 11, 2002 12:17 AM: Somewhat of a work in progress, that is based on a idea I had a few weeks ago when I dreamed up the title. For Milton and Dante Quotes from odd and esoteric pamphlets, a sarcastic quip on theology, blurred...
  • Winter in New Orleans December 10, 2002 1:55 PM: It's not so cold as in Montana, the winter in Louisiana; but if the humid heat of June boils thin your blood, you change you tune when icy rain clouds fill the sky and it drops below fifty five. I've...
  • Ownership December 9, 2002 8:29 AM: My country, our freedom, our way of life - A gift from the gods, or a two-edged knife? Our neighborhood, to be patrolled from within; not defined by what we take out, but what we put in. True ownership lies...
  • From Wolfgang to Leopold December 8, 2002 5:08 AM: It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Krishnamurti Stop. I cannot imagine too much more of this: in dreams in waking moments in between the breaths and along-side the twelve steps...
  • Song for the Green Man December 6, 2002 8:42 AM: With the Yule season rapidly approaching, I thought it might be nice pull out a paean to the original jolly old elf, the host of yuletime present, the Green Man :) I wrote this about a year ago. May your...
  • The Anti-War Codicil December 5, 2002 3:37 PM: Crank up the war machine, conscript the poorThe wisest solution is we must to warFor we are insulted, and slighted, and moreWe must have a cause, a wolf there at the doorWe lead by example, as everyone knows,a emperor naked,...
  • Does a Rose Say No To Life? December 5, 2002 3:11 PM: If life be a rose, those who pick it may find both petal and thorn, sweet and the unkind; and essence as well as the outer husk, for each is essential, both prick and musk. If life be negation, that...
  • For Stardances in Summer December 4, 2002 12:20 PM: Here is an old poem of mine that I rediscovered while updating my website. BTW, it is one of the poems that I wrote for Starlight Dances during our on-line courtship :) Early morning sun The gentle mist of green...
  • The Celt and the Kiowa December 3, 2002 10:39 PM: A few weeks ago Stardances and I were having a discussion, and one of the topics that came up was my perception of the similarity between Native American and Celtic spirituality. Granted, much has been made of this supposed "correlation"...
  • America is Still Singing December 2, 2002 7:58 AM: An envelope sonnet, actually part one of a sonnet redoubled: for Walt Whitman America still sings, as Whitman wrote, but often-times the tune is fading low; and her heartbeat, not stopped, is often slow, causing a frequent skip, or sour...
  • Twilight at Pontchartrain November 30, 2002 6:03 PM: for stardances There at the lakeshore, the last light of day slipped down in a lavender, purple cascade, leaving the clouds streaked with pinks, blue and gray as my love and I watched them wander away Against the horizon, the...
  • First Harvest November 28, 2002 8:16 AM: I don't know how the original pilgrims did it, but I am on a pilgrimage of my own. In our house, this is how one pagan gives thanks. This is a poem I wrote for First Harvest last year, and...
  • The Bard Blues November 27, 2002 7:35 AM: Earlier this year, someone approached with the notion that being a bard was a relatively simple undertaking; of course, I took a small bit of umbrage to that idea, and responded with the following poem: Who is a bard, who...
  • On the Tao November 26, 2002 10:45 PM: a sonnet for my friend fool_in_spirit The Tao that can be seen is not the Tao, the obvious is never what it seems; and often, what connects the who to how is understood only by fools in dreams. Still, once...
  • Bright and Clear November 26, 2002 10:22 PM: The French ballade form There is a quiet place where one may find A respite from the bustle of the day; Where silence soothes the worry of the mind and with its echo, holds the world at bay. In this...
  • I Awoke Glad November 26, 2002 9:51 AM: awdl gywydd I awoke glad for no cause; but did not pause to reflect, just smiled to myself in bed, and instead of neglect I gave myself attention; didn't mention my great flaws, but spoke kindness to my soul; on...
  • The Write Stuff November 25, 2002 1:29 PM: A Shakespearean Sonnet To write, and do it well, is my intent - in idioms of verse and prose and play; Success or failure will be evident In how my critics judge the things I say. I do not hope...
  • The Gift of Life November 25, 2002 11:36 AM: A modified Spenserian sonnet A precious gift is life, and how we use Each moment tells just what we think it's worth; A wasted dawn is reproof of our birth, and consequences that we can't refuse. There is no misplaced...
  • A Poem is Different from a Song November 24, 2002 11:39 PM: A poem is different for me from a song One takes a single image and distills its essence, While the other takes a story and dissects its scenes; Each has as its focus a sole point of view, most times,...
  • Among the Trees November 24, 2002 3:10 AM: a villanelle I have sought among the trees for peace, And found in their shade a quiet knowledge; There is a humbling silence in their ancient speech. The echoes of time are within their sky-bound reach, And to find my...
  • Carport Cacophony November 23, 2002 1:30 AM: a sestina Under the carport, inhaling from my last cigarette another drag, I listen to the voices rise and fall through the window, their cadence and cascade a soft counterpoint of sound, muffled through the closed glass; here and there...
  • A Cup of Morning Chai November 22, 2002 10:11 AM: I've decided to try and write a new poem each morning and post it, just to "wet my beak" so to speak, to keep my hand in and make sure that I continue to focus. Some of these daily poems...
  • Kind of Blown (Miles Davis is Past Tense Now) November 15, 2002 7:51 AM: This is a poem that I wrote while in Boston, studying to become a jazz Musician (LOL). Composed a day or two after Miles Davis died, I like to think of it as my Jazz Impressions of "Prufrock", or daring...
  • Plastic Pocket Harmolodics November 14, 2002 11:51 PM: or stretching out, otically speaking... When in doubt of where to go, Musically, when questioning one's ability to hear harmonic structures, to find the "in" groove or chord, or if just in need of a general aural cleansing, there is...
  • The Place of Refuge October 24, 2002 1:32 PM: I wrote this poem last year when stardances and I went to Hawaii together. I wrote this poem after she and I performed a thanksgiving ritual at the shore early one morning a day before we were to leave the...
  • Addressing a Troll October 18, 2002 2:03 PM: I know you surf the message boards Trolling for something to sneer about I have no doubt You've seen my latest word I know you think you know it all Walking that line between fear and doubt That's what it's...
  • Instruction to Fertilize October 15, 2002 7:49 PM: If I hurl vitriolic gobs of hate-filled angst at the speed of aborted thought down the ink-blood edge of an angry pen; take as my heroes those who defined life as the bitter sentence terminated with the punctuation of death...
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