You deconstruct. I’ll reconstruct.
You analyze. I’ll catalyze
New brews from old elixirs.
You mix it up. I’ll fix it up.
You break it down. I’ll play the clown
At one of your faculty mixers.
You challenge style. I’ll smile awhile.
You find the theme. I’ll soon redeem
My work from any classroom trickster.
The Chair
Tremulous skeins of destiny
Flutter so ethereally
Around me – but then I feel
Its embrace is that of steel.
Short Story
A gasp of breath,
A sudden death:
The tale begun.
A rustled page
Passes an age:
The tale is done.
The Modern Age
Living in the modern age,
Death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.
Ruled by violence and vice.
We all stand upon thin ice.
Are we brave or are we mice,
Here upon such thin, thin ice?
Dare we linger, dare we sate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate?
Knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?
Wee Wisdom
When tempest-tossed,
Embrace chaos.
This Old Honkytonk Of Fools
Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things right and all the wrong
Will come straight to you: It’s fate.
Hear the music, dance if you can.
Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkytonk of fools.
Cold Fire
Vibrations in a wire.
Ice crystals
In a beating heart.
Cold fire.
A mind’s frigidity:
Frozen steel,
Dark rage, morbidity.
Cold fire.
Defense against
A cruel life,
Death and strife:
Cold fire.
Whom You Might Trust
Nowhere can a secret keep
Always secret, dark and deep,
Half so well as in the past,
Buried deep to last, to last.
Keep it in your own dark heart.
Otherwise the rumors start.
After many years have buried
Secrets over which you worried,
No confidant can then betray
All the words you didn’t say.
Only you can then exhume
Secrets safe within the tomb
Of memory, of memory,
Within the tomb of memory.
1992
Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,
And morning skies had a peculiar way
Of slipping cat-quick into midnight.
Men On White Horses
Those who would banish the sin of greed
Embrace the sin of envy as their creed.
Those who seek to banish envy as well
Only draw elaborate new maps of Hell.
Those with passion to change the world
Look on themselves as saints, as pearls,
And by the launching of noble endeavor,
Flee dreaded introspection forever.
Crossing Nevada
Las Vegas far behind
The highway flat
And straight
The Mojave dark
Where this small town
At 2 a.m.
Holds hot eternity at bay
With service-station lights
And a humming Coke machine
Though neither can lay to rest
The uneasy suspicion
That a power failure
Would release not only
The dammed-up night
But also the ancient sea
Withdrawn eons ago
And waiting to return
In a massive tide
When the cola logo
Blinks off.
Melodrama
A rain of shadow, a squall!
Daylight retreats. Night swallows all!
If good is bright, if evil be gloom,
High evil walls the world entombs.
Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.
Busy Humanity
Pestilence, disease, and war
Haunt this sorry place.
And nothing lasts forever.
That’s a truth we have to face.
We spend vast energy and time
Plotting death for one anther.
No one, nowhere, is ever safe.
Not father, child – or mother.
Kiss
Night can be sweet as a kiss,
Though not a night like this.
She’s traveled on from me,
Across that uncharted sea.
I stand on this dark shore
And of the stars implore.
Give me that same cold kiss.
I’ll join her then in bliss.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Where eerie figures caper
To some midnight music
That only they can hear
Winter Moon
Under the winter moon’s pale light,
Across the cold and starry night,
From snowy mountains soaring high
To ocean shores echoes the cry.
From barren sands to verdant fields,
From city streets to lonely wealds,
Cries the tortured human heart,
Seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
By which to understand its plight
Under the winter moon’s pale light.