Dawn is unable to fade the night.
Must we live ever in the blight
Under the winter moon’s cold light,
Lost in loneliness, hate, and fright,
Last night, tonight, tomorrow night,
Under the winter moon’s bleak light?
The Mask
Evil is no faceless stranger
Living in a distant neighborhood.
Evil has a wholesome, hometown face
With merry eves and an open smile.
Evil walks among us, wearing a mask
That looks like all our faces.
Reality
In the real world
As in dreams,
Nothing is quite
What it seems.
In the dream world
Or the real,
We can’t know what
We can’t feel.
The Answer Comas After The Funeral
The sky is deep, the sky is dark.
The light of stars is so damn stark.
When I look up, I fill with fear.
If all we have is what lies here,
This lonely world, this troubled place,
Then cold dead stars and empty space…
Well, I see no reason to persevere,
No reason to laugh or shed a tear,
No reason to sleep or ever to wake,
No promises to keep, and none to make.
And so at night I still raise my eyes
To study the clear but mysterious skies
That arch above us, as cold as stone.
Are you there, God? Are we alone?
Drummer
Darkness devours every shining day.
Darkness demands and always has its way.
Darkness listens, watches, waits.
Darkness claims the day and celebrates.
Sometimes in silence darkness comes.
Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.
Potboiler
There’s no escape
From Death’s embrace,
Though you lead it on
A merry chase.
The dogs of Death
Enjoy the chase.
Just see the smile
On each hound’s face.
The chase can’t last
The dogs must feed.
It Will come to pass
With terrifying speed.
The hounds, the hounds
Come baying at his heels.
The hounds, the hounds!
The breath of Death he feels.
Saving Graces
Courage, love, friendship,
Compassion, and empathy
Lift us above the simple beasts
And define humanity.
Politics
At the point where hope and reason part,
Lies that spot where madness gets a start.
Hope to make the world kinder and free –
But flowers of hope root in reality.
No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,
Unless on some world out beyond Orion.
Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.
Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.
Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas.
All the words of men can’t calm the seas.
Nature – always beneficent and cruel –
Won’t change for a wise man or a fool.
Humanity shares Nature’s imperfections,
Clearly visible to casual inspections.
Resisting betterment is the human trait.
The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.
Ten Years Old, Reading In Bed
From a blanket, the boy built a palace
With a flashlight for a chandelier.
Down a rabbit hole, he followed Alice,
Where the cursing and shouting weren’t clear.
He lived stories of courage and malice,
While the old man chased bourbon with beer.
Riding with horsemen north out of Dallas:
Thunderous hoofbeats would not let him hear
The plotless rage and the whiskey diction
And the chaos always conquered in fiction.
Fallen Yet Not Lacking In Virtue
Every eye sees its own special vision.
Every ear hears a most different song.
In each man’s troubled heart, an incision
Would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.
Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
Than reside in the valleys of Hell.
Yet goodness, kindness, and love arise
In the heart of the poor beast as well.
February, 7969
She died wondering
If she were loved
She died with her hands
Ungloved
By the hands of a sister
Or her son
Neither one
Neither one
We were on the highway
In the night
Speeding to Pittsburgh
Stars not right
We arrived in the crisis
She couldn’t wait
We reached her bedside
Too late
My father entered
Whiskey on his breath
More than my lost mother
He smelled of death
As useless as usual
Self-involved
Into tearless grief
His face dissolved
Had I not stopped
To eat a slice of toast
I might have gained
Two minutes at the most
Had I not changed my socks