And then my shoes
Before responding
To that urgent news
Had I driven
Even more recklessly
Mother might yet have been alive
For me
Still only aching flesh
And weary bone
But spared the burden of dying alone
We Are All So Modern Here
Peaches, surfers, California girls.
Wind scented with fabulous dreams
Bougainvillea, groves of oranges.
Stars are born, everything gleams.
A weather change. Shadows fall.
New scent upon the wind: decay.
Cocaine, Uzis, drive-by shootings.
Death is a banker. Everyone pays.
All Those Snappy Epigrams On The Theme Of Night
The whisper of the dusk
Is night shedding its husk.
Numberless paths of night
Wind away from twilight.
To know the darkness is to love the light,
To welcome dawn and fear the coming night.
Night has patterns that can be read
Less by the living than by the dead.
Something moves within the night
That is not good and is not right.
When I’m in the night,
I feel the night in me.
The night speaks with a human voice.
To commune with it remains our choice.
Brother night, sister moon.
Together sing a tuneless tune.
Anthem
To see what we have never seen,
To be what we have never been,
To shed the chrysalis and fly,
Depart the earth, kiss the sky,
To be reborn, be someone new:
Is this a dream or is it true?
Can our future be cleanly shorn
From a life to which we’re born?
Is each of us a creature free –
Or trapped at birth by destiny?
Pity those who believe the latter.
Without freedom, nothing matters.
A Thought While Reading Rex Stout
Holy men tell us life is a mystery.
They embrace that concept happily.
But some mysteries bite and bark
And come to get you in the dark.
Cry Doom
Is that the end of the world a-coming?
Is that the devil they hear humming?
Are those doomsday bells a-ringing?
Is that the devil they hear singing?
Or are their dark fears exaggerated?
Are these doom-criers addlepated?
Those who fear the coming of all Hells
Are those who should be feared themselves.
Dragon Tears
Far away in China,
The people sometimes say,
Life is often bitter
And all too seldom gay.
Bitter as dragon tears,
Great cascades of sorrow
Flood down all the years,
Drowning our tomorrows.
Far away in China,
The people also say,
Life is sometimes joyous
If all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
With bitter dragon tears,
Seasoning is but one spice
Within our brew of years.
Bad times are merely rice;
Tears are one more flavor
That gives us sustenance,
Something we can savor.
Cold Questions
Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
Trough each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
That will cast a revelatory beam
Upon the meaning of the human dream.
Mary Shelley, No One Listens
Humanity yearns
Desperately
To equal God’s creativity
In some creations
How we shine
Music dance storytelling
Wine
Then thunderstorms of madness
Rain upon us
A flooding sadness
Sweeps us into anguish
Grief
Into despair
Without relief
We’re drawn to high castles
Where old hunchbacked vassals
Glare wall-eyed
As lightning
Flares
Without brightening
Laboratories in high towers
Keen scientists
With sharp powers
Create new life
In dark hours
In the belfries of high towers
A Job May Not Be Enough
Life without meaning
Cannot he borne.
We find a mission
To which we’re sworn
Or answer the call
Of Death’s bleak horn.
Without a gleaning
Of purpose in life,
We have no vision,
We live in strife
Or let blood fall
On a suicide knife.
The Root Of All Mystery
Death is no fearsome mystery.
He is well known to thee and me.
He hath no secrets he can keep
To trouble any good man’s sleep.
Turn not thy face from Death away.
Care not he takes thy breath away.
Fear him not, he’s not thy master,
Rushing at thee faster, faster.
Not thy master but servant to
The Maker of thee, what Who
Created Death, created thee,
And is the only Mystery.