20200531.0430

What makes good verse
I can't rehearse
Because I do not know it
It is my curse
I am not terse
And all my stanzas show

20200530.0430

A swan did sing of life as acts
Portions of a play imposed by later editors on
The shifting scenes first written
But lines and stanzas may be better
Gathered into fitts
And living often enough sounds
Like a tantrum

20200529.0430

I may not know the names of the
Flowers that spring in such abundant colors from
The thin and rocky soil, but
I need not know their names to know
Their beauties, nor yet need I to
Pluck them

20200528.0430

Even over the percussive drone
The coruscating melody sings out
From small fowl in their unintended
Harmonies proceeding from no score
And answering to no baton

20200527.0430

Aestas approaches again
The bountiful curves of her full figure showing well
Exciting in their voluptuous swellings and pulsings
But even Priapus falters before her feet tire
Of dancing across the limestone hills
Threading through the oak and cedar and mesquite
While many bare themselves to the vision of her passage

20200526.0430

If drunk on anything
It is insufficiency
Left to ferment far too long in
The too-large tank of a belly swollen
Not with new life but
A still and bitter brew
Flat on the tongue and stinging to the nose
No spirit worth imbibing
Even eschewed by the urolagniac
That revels in life that has been
Not distillations that cannot claim so much proof

20200525.0430

Again, they pause, and claim now to recall
Those whom they say gave even their all
By standing strong until their final fall
Were they the Isaacs or the rams
Whose ends were met at Abrahamic hands?

20200524.0430

The ship reached its harbor
Offloaded cargo
Set sail again with the same crew and captain
And the storms that wracked it left only the one
Who now drifts in an uncertain sea
The sun beating down upon a too-bare body
That plots no course
While others sail by
Driven by winds that do not stir the drifter's hair
Pushed by currents the drifter does not feel
Speeding along to certain ends
And while they may well run aground
At least they know where they are going

20200523.0430

What truth there is that is in words contained
Is hidden that it has to be explained
And there are many who will not be pained
By taking on the task of understanding

20200522.0430

Bells ring again from the spires of the ivory tower
Summoning them to worship who seek to be ordained
And my heart leaps within my breast, though I am apostate
Growing more heterodox with every ignored knelling
Even if I still inveigh against heresies

20200521.0430

Amaryllis springs up
A weed among the bluebells
Where hyacinths have long since withered--
And they only grew sickly and twisted--
And the willows ever threaten to take hold
Stifling all the rest

20200520.0430

Maybe if I
Stare at the carpet long enough
I will see something in the warp and weft
Emerging from the pattern to present itself
The weaver's underlying message that I can
Put into words
But it is more likely I will simply get a headache from the eye strain

20200519.0430

That thing at which I can claim to excel
In some small measure--though, if I do well,
It is in not, if I will the truth tell--
Does not excite whom I would bring to glee.
I take some comfort that it is not me
Who discommodes her thus, yet I still see
Her turn away from such gifts as I give,
Such gifts as by which I long sought to live.
She holds such gifts as water in a sieve,
As well I know, yet still I pour them out;
The faucet ever open sprays about
And moistens others--therein is no doubt.
As my Aquarius I would have her,
And would, could I give her what she prefers.

20200518.0430

The ball
Volleyed back
Struck a player already leaving the field
And even if it was not meant
A bloody nose is no nice thing

20200517.0430

Treading the same paths again
And again
Has long since worn ruts into the ground that
Stepping out of them would trip a person
And now the rains are falling
Making sucking mud of the tracks
Keeping those standing in them from
Moving ahead even on the narrow path to nowhere

20200516.0430

The laurel's leaves are withering
The boughs brittle upon my brow
So I shall have to cut some new ones
Weave a new wreath
If my hands remember how

20200515.0430

I do not know what I have taken in
But it has stopped me up tightly
And I feel the pressure building inside me
As what I have digested seeks to burst forth
I expect it will be a mess when it does

20200514.0430

I should adhere to what
Polonius said of the soul of wit
Rather than what he showed of it
Far more rind than pith

20200513.0430

There was no Golden Age
Iron was the best we had
And now we are in Plastic days
Even as the landfill yawns
And we have left off recycling

20200512.0430

One writer writes
Ford's in his flivver
All's right in the world
And it seems he has always been so
Or someone enough like him
In a like enough place
That it makes no matter
No more than many
Then is as now
As it has always been

20200511.0430

Wearing their masks as they argue against them
Waving around their guns because they are afraid and
Cannot allow themselves to be so they make themselves
Angry instead
They show their true faces or
Recognize that their ugliness deserves to be kept away from where
Others can see
If only dimly
If not enough

20200510.0430

On Mothers' Day, a mother's gift she gave and she received
And since then, many times again, as must well be believed
She's been a gift and gotten gifts, not always well perceived
Because those that gave them had they themselves deceived,
And once again, today's the day that she will be relieved
Of one number for another, and we're not aggrieved.

Happy birthday, Mom!

20200509.0430

As the sun sets on a long day
The light that shone fading past a horizon that
Ever recedes when it is approached
Hides what lies beyond it
The hardest thing is not that the night will fall
But that another day will begin
And must be faced

20200508.0430

Some claim to dance upon the strings of fate
But I think that
If I am a puppet
I am less like Pinocchio was
And more like Kermit or Fozzie
Though less well performed

20200507.0430

How proud, once, what is now fallen,
What stood so long so firmly and tall
But when blowing upon it became too much
It faltered, and now lies flattened
Dying from within

20200506.0430

I have savored the salmon, smoked and tender,
Contented myself upon the cod and the catfish,
Made with the mackerel no small merriment,
Taken the tuna into me with glee;
Fain am I to feast on fish again

20200505.0430

Many arms wave as solemn sentinels stand
Crowns upon them dipping and bowing above
Tossing green seas rippling in glints of gold
Festooned with brilliant colors yet remaining

20200504.0430

Against what would have been the
Crowing of a cock standing proud
Testudine, the head rises
Cannot return to the soft shell
But must cast off the turtle's trappings
And plod ahead until the burrow calls again
And though that siren song is sweet
It offers little release
Else the the head would have withdrawn
And dug back in where it had lain

20200503.0430

We tell the heroes' stories in the hopes that we'll be great
But that tales lead to greatness is a matter of debate
Since storytellers often are among those we berate
And they must ever have a care whose egos they inflate
As they go on and spin their tales, as they will at length prate
And greatness, we must all recall, may not be a fair fate
Because as great as glory is, at least so much is hate,
And fear spreads wide, as well, as we have seen of late,
And no small peril presses forth to on us hunger sate.

20200502.0430

They weep, not wrongly, for what they thought to have
And now may not because the world is wrong
And I weep with them, more than most,
Because I was also dispossessed
But mine was more my fault
And bitterness is not hidden by the salt

20200501.0430

Brightly though the sun may shine
And warm though winds may blow
They scarcely touch those in this time
Who look through the window
Where once the world had, fast, rushed by
And now is nearly still
As those who worry they will die
Abandon daily thrill
Yet this does not much satisfy
And nothing, really, will