If you knew the future,
what would amaze you?
Category Archives: Poems
Reading Old Poets
Reading Old Poets
Before the words are spoken,
before a wheel has broken,
beyond the horizon of time
and in the far reaches of a mind
the story has been constructed and told
then reconstructed, so it never gets old
for the imprint of love on life is known
beyond anything the heaven’s have shown
to be the unchanged fortunes of a poet’s fate
no matter long-ago written or just-of-late
it becomes who we are and what we will read
beyond the horizon of a life we will lead
The Optimist’s Shadow
The Optimist’s Shadow
Eighty percent chance of rain,
but it might not.
Seventy percent chance of pain,
but it might not.
Sixty percent chance of division,
but it cannot.
Fifty percent chance of revision,
but it will not.
Forty percent chance of caring
but does it matter.
Thirty percent chance of waring,
and this will matter.
Twenty percent chance of sunshine,
and this will make it clearer;
the optimist’s shadow is hard to find,
and a winter of discontent is ever nearer.
Potential
Potential
The gap between capability
and dreams.
The gravitational energy of
massive demand.
The measured charge of every ion
of your being.
To be overcome with
just a nudge, a spark.
In the right direction
toward the future.
Toward your dreams.
Today is a Day
Today is a Day
It is not tomorrow
it is not yesterday
unique to itself
it may seem routine
and familiar
but it is entirely different,
here only once.
The wind forms the sail
and the waves are pushed
by forces of wind and moon.
Each wave, lives in this moment
and is gone when it’s gone.
We are formed by this wind
and pushed too by wind and moon
as we live in this moment;
and when it is gone, it is gone.
But for now it is today.
Listen for Wisdom
Listen for Wisdom
Your beliefs are everything
and your wisdom unassailable
You can be told of nothing,
the door to your mind unpassable.
I ask you to suspend
such hard fought disbelief
and open the door to another.
Who is willing to bring some relief
to the suffering of a confused brother.
For the more narrow our sources of thought,
then the more radical beliefs emerge.
And we become one fraught
with fears, which brings us to surge
into darkness, where wisdom no longer shines.
And we see a world divisive and of pain.
Allowing us to be dragged further into the mines,
in search of something lost, and something to gain.
All because you let others with evil intent
control your mind, closing the door with words
of hate, and keeping you in their circus tent,
while they sharpen their weapons and swords.
Before they putting you to their evil use.
Please my friend, open your mind one more time
to ideas that you continue to disabuse.
And let wisdom shine in all corners of your mind.
…. before it is too late!
Soul Wish…
Soul Wish
Let me bring the world texture
Let me be a brilliant color mixture
Or maybe, I’d be the base of a sculpture
Full of life, and activity it would capture
Or the base-color of a painting, green
I think, for it must be of beauty and serene
This color is for everywhere, as in spring
And the stems of the flowers I would bring
Or because, I have nothing more than rhymes
Of a poet in my capacity, and in these times
I’ll bring you, as I can, if I might, just a tiny smile
As you read this, and think of me for just a while
Memorial Weekend, 2021
Memorial and Loss of Truth
This weekend we fly flags.
There are parades, and remembrances
for heroes that died for our freedom
and all lovers of fairness and democracy.
Yet it is through Republican filibuster
that we will fail to honor a hard-won freedom,
and demonstrate that power wins over values,
and insurrection trumps democracy.
Now we know our freedom is not guaranteed.
We know that democracy may not be permanent.
That power is valued more than the sacrifices
which we celebrate this very weekend.
Our flags fly at half-mast as we grieve the loss.
The loss of truth!
Remedies
I hear I was an unruly child, and I was fortunate to have been reshaped by the remedies of the day, to be a bit less unruly man…
Remedies
As a child I knew not how to behave
long before I had a wisker to shave
long before I had a notion of right
and wrong, I found myself in fright
for the remedies correcting my sins.
For the forced apologies to make amends
of transgressions in witness of family friends.
For words I never knew that I knew.
As I tried them, I found something new.
The taste of soap is a remedy of first order
such that I wished I had a mental recorder.
For then I’d know the word I shouldn’t say
to avoid the taste of soap that lasts all day.
Nor, for that matter the sound of a belt
on my behind, and how deleteriously it felt
as a remedy for a child that was learning still
to behave while expressing his (not so) free will.
Remembering Factory Work…
Factory Gray
There was a grittiness about it
which envelops you as you enter;
the floor is gray,
the walls gray,
the people gray.
Gray dust hung in dim light
the floor gritty under foot
you touch nothing
for the gritty dust
was everywhere.
No one smiles,
no humming,
no whistling,
just move through it
the same as yesterday.
Mind numbing repetition,
interrupted by danger,
and irrational conflicts
which you hope to avoid.
No outside indication
is it day or night
even the clock
told you the hour
not ante or post
meridiem.
So you work
to live, and
finance hope
and deliverance
from gray to white
Someday.