Poetry
My personal poems and works by favorite authors.
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National Poetry Month: “Richard Nixon Asks for Forgiveness”
I told Pat the other day that I was a proud man. Too proud. I had many successes. There are events I regret of course. But I do want to say that I seek forgiveness. You know my mother was a devout Quaker. She was what they would call a “true” believer. She would sit…
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National Poetry Month: “Obscured by Clouds”
There was a steady droning in the sky The horizon dimmed by a vast tower of cloud orange and red swirled together, flashes of lightning outlining lumbering sailors in the haze racing through was a silver pill heated and glowing before a strange umbrella unfolded to slow it and appendages emerged to taste the sea…
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National Poetry Month: “Hitler’s Bunker Blues”
Over the Rainbow The gramophone is playing ‘Over the Rainbow’ Judy Garland is singing, turning from sepia tones to full spectrum color in the blink of an eye. The ceiling shakes in syncopation deep within you can hear the machine guns rattling bombs cause the needle to skip out of the finely machined black track of…
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National Poetry Month: “The Plan of St. Gall”
I’ve got that red ink I’ve got that fresh vellum I’ve got all the time in the world to draw this dream. Charlemagne reigns and he’s got the vision we’re restoring the world like Roma Aeterna. I have reading, writing, and arithmancy with which I will create a monastery. Praise be to God – Gozbertus,…
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National Poetry Month: “Napoleon I”
The balloon hangs blazing in the sky its modern sorcery attracts the eye like a billboard in a dream singing praise for the new regime Regalia like Charlemagne restored in glory away from pain Here arrive the guests the aristocracy, the Pope in Notre Dame, bereft of rest they put their hope Her stones are…
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National Poetry Month: “Powderfinger II”
Note: This is meant as a sequel to Neil Young’s song “Powderfinger,” written from the point of view of the gunboat. Powderfinger We were steaming up the big river the captain said that he had a fever and the humidity had him in thrall all because the rain refused to fall. Around the bend, the…
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National Poetry Month: “Buzz Sits through Another Interview”
Buzz Aldrin is asked to remember it again. The footfall. The desolation. Leave me alone he shouts in his mind. Alone where I can be the spectral captain of my own tin-can ship on a sea of moondust. Sailing under the blackest of skies my wake silver diamonds the Earth my polestar. I call as a…
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National Poetry Month: “Walk”
Around the corner past the mailbox and the severed palms I would walk to school. Past the Mexican market and the panaderia the old Bank of America with its Art Deco marble panels riddled with bullet holes. Past the yellow brick Masonic Lodge and the three long blocks of Dooley’s Hardware – the “Largest Hardware…
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National Poetry Month: “When the Future was Real”
When the future was real when warm ocean breezes blew around the Cape in late afternoon giant spaceships trundled through the sand to find harbor in the rust-red arms of home. When and how were questions for the scientists why was the assignment for the writers. Bottled energies in liquid oxygen in machined chambers of…
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National Poetry Month: “Franklin Dies”
He is dead. And bells are rung. Who rings the bell? That upside down bronze cup clanging back and forth. It rings on the hour and for the moments prayers are needed or expected. It rings out in celebration and in sorrow. This thing come free of chains rings freedom for his soul. Mortal once,…
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National Poetry Month: “Fire”
The Normandie was burning in New York harbor. It was a nebulous sensation the question of fire and the man who watched the cork life vests bloom how fascinating, how pure to see the ignition of plasma and watch its growth from birth to groaning metal collapse into the harbor, the water sprays now floes…
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National Poetry Month: “Marina”
There are things I do not know. I do not know why the waves of the sea brought you to me. I do not know what you are here for. Is it for liberation? Or is it treasure hoards you seek? I do not know why you stand there tall and fair and look upon…
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National Poetry Month: “E.P.C.O.T.”
Uncle Walt takes a deep breath as deep as his remaining lung will allow. “There are things undone of course, but I linger along the shores of the living. The power is going out. The ego will give way to the Id the barest aspect of my nature will lie revealed as the vital force…
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National Poetry Month: “Neil Young Goes on a Trip”
Neil Young falls through a crack in the asphalt. It opens wider than a chasm. Each second he falls, time regresses. He sees the aperture of God’s eye experiences 10,000 lifetimes; some human some not. He dies and is reborn, ages and dies again. The infinity throws him up on a street somewhere in London,…
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National Poetry Month: “Black and Light”
Boundless black. Stars falling into a pit so deep that their light can’t find its way back once it streams in. The tremendous the cataclysmic voracious gravitational anomaly – yet we call it a “hole.” At the center of our galaxy sits one of these, feasting for what might be an eternity. A collapsar, an…
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National Poetry Month: “Bede Time”
Bede prays with folded hands, his tonsured pate shines like a glass goblet in front of a fire. She didn’t quite understand the Latin, but she got the flavor. His love for God was no doubt greater than his love for her. But what could a woman do? I married a monastic philosopher. Finally he…
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National Poetry Month: “Sack”
The barbarians are at the gate – except there are no more gates. The child emperor has failed the Eternal City sitting and playing with his cock while Alaric and his vandals prepare to rob us blind. We are blind. I called for the bishops to meet me here. The great bronze doors opened just…
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National Poetry Month: “Scribe”
I was told that these were dark times. How? I scratch all day long upon my parchment. All day long my hand cramps and burns. I read in the ancient codex I copy about the marble columns that held up the architraves of pagan Greek buildings. Whole treatises on their temples to fallen gods. But…
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National Poetry Month: “Circles”
The crow flies approximately 15 miles from her nest. Her universe is over the land. From here she sees the nature of man. His clusters of huts, the small winding paths between the trees, the smith working bellows to make bright objects to reflect the light of the sun. She sees forests being cut down,…
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National Poetry Month: “Archimedes Talks about Wind”
The elements still stand at four. We’ve exhausted earth. Fire. Water. Now the wind begs for our leash. One can hear it shushing through leaves in tall birch trees. Branches bending gently on a warm evening in Sextilis. Can you feel it on your skin? Conscript the breeze. Make it work like a donkey walking…
The Numinous Cosmos 