My ship sailed without me
With sails a-billow
My bags on the pier
I rubbed my eyes and turned
And saw the port for the first time
My ship sailed (a tanka)
2
Category Archives: Poems
Rhyme, this time
I know you might say
Upon glancing my way,
“If you’re such a poet,
Why don’t you show it?
There’s not a rhyme anywhere
In your usual fare,”
And for this I extend my apology.
I offer this sop
To prove I’m no fop
In the hope you’ll accept
That at rhyme I’m adept.
To ensure that you’ll like it,
With humor I’ll spike it,
And fill it with gosh and oh, golly, gee.
Burma Shave
Diptych for a late Spring
I
You are meaningless, it is said,
without those who went before
in whose long shadows you strive,
in whose helix you twine
inextricably.
Ghosts, you call them,
wraiths with no claim to substance,
until, in a mirror,
you see them bounding through
your fate,
great feet tramping up the path
you thought was yours alone.
How can you be so like them?
How can it have gone unnoticed
so long?
Is nothing left to separate you?
II
Fine, let’s have it, then.
I’ll be the last witness
to poll the seasons.
But you’ve lost your will
to power, haven’t you?
Would you think your
reflection grotesque, off-putting,
if you saw me now?
Would you see an empty mask,
devoid of all you held dear?
As you wish.
We are both powerless
to divine our true meaning.
Friday, February
We’re all down here
Banging on the cosmic pipes
For someone to please
Turn up the heat
But there’s nobody home
Just confetti drifting down
Must be some hell of a parade
Another look at time
The unexamined life is not worth living. ~ Socrates
So, I’m waiting for this horseman,
Windows barred, doors flung shut
In a vast pretense
Of indifference.
Only, I see roaches,
Resigned, driven by doom
Under cracks, seared by dim
Flashes of light, some blue,
Some red, not just unaware,
But irrelevant
Like distant quaking nuclei
Star struck long, long ago.
This means little,
For now not only exists,
But does not exist.
exiles child 