To a Scholar

To a Scholar

I take no credit.

I am a small bit of mortar

in the edifice that becomes your

living.  Our roads cross

briefly, but your

journey is lengthy.

I am but a sign post.

I am not the path.

You fly.  You sing.  You

work.  You play well.  You

become an aria as your own influence

mingles with the gladness of a choir of strong elders.

Indubitably, you

are more than the sum

of all the intermittent notes that balance you

and that you count

for brief moments--

more than all the arcs that spring

you to spiral

upward and forward

to countless blessed hours.

The long-lived measures

you learn to improvise

after understanding the rules of school--

and I am humbled
and carried forth

by the delivery

of your song.

8 June 2011, edited 28 August 2012

The Umbra

Fear is the umbra that I carry

From my youth.

It snakes its way coldly

Through the years—

As shards of ice shooting

Through my veins,

Stabbing my heart,

Compelling me to falter—then halt.

Hence, the steam from the bleeding-out

Infects me with cold sweat in the night—

When all reason is obscured.

Yet I cling to this shadow

Which cannot leave me

(for a shadow is not a variable),

Seeking its companionship

Rather than enmity--

As a Lost Boy who delights

In the tests of his bravery,

However spectrally

They are presented

(for Hope is the small thing

that thrives in the darkness

of Pandora's box).

Herein lies the key to surviving:

To open one’s eyes as

Innocently as a child

Each morning

As Dawn slips in through

The window to 

Emblazon her light on the face

Of fear—

Hence blinding the serpent

Which would tempt and deceive

With the image of safety 

Hidden underneath

The dark covers of the bed--

Urging one to live in limbo forever.

10 June 2011

Agley: From Dictionary.com, Word of the Day

a·gley

   [uh-glee, uh-gley, uh-glahy]  Show IPA

adverb Chiefly Scot.

off the right line; awry; wrong.

Big Lennie loved the mouse a wee

Bit hard.  He begged for rabbits, too.

But George--he knew that she--

Whom the big child crushed (though nameless She may be)--

Foreshadowed all their schemes--agley…

The rabbits in the sky he watched…

The rabbits in the sky:

He had no prospects more to fear

And no more stakes unmade.

Mice and men are fragile beasts,

And so’s a woman without a name.

6 April 2012

dog day musings

still August but a bit of

fall is springing in the air

during seconds in the

shade by St. Augustine

which survives in any heat

…hope…there’s hope…

my new year always begins

in the fourth quarter

…listen for the marching band’s

practice tomorrow morning

…I forget this every year

until surprise smacks me

after the drought and channels more words

buzzing in the left brain

waiting for a nudge from the right

brain while dodging squadrons

of giant dragonflies that the

aerial spray didn’t kill

…happy they’re alive

…not the graceful lacey ones

…hordes of them like black ops 'copters

…perhaps the strongest to survive or

perhaps ones strengthened by the poison somehow—

bizarrely, like the green grass that grew one

August in Hiroshima

…still, there’s hope

…a Mayberry day

…walking the chihuahua who’d

love to chew away the leash

and make me work for this walk

…a Mayfield day

…even the tree trimmer’s red rig

like old Gus’s fire truck

…transcendence to a time

before the towers came down

to a time which needed no towers

…or so I think…

23 August 2012

Sing

The panther screams, yet again, within the womb;

His mother’s golden eyes search the shadows

Of the night for the poacher:  No trickery

Of the gods on Olympus here:

Innocence no longer tempts them:  Paranoia and evil

Cloak and arm themselves into incarnate forces without

The aid of a sanctified force…no thoughts of “meant to be”

Can be condoned:

Evil happens when evil is allowed when heads turn the other way.

The words of poets, the canvases of artists,

The songs of chanteuses:  These are our strongest prayers—

Besides the mother’s wail and the father’s jousting with the night.

The poets, the artists, the singers absorb the ricochet of every bullet

In their souls when the fabric of the universe is rent once again.

They cannot sleep until they weave more cloaks against the

Coming of the phantoms of fear.

So, “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

Of that man skilled in all ways of contending…”
 

Where are our heroes?
They are within.

24 March 2012

The City Sings a Song of Jazz

The city sings a song of jazz

with softened saxes and gentle guitars

to send us gliding around the curves

of overpasses brunted against the

neon skyline as the moon rises and ripples

among high frozen notes of clouds

as the sun plays its final reprise

on the shaded eyes of skyscrapers

while the users of the streets

play musical chairs--

as some exit, others arrive--

while many can only march in place.

The jazz once sang for a swinging happening

at a fancy club where memories of jet-setters are left

as ring stains on bars and tables.  The fog of

martini-laden nights croons to us--who were too

young to be glamourous then.

The underbelly of the city cannot quieten

the soulful scats of the lounge singer's echo

from decade to decade,

cannot hide the burlesque

that flowed heavily and rounded, carrying the good and the bad on its River Styx,

cannot stop the resonance of bullets near a grassy knoll,

cannot stop the carousel's fillies from going 'round and 'round.

We stalk the years

that played all the standards--and set the standards

up and down the scales of every dweller's heart--

and we lean wistfully on lamposts,

wishing for a film noir's moment

with a saxophone's rising.

26 September 2011

Another Play Has Ended

Another play has ended.

The audience disengage the

Magnetism of the boards –

Catharsis completed,

The cycles of heroes repaired. 

They tread gingerly into aisles

Toward other realities, lumbering

A bit, questioning the return

To the tedium that has sent them into this

                        Realm of the stage of sounds and

Sights, marvels and ether—

Wondering how

To enlighten—

Murmuring

To their equals and to themselves

(unlike groundlings and fickle mobs)

So as not to frighten

The Muse

Whom they wish

To carry away as in a basket

Of rushes—

To flow gently

As a river might—past the populations

Who know no art.

19 February 2012

Love Song from the Bards

Love is deeper than any sea that

I thought I would ever scavenge,
A rough and roiling voyage—
Not a frolic in a pond
Which only breathes of fronds and polliwogs.
Love is not Ophelia’s barge entombed
With weeds which drifted her unto death.
Love leaks in floodwaters of despair, yet
Builds a lighthouse to guide the valiant bark
Home to its craggy shore.
Love is not the perpetual trumping by hero’s antics,
Nor of schoolboy’s daring
To prove the heart for a flutter
Of a simple kerchief or the wink of a darling Calypso.
A steadfast hymn is the longest song—not a Siren’s call
To dash one’s heart, not an Antony’s pact with Cleopatra
To die for drama’s sake to prove that the world is cruel.
Monotonous seems the daily embarking and the disembarking in
The mornings and the nights,
And persistent are the tides that ebb and flow with lunar moods—
But passionate sings the deepest rhythm that few can ever hear
In the crashing waves of dear devotion that
Sanctifies my reason to dive headlong into the depths—
To sink, to eddy, to float, to stroke—
To be one with the currents that satisfy my reason to weave
The net that holds my love as a constant trophy.
6 January 2010

Through the Glass

The fluttering in my heart—

Is it that of angels’ wings,
Or nerves and pressure and blood?
I swallow concoctions; I read a book;
I look to the world outside my window—
Outside my eyes—
Onto the heart of something
Not comprehensible (the dust of snow—
from angels’ flights?), for life and love evade
My understanding.
The past, the present—both rolled into one—
Whisper to my future. I hope.
I try for wings—to fly today;
The blood and flesh
Are grounding me.
The humanness that I am beseeches
Love, yet subtracts affection.
I shall know more at a later time.

But through the glass I see a spotted dog,
Tugging at a cord his mistress grasps;
His heart bursts forth to break away,
Yet he turns with joy to laugh—
To see her chasing faithfully behind—
To laugh with joy at their bond—
As their eyes mirror a holy thing.

23 February 2010

Gordon

Gordon 
He sings into the grain of things,

down on the ground to change

the pure white cotton of a shirt.

His songs—they sink into my brain and

link onto the pain as

he grabs my soul and leaves.

The troubadour— he sings unto the dawn,

then flees upon the big water

and the iron highway

that were locked inside my heart.
He does not stop for sundown

while trailing a ghost in his wake.

Yet he’s laid blue velvet atop the ice

to make my crossing easier.

His footsteps are light--

the loosened chains

never rattle a warning sound—

and I shed tears for the beautiful.

20 August 2010

The Magnolias Whisper

                                                                         

  The Magnolias Whisper

The son’s fingers sift

The mother's trinkets

As they wander inside

The vanity drawer. 

 “Nothing clinquant can stay,” the

Magnolias whisper.

Powder clouds and

Floats to nothing.

Perfume spills and

Becomes vapor.

Gossamer curtains sag and

Then dissolve.

The candle’s wax fuels no more

Flames for the wayward children.

Only the trees remain.

26 May 2011