Love Poem, Inspired by 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 a hero's antics
Nor a 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 of the waves of dear devotion that
Sanctifies my reason to dive headlong into the depths--
To be one with the currents that satisfy my reason to weave
The net that holds my love as a constant trophy.

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.

SECOND RESUME

A second Dorothy Parker

I would rather like to be,

Yet I fear she would say,

"Go hang in a tree."

RINGING IN SPRING WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

 



Spring has sprung;

See how they run!

Seize the day--calloo, callay!

The goat man whistles;

Follow through the thistles!

Pick a memory bouquet;

In the sun we'll make hay!

Gather up rosebuds!

 

O how the sap floods.

Amongst Starfish on the Shore

A sounding board...more likely a sponge,
Almost drowned bearing up
Under the gravity of
The venting of marooned Sirens
Needing relief...
What is the mouth of a sponge?
It becomes a thing crusted
With squamous salt
If she finds herself washed ashore,
Dried up and abandoned
After reeling through the nebulae
Of eddies and tides and jellyfish.

Warning

The sky, layered in textured and roiling grays,
Submerged a dull orange-red
Into the morning's horizon of the lake and
Gave background to water birds
Perching high in February's bare trees.
With necks hooked and silhouetted,
They watched the clouds,
Never seeming to notice
A hawk as it flew by
With a fish in its claws.
The light, limited and superb, escaping
The darkened clouds
Polished the tree limbs shining and
White as crooked bones beseeching the gods,
Furnishing a stage
For the sailors to watch
The birds watching the thunder build.
Cypress trees, void of fronds,
Stood sentry nearby, stately and hard
Against the next
Harvest of turmoil.

lunch with pandora

Cat Stevens and Sweet Baby James and Beatles

and Crosby, Stills, and Nash

sing love songs and break-up songs from so long ago sung

to fresh brave and newly chapped faces

later played at a constant beat

on tape decks and radios

in breezy cars that drove by houses on hot summer nights

while we rode shotgun in best friends' cars

to drag out the dousing with tears the smiles

of first love

of the rain and the fire

that came later as you set off on your own

to the world so wild that you met with a smile

songs played again as classic songs to girls forever sixteen

why couldn't you have gone there just in your mind?

as the song says

why was the golden-haired green-eyed one so beckoning to you?

why why why?

we asked ourselves then

we could work it out

we thought then

how does a singer have the power

to reduce a woman to a mewling girl?

they're just songs

they were our life forces

we sang them at the tops

of our lungs with speakers

blasting during the constant

circling of the streets rushing

our hearts with hope

for new love when actually we

thought love couldn't be reformed

after the mysteries of a new world

had been revealed to your young eyes

as the malevolence of heartbreak spewed out yet again

onto a world of girls

diminishing us as females

I was wrong 

I love this house and these two cats and

the one who lights the fire

it's warmer here

than in those chilled parked cars

but my pizza has gone cold yet the ice

has melted in my coke