Nothing ventured, nothing gained
But I cannot change
The angle of repose
Adding to the top, as high as it goes
But everything tumbles to the base
Constantly spreading to fill its space
I pour my noblest thoughts at peak
One by one, the highest strata seek,
But they mostly spill back to the ground-
Still, nothing sought is nothing found.
Science is a fascinating religion.
Somewhere under the ideas and opinions
The activity of life functions regardless.
We poke and pry and prod all this
Hypothesis by hypothesis, shade by shade,
Til we can hardly absorb the spectrum we’ve made
Of complementary to contradictory theories
All following wherever the evidence leads
Searching for the deeper, clearer truth
And struggling against the consensus view
Whether met with censure or acclamation;
It closely resembles Protestant reticulation.
Oh morning sneaking in
With bright eyes, an open throat
If you knew the night wherein I’ve been
You would see no need to gloat.
Hush, hush, triumphant sun!
Lower your blinding voice.
Can you not afford we sleeping ones
An alternative in choice?
You told me things I couldn’t hear,
Couldn’t condemn, couldn’t agree,
Preying on the secret fears
All mankind exhibits openly
And it took years to shake you off,
But it was worth each tick of time,
I deflect you with the mocking scoff-
A weak rebuttal to your crime.
If I am forced to listen unhardened,
To hear you speak into my ear,
Like poison in the sleeping garden
When jealous greed sneaked ever near
Forgive me if I make it plain
You aren’t the first Judas I have known,
Nor Judaiser, but your gain
Is toxic with the seeds you’ve sown,
And after seizing all you’re viewing,
The possession will be your undoing.
The sleepless moon is rousing me
And pulling me to ebb and flow
Pale rays cut through to drag the deep
But silt yields nothing worth the know
Still every churning of the storm
And every passing of the tide
Combs through the bowels of the abyss
To clean and purge its black insides
And by the moon the angry waves
Keep threatening to wash ashore
The hollow, lost, eroded bones
Buried, banished to the sea floor.
All watery graves overflow,
And all their secrets, in time, spill.
Every wave hits its breaking point
Against the sand, against its will,
Pushed along by the wide-eyed moon
Who does the deed and takes his rest
So that the sun may shine upon
The tangled strandline confession.
The turtle’s shell would crack
Under such a great weight,
And my shoulders have long drooped low,
But I am learning to stand straight,
Learning it’s better late than never,
And never is a very long time.
My brother slashed his canvases
His scenes of earth in motion
Were layers thick in paint
Every coating represented commotion
So in the tumult of self-condemnation
He succumbed to but one emotion.
I dump my words upon my words
Hoping a new layer somehow conceals
The best in me, the worst in me,
The passion I’m ashamed I still feel;
Instead of smothering my inadequacies
Each word finds a new piece of me to reveal.
Letting your best go off to greet the day
Requires the skill to forgive
Perhaps there comes a decisive moment
When you have given all you have to give
And you must decide to slash your darlings
Or let them leave to let them live.
My waffle iron is an old man
who groans as he bestows
dried parcels and dark stories
from breakfasts long ago.
My waffle iron is an old man,
whose joints creak and shake
and every lifting of his head
is another threat of break.
My waffle iron is an old man
though my children leap with vim
and run and dance along their way;
He can’t keep up with them.
I should always
occasionally
write a poem on death
While mirth still dances in
my gut
and laughter kisses me
I should form a stanza or two
Of death riding in on
A pale horse to reap
So when the fellow offers me a ride
those waiting on foot
can read the crumbs left behind,
and say ‘she knew it all the time.’
Sorrow used to come at me
With a sharp drawn in its hand
And stab and swing and sever
And I was naught to understand.
Then it knocked upon my door,
But I scarce would let it in
Until it crept off in the dark
It’s blade to whet again.
Now we meet as strangers,
Who recognize the other’s face
But can’t remember if in a dream,
Or in this wicked place
We once fought as enemies
Dealing mortal blows;
Sorrow’s, to teach me misery,
And mine, to cease to know.
