writing

August 2, 2020

PAYING HOMAGE

No one thinks it all that strange
that novels featuring James Bond
appeared well after Ian Fleming
again made acquaintance with the soil.

Nor are we shocked that Conan Doyle
has seemingly taken up pen again
and brought Holmes back to life,
although many find those efforts regrettable.

And yet when I take pen to paper
and cast line upon line of verse
upon the page, weaving intricate rhymes
and couplets of fine iambic pentameter,

I am called a fool or a charlatan for claiming
my work is merely a continuation of
Milton, Eliot and old William Butler Yeats
but homage is a tough game and I’m up to it,

and I toil away wondering just who
will strive to continue my tales when,
as draws ever closer to my chagrin,
I join the masters as further food for worms.

June 26, 2020

NEW LISTING

Consider them very carefully
for you will have only this chance
and you don’t want to add
those which ought not be included
or be forever burdened by those
you overlooked or misassumed
you wanted to retain.
When you are quite certain
you are finished, that your list
is exactly as you wish it,
that all your dislikes and regrets
are properly delineated, then
walk slowly to the river,
pen at the ready, and write them
with a precise hand upon the water.

June 17, 2020

THE REST OF THE STORY

It should be the stories
behind the stories that get told.
We have to blame the songwriters
I suppose, telling only the part
of the story they choose, leaving us
to sit and wonder, no answers, forthcoming.
We all know what happened to Billie Joe
and the damned Talahatchee Bridge, but how
did Becky Thompson snare the brother
and for that matter, why Tupelo?
And Mr. Jones, how does he know
what’s happening and not know what it is,
and why in the hell is he so thin?
But Suzanne, she was a real piece of work,
always with the river, but ask
all you want and she won’t say
what river it is and Jesus says, simply,
come back later, you’re not a sailor yet.

May 26, 2020

SCRIVEN

“You know,” she said with a smile,
“that you are going straight
to the infernal regions when this
is over and done with, no doubt.”
“I can’t imagine,” he replied, “that
He who is all knowing and all powerful
would ever let that happen to me.”
“Be serious,” she added, “you know that
the nether world is replete
with scriveners of doggerel, it is
their natural home when they are done here.”
“But I’m a mere bard, a weaver of tales,”
he cried, “nothing more, nothing less.”
“Ah, yes,” she smirked, “but the road
to everlasting fire is paved
with cliches and euphemisms.”

For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com 

May 21, 2020

KAFKA

June 13, 1896, Prague
a warm day, old stone schul
you stood before the minyon
wearing the skullcap
repeating ancient words
that lay on paper, rehearsed
sounding false on a tongue
swollen in anxiety.
Your tallit, white
woven with blue threads
hung at your knees
fringe fingered, rolled
and unrolled, twisted
until touched to skin
words inscribed, etched
into collective memory.
Seventeen years later
sitting with Buber
did words come back
and stick on your tongue
and later still
when you studied
under Bentovim, did words
take form, shape, dredging
up a past kept suppressed
walking in desert heat
knowing salvation was
down a hill, entry forbidden.
Lying in your bed
in Hoffman’s Sanitorium,
the trees of Kierling blooming
did you recite Kaddish
as endless night engulfed you.

First published in The Right to Depart, Plain View Press (2008) and reprinted in Legal Studies Forum Vol. 32, No. 1 (2008)

For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:

Bird-of-the-day.com 

May 5, 2020

IN SEARCH

En route to Buddhism, I must admit
I stopped at numerous philosophical
way-stations, none quite as equipped as I
would desire and so I moved on.

Buddhism was my solution, no demands
other than I be present, knowing
I had no real choice but to do so,
all in the recognition of that fact.

I did consider other faiths and -isms,
and each but one had something
to beckon me, but each was incomplete
and I was looking for a full solution.

The easiest to reject was nihilism,
for while it was the simplest to adopt,
asking, no demanding, nothing from me,
assuring me all was nothing in the end,

I knew it would fail me in the most
essential way, for I discovered there
were no great nihilist poets, how do you
write when there is nothing real to say?

For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com 

April 28, 2020

A PEN FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

It has a certain heft
that says something substantial
lies within, waiting to be freed.
It glides easily, suggesting an
effortlessness you know is a tease,
that labor still waits.
Still, it does said comfortably,
is appealing to the eye,
has the deep jade green 
along its barrel, the knots interwoven
top and bottom that say what lies
within cannot be easily unraveled.
As you draw it across the page
you hope that somewhere in Neamh
old Robbie will look down on you,
smile and share a thought or two,
but that you know, is for another day.

April 14, 2020

WAITING FOR TEACHER

It should come as no surprise, for both
Buddhism and Hinduism grew
out of the same fertile soil.
An older Hindu man said, “do not look
for your Guru. When you are ready,
your Guru will find you.” I knew
the Buddhist equivalent, and its corollary,
when the student is ready, the teacher
disappears. My poetry professor’s yin
couldn’t grasp my yang, and I am
still waiting patiently for my poetic Guru
but despite my growing age, he has yet
to appear, but my spirituality seems
on firm ground, so it may not really matter.
But during my weight, I have found
Oatley, Duval, Rose, Kirk, Cullen,
and though I have met none, and not
a one has found me, the Nirvana they place
in bottles at my disposal, that they willingly
a ship from Australia, makes me wonder
what other possible Guru I might need.

March 22, 2020

NEWS

The most interesting thing about visiting
websites from foreign news services
is that so many offer content in English
and how deaths that occur locally seem
to invoke the same sadness, horror, belated honor,
and that local disasters take precedence
over our own disasters not merely because
it happened there and not here,
but because the losses are greater, the damage
far worse, the faces far less white.
We hold the world up to the mirror often,
but is only our face we see, and those like us
standing behind, and we are blind
to so much of what goes on around us,
because this color blindness is of the sort
that disables seeing at all rather
than seeing all in monochrome.