The writer always
wants to sing
And the singer
wants to paint
The painter fancies
he could dance
To the dancer
songs conflate
The greenest grass
it seldom grows
Where you now
make your bed
As wishes stray
and hopes betray
What might have been
—instead
(Dreamsleep: June, 2023)
From the sound of the bugle
in the rush of the wind
The bodies are counted
as grieving begins
In the morrow replaying
as blood spills again
The enemy forward
whose countenance grim
The courage of many
all acting as one
Their wills long suborted
with fear on the run
Till the bugle goes silent
the bugler face down
Last day ill remembered
—a wounded dog howls
(The New Room: June, 2023)
Why then poetry …
why not prose
the answer prescient
to those who know
On wings of light
it comes unsought
abrupting time
on breezes caught
Why then poetry …
the world in verse
within whose lines
the Bards converse
The oldest questions
age sublime
within its torrent
—within its rhyme
(Dreamsleep: June, 2023)
A voice that still haunts me
and lives in my dreams
The first time I saw her
a boy of sixteen
She lived just a mile
from where I am now
A treasure so hidden
to whose memory I bow
The Samba and Rio
she took me along
Yet barely a man
making love to her song
My eyes can still close
and return to that beach
where my heart she first captured
—and never released
(The Day Astrud Gilberto Died: June 5, 2023)
In rhythms of today
the silence of tomorrow
Where promise lies waiting
—for hope unfulfilled
(Dreamsleep: June, 2023)
In the beginning …
the past and future
were orphans
Lost in a silence
unnamed until
spoken
Waiting in anticipation
their birthrights
in limbo
The present expanding
its moment
—christened free
(The New Room: June, 2023)
The smallest possible infinity
divorced from first and last
A black hole caught inside itself
—time lost in future’s past
(Villanova University: June, 2023)
An Old-Man-Child
in an adult world
Alone in their gather
of cocktails and swirl
Again but an alien
as when he was eight
The steps to acceptance
he’s loathe to retrace
The pomp and the patter
falls deaf on his ears
Each slap on the back
reinforcing his fear
An Old-Man-Child
in an adult world
shunning their presents
—midst diamonds and pearls
(The New Room: June, 2023)
Living within the madness
the echoes come and go
Channeling everything left unsaid
in phrases yet to know
Time suspended, barriers down
the walls come crashing in
Each voice a memory which haunts sublime
—that unforgiven sin
(Dreamsleep: June, 2023)
Trapped between two hells
we flee from one …
as we manufacture the other
(Dreamsleep: May, 2023)
An Anthology Of Perception 