Fame

becomes your temptress

When hope

becomes a shadow

Greed

becomes your partner

When Plutus

blocks the sun

 

Darkness

that infatuates

Darkness

shrouding memory

Darkness

that incarcerates

Darkness

— ill begun

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

You can’t rationalize

emotion

Thoughts and feelings

will never transact

 

Only in the lines

of a poem

Can their courtship and marriage

— be fact

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

Too many Kings

not enough Empires

Too many Sinners

not enough Pain

 

Too many Tears

not enough Sorrow

Too many Poets

  — lost in Refrain

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

Emotionally

Intellectually

Factually

(or)

Metaphorically

— say something

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

 

A scant twenty years

grieved a century or more

Poetically perfect

in spirit and lore

 

A man and his horse

alone on the range

The cattle his instrument

and music to play

 

Civil War veterans and blacks

from the South

Through dust and dark clouds

even blizzards they mount

 

Together they battled

in concert they fought

Each unto himself

through prairies uncrossed

 

The hardship and death

to him worth the price

Pushing always ahead

a stranger to fright

 

The only thing branded

to be left at the end

Was the legend he gave us

— and the message it sends

 

(Cowboy Poetry Gathering: Elko Nevada, February, 2017)

The last thing

you should ever want

is for a poet

to re-edit your verse

Better a robot

still better an ape

 if your words to survive

— and disperse

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

Trapped in the meter

a prisoner of rhyme

My spirit indicted

a felon of time

A minstrel’s disciple

epistle in hand

The sound and the rhythm

my soul’s contraband

New couplets my jailer

their sentences cursed

The key to their freedom

locked deep in the verse

And serving in silence

chalk marks on the wall

I listen intently

for one voice to call

Awaiting its pardon

this exile to end

My words liberated

— to forever ascend

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

My mind passes through

— what my heart must leave behind

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

Cometh the hour

cometh the man

 

Time in the cross hairs

— fate to command

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)

I don’t wish

to be studied

just

to be read

 

Where daydreams

long scripted

danced round

in my head

 

With words

humbly gifted

each phrase

probate free

 

To those

in whose honor

my best

— I bequeath

 

(Dreamsleep: October, 2025)