Spending the future,

saving the past

 

Tomorrow debentured

—moments that last

 

(The New Room: January, 2021)

The poorest among us

only have money

 

The richest endowed

—with nothing but time

 

(The New Room: January, 2021)

In the currency of dreams

—you can never make change

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)

Music can only be heard one way,

words have a different refrain

 

Melody imprisoned by note and score,

what’s written when read apt to change

 

The ear a prisoner to the composer’s delight,

to listen—a captive within

 

But reading the lines that a poet inscribes

ever changing—each time you begin

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)

The drums have restarted,

the chanters proclaim

 

The dancers with coup sticks

in shadows remain

 

The flames burn in tribute

to death songs before

 

Because only the dead

—know the end of war

 

(Radnor Pennsylvania: January, 2021)

The lack of humanity

drives zero-sum

Away from each other

a darkening sun

 

What science explains

its methods conceal

Frustration attacks

lost cogs on the wheel

 

Desperation in charge

its point ever sharp

To pierce into nothing

but leaving its mark

 

That human about us

 left bare unatoned

Quantifying our passion

—stripped clean to the bone

 

(St. David’s Pennsylvania: January, 2021)

You don’t have to abandon previous beliefs  

to embrace what presents to you now

 

As windows long open whose portals of light 

wrap around each new vision—enshroud

 

Those messages ancient and all messages new 

interlock like the fingers of God

 

The truth by dimension delivering you whole    

—new lightning reclaiming the rod

 

(Villanova University: January, 2021)

It’s easy to criticize…

harder to know

 

The poison unleashing,

reflections aglow

 

Assumption to breed

where temerity hides

 

The lie in sheep’s clothing

—truth buried inside

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

let me count the ways

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

so near, so far away

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

one chance to cross the line

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

love is so defined

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

as time begins today

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

one word, so much to say

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty,

to reach inside oneself

 

Beauty is truth,

truth is beauty

 —whose passion only felt

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)

Do you need to be born in Africa or Haiti

to be saved

What about the single mother in the ghettos

of Detroit

Will an actor or politician or philanthropist

deem you worthy

Of a rescue from a situation that as assuredly

kills

Cable TV asks for your money for the starving

third world

While lost souls in your shadow are homeless, crying

—in plain sight

 

(Norristown Pennsylvania: January, 2021)