I’m young enough

and old enough

 

And smart enough

and dumb enough

 

And rich enough

and poor enough

 

To laugh enough

and cry enough

 

But fast enough

and slow enough

 

To guess enough

and know enough

 

To take enough

and give enough

 

To think enough

—and feel enough

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2020)

 

 

Can you trust

if not equal

 

Can you hate

if not shown

 

Can you love

without taking

 

Can you have

—but not own

 

(Ardmore Pennsylvania: February, 2018)

Have I lived long enough,

have I said what I came to say

 

Is my spirit now to rest,

has the toll-way back been paid

 

Have I lived long enough,

being willful, righting wrongs

 

A last heartache twice forgiven

—one more smile before I’m gone

 

(St. David’s Pennsylvania: February, 2020)

How quiet are the closing moments

of Winter

 

Its final lingering shadow

passing over your regret

 

Days lengthen into night,

returning Blackbirds a good tiding

 

What ended in shades of red and brown

—beginning once again

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2019)

Bad prose masquerading as poetry,

darkness posing as light

 

Words stacked on top of words uttered in vain

—narcissists delight

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2020)

Disappear into your smart phone,

the world outside is doomed

 

Your few remaining human traits,

have long since left the room

 

Disappear into your smart phone,

all life beyond is lost

 

Your feelings truly virtual,

you’ve paid a mighty cost

 

Disappear into your smart phone,

while others stand beside

 

And just like you they tap their screens,

faint proof that they’re alive

 

Disappear into your smart phone,

as time is winding down

 

All spirit tapped, emotion strapped,

your history lost, unfound

 

Disappear into your smart phone,

that bed you’ve left unmade

 

Your spirit cries as memory dies,

whose LaLa land you crave

 

Disappear into your smart phone,

its power now supreme

 

Your knowledge mapped and future trapped

—your destiny undreamed

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2018)

Religion has too many givens,

the takeaways few, far between

 

Questioning ravaged, intelligence savaged

—the mind left to wander and dream

 

(Bryn Mawr College: February, 2020)

My prose becoming painful,

poetry yet a joy

 

Explaining has deterred me,

rhyme a favorite toy

 

Sentences locked and muted,

as couplets run and play

 

New paragraphs unwritten

—as verse my heart does pray

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2020)

Embracing the myth,

I hide deep within

 

More Devil than Savior,

aboriginal sin

 

Excuses my sacraments,

grace bartered for lies

 

Judgment internal

—redemption denied

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2020)

It hurt so much it robbed her soul,

and drove her cross the line

 

The men she knew, the men she loved,

the pain thought once sublime

 

The last man in, the last man out,

now done with men for good

 

Her passion torn, her body raped,

a woman she now took

 

She lived her life on foreign lands,

with mirrors that denounce

 

She washed the staining from her hands,

returning count for count

 

And when she died the parson said,

upon this somber day

 

“A spirit pure but torn in half

—the best part cast away”

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2018)