Wrestling in heaven,

two Archangels beset

 

An arm bar on hell,

to the devils regret

 

Scepters now grapple,

as eternity waits

 

One rule to pin down

  —a reckoning at stake

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

Can you save it in a poem,

as you free the words out loud

 

Can you write it as a picture,

softly drifting to the clouds

 

Can you fill the lines with music,

as the verse begins to score

 

Can you leave a troubled listener,

feeling better—wanting more

 

Can you deem the time now timeless,

with your message in the wind

 

Can you find yourself left breathless,

as your ending then begins

 

Can you defend the sacred question,

for those who came before

 

Can that poem with its gentle hand

—release the lions roar

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

I don’t write for other poets,

God condemn me if I do

 

My words all gifted freely,

to those searching hard and true

 

I don’t write for academics,

as they archive others thoughts

 

I write for that one reader

—whose emotions can’t be bought

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

Do you remember what you’ve written,

can you elicit every thought

 

Does it stay within your memory,

or escape to others sought

 

Is it linear or transcendent,

on the page or in the wind

 

Can you still retain the title

—to what your spirit freed within

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

Sneaking into the enemy camp,

the guards all fast asleep

 

Crawling past the sorrow and pain,

old promises to keep

 

Deep within the saboteurs grasp,

for one last time, alone

 

Burrowing into uncertainties lair

—to despoil the unknown

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

If wishes were dreams

—eternity could sleep

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

The friendly enemy,

or enemy friend

 

What matters the difference,

or need to pretend

 

Either stabbed in the front,

or knifed in the back

 

The wound just as fatal,

in either attack

 

Blood given freely,

or blood taken dark

 

Veins running empty,

leading back to the heart

 

To face it undaunted,

or preyed from the rear

 

Deaths twins will approach

—on the tip of one spear

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

Forever an outsider,

a key without a door

 

Locked in your detention,

its barrier secure

 

Always on the outside,

forever looking in

 

My actions well intended,

your eyes see only sin

 

I spend my time in silence,

rejection as a friend

 

These years I serve in exile,

one word from you could end

 

The walls keep growing thicker,

blank paper for a cage

 

My spark now just a flicker

—to light my dying rage

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

Consumed within my writing,

devoured in the verse

 

A sacrificial empty draft,

waiting for the hearse

 

Buried just below the line,

a dead unwritten verb

 

A victim of tomorrow

—whose pen has lost its nerve

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

If you know that you can,

do you really still have to

 

With uncertainty gone,

does incentive still thrive

 

Must you then prove to others,

what you know beyond measure

 

Is it anticlimactic

—once the bee leaves the hive

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)