The dirtier the world,

  the cleaner the verse

 

The need becoming greater

  —when the call most perverse

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

With age,

My sword

Is deeply scarred

But its edge

Honed twice as sharp

 

With age,

My words

Are penned in blood

All flowing

From the heart

 

With age,

I embrace what

Truth reveals

And am humbled

By its power

 

With age,

My light burns

Free at last

To illume

 —my final hour

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

Present past and present

  future

 

Holy Trinity with the here

  and now

 

Three states that bind all

  known creation

 

Defining when but never

  how

 

This very instant the past

  calls forward

 

The future answers

  from a timeless path

 

Where all three join and

  walk together

 

To bless this moment

  —the one to last

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

There are no other words

  that better describe…

 

So I rethought the terms,  

  future and past

 

Bringing them into my

  perpetual present

 

To feast in the moment

   —instead of fast

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

Locked inside my indecision,

  death opened up the door

 

And let me look inside my fear,

  which I hated and abhorred

 

The view not half as frightening,

  as the deception and the lies

 

And its arms extended toward me,

  standing frozen—eyes on mine

 

My steps then hesitated,

  and its threshold wasn’t breached

 

As I watched the door shut slowly,

  todays outcome never reached

 

But a key was left before me,

  to unlock what’s yet to know

 

Of a still uncertain future

  —through the doorway I was shown

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

 

Revenge…

 a desperate stepping stone

  —on the road to perdition

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)

 

Stuck on the broken landing

Of a stairway to nowhere

My mood no longer elevated

My spirit remiss of song

 

Looking over the railing

Into a history that I buried

A ladder appears above me

But when I step—its rungs are gone

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

Editing Poetry…

  which face comes off the mountain?

 

(Keystone South Dakota: August, 2013)

 

It’s all been different

It’s all been the same

It’s all been anonymous

It’s all had a name

 

It all had a beginning

It all has an end

Its truth lost in winning

Its game of pretend

 

And we search for the answer

And we question profane

And we blame it on providence

And we smother the flame

 

As we look toward the horizon

As we look past the shore

As the waves crash with meaning

  —now as then, and before

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

Don’t get ahead of the feeling,

  never forget a memory unlearned

 

Don’t think and kill the passion enflamed,

  forgoing the moment—all time left to burn

 

  (Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)