Are your wishes scribed in combat,

  are your hopes relined with pain

 

Is your motion found still wanting,

  as you climb the stairs again

 

Are your words now of this moment,

  is your verse free and sincere

 

Are your feelings calling inward

  —from a heart that’s yearning dear

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

The tightness of the words

   protects the freedom of the thought

 

Whose voice when spoken gently

   —can silence thunder and dragons caught

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

To change one word and rock the world,

   a verse now dancing free

 

Its weight unmeasured, breadth untold,

  whose key unlocks the dream

 

The bottle open, the genie gone,

  last domino to fall

 

One word pulled out, or inserted in

  —new meaning to enthrall

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

 

In the darkest final hours,

  I began to write

 

And my words once spoken new

  from scattered ashes light the sky

 

To begin and end each day

  caught up in beauty’s distant wake

 

All loneliness filled by pages lined

  with happiness and joy

 

My fate betrothed, once mistress

  scorned

   —a lover more than wife

 

Whose vision so much sharper,

  her dissection cuts through bone

 

To slay the muted dragon’s fire

  in present tense delight

 

Beyond all past and future clouds

  above the darkening storm

 

To mate each breath and gifted word

  that heaven sends unwed

 

Never destitute in blessings shown

  —or in things I wish I’d said

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

War is not a career

 —but a calling

 

Where dreams become martyred

   in cold blood

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

 

We worship inside the dark rapture

  of our own becoming

 

Hiding from the very light

  —that promises to show us the way

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

 

Poetry allows me to combine what I think with what I feel.  It lets me drive toward a point while being pointless at the same time.  The beauty of the metaphor masking the philosophical content, pulling the reader in without questioning why.  Both sides of my brain becoming fully engaged—my spirit set free.

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Present ordained,

  past—future in shame

 

The Poet and Jester

  as one

 

Living unclaimed,

  free and unnamed

 

Archangel and Devil

  —undone

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Sleeping with the Muse,

  my nights have grown short

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  all senses comport

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  words dance with delight

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  confronting my fright

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  her will tests again

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  not lover or friend

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  my dreams sacrificed

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  all rest put on ice

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  the whispers come clean

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  excuses demeaned

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  my spool is respun

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  divorced from the sun

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  in darkness I learn

 

Sleeping with the Muse,

  my spirit confirmed

 

Sleeping with the Muse

  till dawn’s freeing light

 

Sleeping with the Muse

   —new verse to take flight

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

If we were young men,

  if we were strong

 

If we had fresh words,

  to add to our song

 

If we were soldiers,

  with war in our veins

 

If we were poets,

  our voices reclaimed

 

If we were lovers,

  of women that cried

 

If we went wandering,

  our heart’s reapplied

 

If we were statesmen,

  the world in our grasp

 

If we were sailors,

  the wind at our backs

 

If we were farmers,

  with meadows so green

 

If we were actors,

  on stages supreme

 

If we were hunters,

  new wolf on the prowl

 

If we were dreamers,

  all wishes allowed

 

If we were young men,

  still facing the sun

 

But alas, we are old

  —and darkness has come                

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)