Only As Sacred

You want to define Poetry,

behind the safety of your bars

 

Open the door to your cage,

a world awaits, whose feathers tar

 

Dusty journals and how-to books,

no longer serve you here

 

The price of your admittance,

an acknowledgement of fear

 

With words only as strong

as the impression they leave

 

And feelings only as sacred

—as memory retrieves

 

(Seattle Washington: March, 2017)

A False Infinity

Is your memory a circle,

or a trip straight out and back

 

A beginning and an ending,

or one continuous track

 

Do you see the same things going up,

that you pass when coming down

 

Is retention sealed and programmed,

by things going round and round

 

Without an ending where you stop,

or perhaps just one last verse

 

You rewind backwards to square one,

the past again rehearsed

 

This flux of motion holds you tight,

your perception never free

 

Serving both to mislead and to lie

—in a false infinity

 

(Seattle Washington: March, 2017)

Time’s Grip

Trapped inside a wasteland,

dying inch by inch

 

Slave inside a rusted heart,

feelings chained then lynched

 

Later now than yesterday,

earlier than goodbye

 

Spooled like thread that can’t be sewn,

the needle asking why

 

But time contorts, reversing,

trumpets call you home

 

Eyes unspoken, voice untouched,

senses all atoned

 

Words on fire with freedom stirred,

reasons scorched and bare

 

A silence brewing louder,

new light burns through the air

 

Eleven Angels fly as one,

and twelfth, you join their throng

 

With wings now soaring inward

—time’s grip left dead and gone

 

(Airplane To Seattle: March 8, 2017)

Heaven Sent

Wrapped inside a moment,

reasons tied the bow

 

Excuses thrown into the trash,

where wasted pleadings go

 

The gift of time majestic,

when given free of tense

 

A present there beneath your tree

—its treasure heaven sent

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2019)