Did you flavor it with Hemingway,
or season it with Thoreau
Did you structure it like Eliot,
or was Melville more your go
The rocks you choose to stand upon,
supports to look beyond
As you add your face onto the mountain,
new words inscribed in song
Past voices serve to push you,
to that place you’ve never been
Where your breath may cleanse forever,
the stain
—of unoriginal sin
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
Are you the movie or the commercial,
the story or its cost
The question quite subversive
—in its drama most are lost
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
Like eating your own cooking,
do you favor what you write
Do the words digest completely,
the stove again to light
As you walk that final mile,
in those shabby cobblers shoes
Will you then embrace at last
—what was never yours to lose
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
That laughter you hear in the background
—death following closely behind
(Villanova University: July, 2019)
Slowing down the motor,
running low on gas
The lies, the HOV lane,
the truth off in the grass
The speed counterproductive,
it warps and then transforms
The magic in the stillness,
the beauty heaven born
The light becomes a blurring,
as darkness settles in
Till stepping off the madness,
and travelling within
That fatal rush to judgment,
a quiet now sustains
One choice to stop the treadmill
—all motion rearranged
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
The magic sublime
—is rhyme
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
Does corruption blind intelligence,
does greed devour truth
Will intention cast the final vote,
its motives never moot
As David slew Goliath,
Lilliputians lie in wait
To bind and tie an Angels wings
—the Devil at the gate
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
Vowed inside a rhythm,
married to each sound
The cadence plays a wedding march,
the rhyme to pledge out loud
Betrothed inside their union,
a love forever grows
Verses come and children play
—as heaven only knows
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
To live life as a Poet,
to slay the demon time
Your spirit freed with every verse,
in meter and in rhyme
To reach beyond your passion,
to say what others feel
To bring tomorrow home today,
the devils wrath to reel
To wander past your memory,
returning once again
Each word a ticket through the gate,
its path relined with friends
Their faces each and every one,
a title to a poem
That left your hand so long ago
—with heaven its to roam
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
There’s a poetry to life,
that gets lost between the lines
A secret in each memory,
that the future often finds
A stillness born of movement,
that will last beyond today
Salvation in this moment
—as eternity has its say
(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)
