Watching myself

Wanting you

Standing alone

 —the end in view

 

Watching myself

Reach out through the pain

Lost shadow of night

 —last tear in your rain

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2016)

Out of great struggle

  comes even greater opportunity

 

Each threat being glue

  and a tie that binds

 

With noble purpose

  we define our highest calling

 

Freedom in our blood

  —by our will refined

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)

  ‘To America, On The 4^th Of July’

Forty-five caliber abstract

 targets big and small

 

Bullseye in the mirror

 memories recalled

 

Warning shots abandoned

 prey now closing in

 

One last bullet chosen

 —fired from within

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2018)

I was not alive in 1910

 yet things were pretty good

 

No sleepless nights or stomach aches

 always understood

 

In the quiet calm a promise lay

 a portent yet to come

 

And born I was despite myself

 —now eighty years undone

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 1991)

The past doesn’t pass away quickly enough

 with the future on the run

 

The present an echo between two lies

 —as the moment never comes

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2018)

What was created to expose

  is now a fortress just to hide

 

A bastion of higher learning

  within a haven safe for lies

 

Where discourse once was treasured

  the ivy droops and sighs

 

With comfort their true measure,

  the dilettantes still cry

 

Plato is disgusted,

  John Locke is more than riled

 

As a millennia of learning

  is mocked in false denial

 

Students weak and wounded

  from those lessons never learned

 

Their tomorrow’s but a doomsday

  their futures sure to burn

 

Those words were there to save them

  both the hated and revered

 

All truth in dialectics

  —now abandoned by their fear

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)

Through the keyhole darkly,

  he could now remember his name

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  his medicine kicked in once again

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  he knew his daughter by her face

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  he was now back home in his space

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  his dog was closely by his side

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  his eyes though saddened, opened wide

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  her voice unwrapped a precious gift

 

Through the keyhole darkly

  a love once anchored, set adrift

 

Through the keyhole darkly,

  he felt the light begin to dim

 

Through the keyhole darkly

  his markers fade, his reference thin

 

Through the keyhole darkly

  the killer thief arrives once more

 

Through the keyhole darkly

  all loss of self—a closing door

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)

Are the questions far better

  than the answers?

 

Do they contain the possibility

  that definition never will?

 

Is the magic of perception

  open ended in wondering why?

 

Is the essence of life itself

  beyond what words can ever tell?

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)

Compression ingestion

The world to implode

The numbers decreasing

—all resistance explodes

 

From diamond to carbon

Wheels spin in reverse

The groundhog, the treadmill

—new millennium’s curse

 

(Brooklyn, New York: March, 2016)

It’s not about technique

  or style or genre

 

But something more…like a reflection

  or memory once known

 

Its light coming through

  a universe dark…undiscovered

 

Its message more a feeling than any genius

    —or logic grown

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 27th 2016)

  Watching Elton John’s Free Concert