Are the feelings soft

  but the words rock hard

 

Turning emotion into anger

  or worse

 

Are those wishes pure

  when the ink goes down

 

Are the letters aligned

  or off course

 

Are the feelings soft

  but the sentences vile

 

When frustration takes over

  your rhyme

 

Is the Muse trying to whisper

  as you shout to the crowd….

 

       “Step back

         —nothing forced is sublime”

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

When my words are read

  by the common man

 

No higher praise could

  any writer ask

 

The awards and the accolades

  from the intellectual elite

 

Pale in comparison

  to that man ‘in the street’

 

When my words are read

  by those ‘salt of the earth’

 

My spirit is lifted,

  and I’m home from my search

 

Both steadfast and loyal

  to themselves and to me

 

No more could I ask for

  —no more could I seek

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: Watching the New Hampshire Primary- February 9^th, 2016) 

 

Words, once you free them

 —no longer slave to your name

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: From a longer Poem-Fall 2015)

You can wish and hope for a hundred years,

  or play the game a day at a time

 

You can focus on what’s at the end of the road,

  or squeeze three nickels from your very last dime

 

You can pray for still more than some others might have,

  or be thankful for what lies at your feet

 

You can love in the face of jealousy and hate

   —or start downward on hell’s one-way street

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Living inside the base of a hollowed out tree

  since childhood, my dreams have been formed

 

Living inside a space where the walls almost touched

  kept me hidden, protected, and warm

 

Living inside a place that no others could see

  beyond privacy, I became lost in myself

 

Living inside the base of a hollowed out tree

  —where boyhood memories and wishes still dwell

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

To live within the moment,

  and write as love doth now befriend

 

      “It’s light burning brightest as the

         hours grow short”

 

The beginning reunited

  with the journey’s end

 

       “All memory imploding

          on fates retort”

 

But the window stays open,

  my heart beats faster still

 

      “The march to freedom

         neither to nor from”

 

Time enslaved in a final breath

    one last line to say I will

 

      “The past and future

          left exposed—undone”

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Fantasy,

  a past remembered

 

Travesty,

  regret in embers

 

Sophistry,

  no reason proffered

 

Majesty,

  the treasure offered

 

Artistry,

  the future tendered

 

Modesty,

  true self is rendered

 

Memory,

  where life is gathered

 

Presently,

 —the time that matters

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Without there being a God,

 we could never question his existence

 

Through the shadows of the interrogatory

 divinity shines

 

Do apes question, do birds question,

 do flowers question—Aquinas asked

 

Only through the act of self-reflection

  —is the Creator truly known

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2018)

Your head’s in the sand

  the canary at hand

 

The beggar inside you

  his kingdom commands

 

Mired in apathy

  lost in denial

 

One last Armageddon

  —the price of your wile

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Severed madness….

  the wounds bleed again

 

All stitches have broken

  stains marking the end

 

Unsutured indemnity

  ensuring your pain

 

All flesh now in enmity

 —last bugler in flames

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)