6/20/11

The busiest times when we overextend,
We wish nothing else but more hours to sleep,
Yet when we are ordered to stay in our beds,
We argue like children to stand on our feet.
It seems we're unsatisfied lest we are tired,
Our worth only earned through the strain we exert,
If so, should not injury leave us inspired,
And when we are broken, pride not cause more hurt?

6/19/11

When one endures an injury, an ailment, or poor health,
The caution oft received is that one must refrain from toil.
You're told you must be patient in the healing of one's self,
Then watched with great impatience like a kettle set to boil.

6/18/11

I wind the clocks
And set the time
While medications melt my mind.
And moments blur
And hours bleed,
As time ticks on in mockery.

6/17/11

There once was a man who was able to build.
Employing these talents, his living was earned,
Yet fortunes far greater would his favor his skills,
If only the bridges he made did not burn.

6/16/11

In hospitals, the medicine most commonly applied,
Regardless of your malady or injuries received,
Would be a dose of pure frustration expertly prescribed,
To make you, at your earliest convenience, wish to leave.

6/15/11

Today I became vanished from the earth,
All that I ever was, and loved and feared,
And every moment captured from my birth,
Was in a single instant, disappeared.
The toggle lightswitch of my soul was tripped,
And in a blink of time, my years were gone.
All consciousness detached from life and slipped,
To dangle freely as the world spun on,
Until at once I was at last returned,
Reintroduced into life's waking fray.
So sobering a fact it is to learn,
How tentative a grasp maintains our days.

6/14/11

Tomorrow, I shall fall to dreamless sleep,

Placed far beneath the  plain of consciousness,

While doctors work to fix my injuries.

And on this night before, I must confess,

It worries me to drift outside myself,

And makes me cherish life in newfound ways.

So often times, I’ve hoped for something else,

But now I wish to wake with nothing changed.

6/13/11

Inside my empty house I roam,

Without the aid of company,

But not, I find, at all alone,

For all the ghosts which come to me.

No pretty noise which fills my days,

Sings to avail my solitude,

My sadness, deftly kept at bay,

Is quietly, at last, perused.

I must learn to appreciate,

Life’s frazzled, random, busyness, 

For such distraction insulates,

The heart from woe and wistfulness.

6/12/11

The piano in my parlor,

Every time that it is played,

Shall evoke not the composers,

By which tinkling tunes were made.

But those dear to me who moved it,

Shall be lauded and extolled,

For if not by their endurance,

It burns, kindling for the coals.

6/11/11

There’s a painting of a rooster,

Hanging on my kitchen wall,

And it may seem just a picture,

As you enter through the hall,

But my uncle was the artist,

Grandma hung it in her house,

Patty kept it in her closet,

Uncle laughed and brought it out.

When Michelle had us for dinner,

Then the painting came to me,

So, it’s more than just a rooster,

It’s my love of family.

6/10/11

When I was born, I understood,

All that there was to know,

And I would scorn, if any should,

Suggest this was not so.

Yet, as I grew, each thing I knew,

I questioned or forgot.

And now, one thing alone is true:

All that which I know not.

6/9/11

The flesh is such a strange array,

A dense, immense, complexity,

Where countless vessel threads convey,

The fluid breath of destiny.

Where sinews stretch and fibers shrink,

As liquids quicken, pulsed and squeezed,

While,  pounding , empty chambers drink,

Then let flood outward in release,

As endless webs of ticking nerves,

Ignite all life we know and feel,

For this unwitting passenger,

Who mans the helm without a wheel.

6/8/11

A monarch butterfly with brilliant wings,

Collided with my windshield yesterday,

And taking care, as with all fragile things,

I tried to send it gently on its way.

Alas, the impact was too great a strain.

Its wounds were far too deep for it to fly.

I held it gingerly to spare more pain.

And sought a peaceful patch where it could die.

It’s splendor as I held it in my grasp,

Was striking to behold and to delight.

But still, its loveliness was far surpassed,

By those which flutter free in aimless flight.

True beauty when possessed shall waste and wane.

Yet flourishes afar and unrestrained.

6/7/11

We see a face in wooden grain,

Menageries in cloudy skies,

Our mind’s quick efforts to arrange,

The randomness before our eyes.

Thus when existence is unclear,

As chaos reigns and chance displays,

We trade illusion for our fears,

By falling to our knees to pray.

6/6/11

When comes the day we loose our way,

It is life’s greatest gift.

Illusions made, shall go astray,

When comforts run adrift.

Left all alone, a mind may float,

Bereft of certainty,

And anchorless, shall find confessed,

All stark reality.

6/5/11

For just a short moment that flashed in my mind,

I had a quick question, and thought you might know,

And for that brief instant, you still were alive,

Yet, with my next breath, I knew this was not so.

6/4/11

We opened the boxes and sifted and looked,

Through clothing, and magazines, pictures and books,

Possessions and papers spread out everywhere,

With all that you were, yet still you were not there.

6/3/11

What use can be a voice sung perfectly,

When there exists no heart that it may move?

What can the purpose of precision be,

If none appreciate the truth it proves?

Is something beautiful by it’s own worth,

Or through the apperception of a soul?

Machines shall never take our place on earth,

For none exists which love cannot behold.

6/2/11

The year, at last, is halfway done,

And as I stand and recollect,

I see the distance I have come.

Is also where my life bisects.

As I review my time so far,

The path was arduous and long,

My triumphs marked with hard won scars,

By which each weakness was made strong.

The second half shall not be so.

This I must hope, yet realize,

No scene would be more apropos,

To tell myself a halfway lie.

6/1/11

The quilt was stretched, pulled thin and taught,

By those who strove to thwart the cold,

It’s weak seams, strained by those who fought,

To have their share of covering.

Frayed strands were tied by those who sought,

To aid it’s failing form to hold.

Alas, repairs were all for naught,

To halt this patchwork’s suffering.

For each restitching only brought,

Another vacant, newfound fold,

Of healing cloth which might be caught,

By needy grips unwavering,

Such violent yanks which rent and wrought,

This threadbare fabric, worn and old,

By those who never paused and thought,

What comfort could loose tatters bring?

5/31/11

They tell us that jealousy is a base sin,

A selfish, ungracious, uncouth quality.

Thus, rather than envy another man’s wins,

Most grandstand their fortunes obliviously.

5/30/11

They spent days off to clean their house,

To wash and wipe, to sort and sift,

And then next morning, scurried out,

To waste their lives away from it.

5/29/11

The reconciliation of a feud,

Today occurs between two friends estranged,

But, puzzling is, one party never knew,

The other harbored bitterness and blame.

It was indeed a grievance justified,

Although a silent anger, closely kept,

A poignant fury never vocalized,

A thorn the heart ignores but won’t forget.

No declaration of offence was made,

With no rebuke and no rebuttal hence.

But remonstration seldom satisfies,

Remorse is far less common than defense.

Forgiven are transgressions of my foe,

Thus ends this quarrel fought within my soul.

5/28/11

Sometimes it is through gossip that the truth becomes revealed,

Like pieces of a puzzle found, which solve a mystery.

Perhaps, therein exists the source of hearsay’s large appeal,

For idle words will oft preserve the paths of history.

5/27/11

The windows are open,

The heat of the day,

Is carried on breezes and transferred away,

As warm currents cleanse settled cobwebs and dust,

Which hold the stale imprint of long winter months.

The shadows are broken,

By gold, supple, rays.

Dark corners, forgotten, are brightly displayed,

As birdsong erupts through the wind’s gentle gusts,

Restoring the weary to temperance and trust.

5/26/11

They say that we are never meant to fully understand,

The secret purpose and perspective of life’s mystery,

But if all mortal suffering is part of God’s own plan,

In place of worship, should we not demand apology?

5/25/11

Cutting the grass in the yard once more,

Only to stand by and watch it grow.

Trimming it like countless times before.

Waiting for next, when it must be mowed.

Why does this ritual act console?

Is simple vanity our only drive?

Must living things somehow be controlled,

So we may make ourselves feel more alive?

5/24/11

When one is being medicated each and every day,

It tends to lend the world a veil of fog as you’d expect.

The interactions that you have, the things that people say,

Are like an image out of focus as a film projects.

Yet, maybe then, one’s acumen is actually enhanced,

And if the world seems skewed and garbled, making little sense,

You truly see reality, within your walking trance,

And now appreciate the pointlessness of most events.

5/23/11

Each person has a little bubble which they float inside,

And know the world as it exists for them as seen within.

This bubble holds their lives and loves, their passions and their pride,

And all belief in what they see is filtered through its skin.

But often in adversity, their bubbles turn opaque,

When they are shaken up just like a child’s Christmas toy.

Now blind to others, their fine bubbles swerve, collide, and break,

And in this moment, each of our illusions is destroyed.

5/22/11

When something is no longer made, it is forever lost,

The methods of its fabrication been consumed by time.

Once vanished from humanity, its wake brings mournful cost,

As knowledge of its making is eroded from our minds.

Much like a deep amnesia or confusion forms with age,

The memories are lessened.  Details slowly fall from view.

Our common history, forgotten, faded, worn away, 

And all the lives employing these lost things will vanish too.

Each time an object once engaged and loved is tossed aside,

We have discarded nothing less than pieces of ourselves.

And thus, we must be wary of our progress and our pride,

Lest who we are is so undone, we disappear as well.

5/21/11

 

An automated mechanism banging strings and drums,
A marching band within a box, that sings, and strikes and hums,
And measures, in harmonic pulse, the gleeful melody,
Of raucous nickelodeons and brash calliopes.
But as I stood in wonder and amusement as they ran,
It slowly dawned that, watching them, this ordinary man,
Was not unlike these things he saw, but more or less the same,
A jumbled group of instruments, within a box, contained,
That calls and shouts and thumps without a purpose to its song,
Except, perhaps, the chance that someone else might sing along.