The Villanelle

All art springs from the fear that we’ll be dead
And no one will remember. We were here –
A verse that haunts, and echoes in your head.

And as each stares through darkness in his bed
The shifting drapes just amplify his fear
All art springs from the fear that we’ll be dead.

But sex and life, they make existence red
And joyous bright and surely nowhere near
A verse that haunts and echoes in your head.

But sex and life require death, embed
Themselves with him. Their dancing makes it clear
All art springs from the fear that we’ll be dead.

These thoughts, they are the artist’s wine and bread,
The darkness feeds him the one thing that’s dear:
A verse that haunts and echoes in your head.

The poet writes all that he wished he’d said
To whom he loves and who he’ll always hear:
All art springs from the fear that we’ll be dead,
A verse that haunts, and echoes in your head.

Recursion

Death feeds life and life feeds death
All of earth lives in this heth
Growth embraces not just one
Mountains too will be undone.

On the Rationality of Poetic Verse

A thought: it’s harder to express my love
For both my children than it is my wife
In paltry poems, verdant verse, where “dove”
Is almost all that rhymes with “love,” a knife

Of rhyme that stabs the poet with despair
Of ever saying what he really feels
Without clichés like “laying my soul bare” –
So all I’m left with are these spinning wheels.

If poetry translates a poet’s heart
Into a set of songful, rhyming words,
Then why do words for both my kids depart
Like wildebeest escape a drought, in herds?

Yet for my wife I write my endless lines
Expressing all the love I have for her,
My pines, my whines, my every joy that shines
On seeing her at morn or night, refer

To all the reasons I find that I hold
For loving her. What reason could there be
For loving such a boy who never told
Me anything, who’s fighting to be free

From my embrace, whose only words have been
“What’s this?” since he is not yet two? And what,
In all of her four years, brings me again
To love my daughter so it hurts my gut?

Does poetry need reason so to flow?
Have we mistaken poetry’s true source?
Using emotions, does it help us know?
Or is it reason that is its true force?

Where are the poems for the poet’s child?
Emotions’ rule should make for endless verse
For them if verse is feeling which, though wild,
Is tamed by words, on whose rich milk they nurse.

Instead, it’s for our chosen ones we write,
The ones whose love we can give reason for –
Whose arms and hair and breasts always delight,
Whose eyes and lips we cherish and adore.

The Time I Miss You

I work at night when you’re asleep
We take turns with the kids
My time awake’s with heavy lids
We go from pen to field like sheep
And all the time I miss you

I’m half asleep when I get home
I listen to you talk
I am so tired I cannot balk
Against this chapter in our tome
So all the time I miss you

I have to find the energy
To write a different book
Erase this work that I forsook
Or so I thought with my degree
For all the time I miss you

I do not want this life for us
Of living by the rules
That others make I have the tools
To make your own and only thus
Gain all the time I’d miss you

On the Eve of Decadence

Is it for you, O Rome, to rule the world,
Or is that time now past?
The great Republic stagnates like a swamp –
Did we dare think it’d last?

Barbarians are in the wooded hills –
Or are they now on Palatine?
An emperor is lurking at the gates,
And you are certain he’s divine.

He promises you pearly gates and streets
All paved in gold, that mansions are what’s due
For all who just put faith in him and all
His works, who see he’s just and fair and true.

He will create, he’ll organize, the world
And everyone will fit right in
If you will but obey. That’s your true choice –
Or, crucified for your sharp sin.

The Roman road is rusted with the blood –
We’ve seen this scene reborn –
Constructive rusty rivers always form
When nature’s met with scorn.

No Dreams, No Memories

When sleep-deprived, your brain takes naps,
You live your life with constant gaps
Of memories – where was that thing?
Who sings that song I always sing?
I was supposed to be where when?
I flit through thoughts like a spring wren.

I’m sorry, hon, I just forgot –
I slept right through the movie’s plot –
I haven’t seen my darling since
Last weekend, now our lives are tense –
For absence makes a marriage stressed
And many fail the third shift test.

She works, I watch the kids, I sleep,
The kids can’t make a peep
As she takes her turn with the kids –
I see them all with darkened lids
And then I’m off at night to work.
I live my life without a perk.

At least a brain that must forget
As sleep takes out the neural net
In pieces as you seem awake
Will soon erase your past and take
Away your memories – of life
Alive, awake – and soon, your wife.

Electing Death

Dark, the clouds fill up the sky –
Thunder rolls, we can’t deny . . .
The valley fills with deathly pale
Horses who don’t neigh, but wail.

Death is leading dissonance,
Overwhelming common sense –
He promises to end all change,
Changing Hope to something strange.

Townsmen come out of their homes.
Lightning crackled in dark ohms
From sword to sword the fiends held high,
Making great men faint and sigh.

Saviors! All the men declared.
Hugging horse necks, they each bared
Their wives and children to the fiend
Grinning at what he’d convened.

First he took their daughters and
Then he took away their land –
He promised to replace it all
And protect them with a wall.

Disappearing with the girls,
All their gold and all their pearls,
He left them paper promises
They’d be gods and goddesses.

Hope arrived, but all the town
Drove her to the river, drown
Her in the current as they said,
You’re a fraud, Death brought us bread.

Growth arrived, but every man
Bound and burned him; then the clan
Rejoiced that Change would come no more:
He’s the one they most abhor.

Death returned upon his horse,
Pleased the town chose his new course,
And built the town their walls with bones,
Leather rather than with stones.

All the men rejoiced to see
Mother Death come set them free
From every worry, every fear,
Sure prosperity’d appear.

Death was dressed in ragged drag,
Death’s perfume soon made them gag,
But he assured them they would soon
Love the terms of his commune.

Years went by and children born,
Half the boys, though, were forlorn
At seeing half the girls they’d need
If each boy would live to breed.

Tensions broke out in the streets,
Demonstrating all the feats
Of strength the men could bring to bear,
Genes lashed out in true despair.

Death returned to find the blood
Certifiably a flood –
It flowed up to his horse’s bridle –
He had truly not been idle.

Laughing, Death enjoyed the scene –
Ravishing the golden mean,
The men who lived locked up their doors,
Turned the women into whores.

One old widow looked at Death,
Did not cringe or take a breath,
Then pointed at the demon’s skull,
Fading it to a pale hull.

You! I know what you have done.
Leather, bones, my daughter’s one
You used to build this wall around
We who you once cruelly bound.

Years ago I recognized
Birthmarks on the leather prized
Off of my daughter’s living flesh
Her bones make up this wall’s white mesh.

What did you bring in return?
What did we do so we would earn
A generation who’d destroy
Life and hope and love and joy?

Death just laughed at her and said,
All your lusts are in your bed,
I just provided your desires,
Doused the greatest of your fires.

What I promised was a wall,
What I promised was a shawl
To keep you safe from all of life –
I’m to blame for all this strife?

Death is what you asked of me –
War and Pestilence make three –
And you had best expect that we’ll
Rule with constant, crushing zeal.

Change and Growth – the gods of Light –
You destroyed them with delight –
Was Death an unexpected guest?
You sucked strongly from my breast.

You rejected truth to free
Man from true reality –
But order comes from constant change –
Living things all rearrange.

You chose Death, so don’t complain
My clouds never bring you rain,
And thunder’s really horses’ hooves
Stomping all ‘til nothing moves.

War was here, now Pestilence
Will expose your arrogance
By driving every person mad –
Syphilis in dad and cad.

Welcome to the world you made.
Death then turned and pulled his blade
And showing rare-shown sympathy
Killed her so she would not see.

Death then gathered up each fiend –
Every sword was sharp and cleaned –
Then War and Pestilence arrived.
No one in the town survived.

The Atavists

You think you are so radical
When you’re in fact inert
Your positives are negatives
And you’ll one day revert

To what you have rebelled against
Conservative you are
Embracing childhood protection
So you won’t reach too far

Nor feel the pressure to achieve
While others reach the peak
Their energy creating more
Than you could ever seek

You say you break things to make bonds
Among your fellow men
But bonds are broken everywhere
Your selfish hands have been

You play at being radical
But when the time has come
To make the world a better place
You’re deaf and blind and dumb

Creative Destruction

The forest fills with underbrush, dead-
Wood tangling even shrew legs, tiny bones
The evidence, if you could see them. Red,
Burned in the sun, the grass dries on the stones.

A gale whips up the grass and dust, a cloud
Emerges, lightning strikes, the flames leap out,
The heat and flames create a dance -- they're proud
Of what they're doing, live without a doubt.

And in their aftermath, the ground is black,
The brush is gone, the trees, alive, are charred --
Destruction's all that anyone can track --
They're sure destruction like this should be barred.

But with the rains, the black gives hints of green,
And with the newfound light upon the ground,
New life can spring up and at last be seen,
And even deer have room enough to bound.

The space between the trees is filled with pink
And scarlet, tall fringed orchids share the field
With cardinal flowers taller still. Both link
A newborn network, building a new yield.

And soon the trees are leafing out and shade
The space beneath -- a new environment
Is born, where bluets bloom, ferns fill the glade,
Each using what the last sun-flowers lent.

And changes will continue, changes will
Explore the possibilities that grow,
And over time each space will find its fill
Of every difference we could ever know.

It's You

You wail and gnash your teeth and say the world
Is lacking love -- but are you showing love?

Lament, lament the loss of love the world
Once had for truth -- but do you seek the truth?

You would deprive yourself if but the world
Would embrace virtue -- are you virtuous?

You fill the world with your complaints the world
Is lacking beauty -- but are you beautiful?

You chastise, finger raised, all of the world
For its ingratitude --are you thankful?

You wail and gnash your teeth, lament, deprive,
Complain and chastise -- yes, the world's like you.

Enjoy and love and seek and celebrate
And then the world will seek its joy in you.

On the Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Orion watches Luna's face grow dark
And dark, and finally turn copper-red.
The Earth has cast her shadow on her. Mark
The longest night when Luna hid her head,
Apparently enraged at something in
The stars. To frighten her, Orion shoots
An aster arrow. Will she now begin
To show her face? What darkness dares, pollutes
Her joy? Why does the Earth deprive her of
The Sun who loves to shine his light upon
His love? I stand upon the Earth. Above
The moon begins to lighten. Will the dawn
Arrive before the dawn? I stand alone
My mind creating truth from facts well known.

Critical

Neither determined nor random --
neither strictly ordered nor disordered --
in the realm in between
where rules emerge,
where true freedom exists --
in the far-from-equilibrium state --
as so many of us have already argued --
yes, animals are free,
and so are humans,
and so is the universe itself

Interruption

I'm caught up in the iterates of things
I live a life of constant interruption
But one must meditate on beauty lest
One's poetry degrades into corruption

I can't reflect upon the beauty of
My daughter or my son
My rhymes have lately failed to catch the love
Of my wife that I won

I rush
To work
My work
I love
Is in-
Terrup-
Ted verse
And thought
Cannot
Begin

I write this poem here at work and though
It's early morning almost two this work
Has already been interrupted twice
This broken verse of a hotel desk clerk

Collapse

It's not what I could write
If I had time to think
On beauty in the night
My art is out of sync

The Engagement Ring

Although my parents never smoked cigars
Or even cigarettes, I have their white
Dutch Masters cigar box, and wonder what
It holds. I lift the lid and look inside –
I find a small white Bible there with pink
Silk flowers and a golden cross that locks
Away a secret. This false Bible is
A box that holds a metal object I
Had never seen, but heard about, a ring
That’s not a ring – a pull tab from an old
Pop can, that tab my dad gave to my mom
When he asked her to marry him. She slipped
It on and told him yes and cut him on
The thumb with it when she gave him a kiss.
This tab brought them together for a life
That ended in her early death by cancer,
Asbestos brought to her as dust by her
Beloved on his clothes unknowingly
From work, destroying her through her weak lungs.
But still, I know that she’d prefer to live
The life she did with this same death again
Beginning with this little tab of tin.

Rebirth

The earth is pregnant, wants to sing –
But our earth's voice, the poets, have remained too silent
Too long. The spring
Hides, shivering beneath a violent
Blizzard’s cover of snow.
The clouds attempt to part to let the sun
Try opening green patches in the sparkling glow
So violet crocuses can come up, one,
Another, to bring hope.
A child is ready to be born,
Ready to grope
Its way into this world where scorn
Will be all it is shown
By those who live on winter’s death –
And who will be the first to see him as he’s grown.
The earth will yet give birth – new breath
Will soon be given to the poets, soon
The spring will burst,
And summer’s strong, bright noon,
The earth’s new joyful song will quench the world's thirst.

Not Yet

The caracaras circle. Surely I'm
Not facing death. I'm scarcely half through time.
They land and flush and throw their heads far back
And screech their call. What do I surely lack
That I can't move, that I'm mistaken on
The midday of my life for carrion?
Or is it I who am mistaken? Fate
Does not bring them for me, but for a mate.
I've granted meaning where none could exist.
I look around. I wonder what I've missed.

The Sunflower's Reason

The wise sunflower nods toward the sun --
Its arc is eminently rational --
As is the tastiness of its ripe seeds,
Seductive kernel in the striped hull --

How clever! It gets birds to spread its seeds
And humans to domesticate it so
The species can proliferate its gold
And have its seeds protected from the snow.

The sacrifice of seeds makes perfect sense
For all the flower has to gain. It fills
The fields in monocultures it could not
Achieve alone -- it covers well-tilled hills.

The flower's flavorful seeds fulfill all
The species needs -- the choice to coexist
With other species much more rational
Than making poisons with which to resist.

The bees will get their pollen, nectar -- man
Will get the honey and the seeds, all three
Cooperating to make mutual trade,
For nothing in this life is ever free.

Tragic Hope

Does lack of destiny kill tragedy?
The Age of Great Napoleon brought forth
No tragedies. And Stalin's Russia, too,
Produced no Aeschylus of their far north.

But they believed in Destiny! They ruled
Two countries who believed in Destiny.
Instead of Shakespeare, all we saw was death --
Blood flowed with every promise we'd be free.

Perhaps it isn't destiny, but hope --
No Golden Age behind us, future bright
Instead -- the promise of emergence with
The dangers still in sight -- but we will fight.

This is the promise and the threat of hubris --
The tragic hero must be born in hope --
And he must struggle to break free and stretch
Us to new worlds while tethered to a rope.

This isn't Destiny. This isn't death
That just destroys, inhuman, in its good
Intentions. No. It's growing tall so lightning
Rounds off our top -- a massive, tall redwood.

I pray then that we're ripe for tragic art,
That we are pregnant now with future, not
A Destiny that destroys man and cuts
Him off from his humanity, to rot.

Little Father Time

When little Father Time looks grimly at
The tick-tock time of bubbles bursting blank,
He's certain what he has to do. His love
Misplaces death. He thinks that we will thank

Him for this sacrifice that he intends
To free us with. Instead, it just transforms
Us, drives us into what we hate. The school
House shuts its doors; life hides out in its dorms.

The cold rain shivers us to death, or so
We like to claim when we in fact give up
On life and cut short time. What suicide
Will bring, what murder fills the marble cup

We kept our hope in, hoping we could learn
The secrets of the word. Oh, Father Time,
Why did you take the best of all I made?
Oh why, my love, did you commit this crime?

The Misled Revolution

The crowds are filling up Wall Street,
Police arrive with clubs to blue
The children as they walk their beat.
The banks are blamed, and while their fault is true
The ones who have misled us all just while
Away and hide behind the seen and smile.

The children smash the glass and pray
The jobs will come that way -- this course
Is mirrored by the cops who play
The government's game, by the rules of force --
They are the ones who have misled them all
And mock them as they walk the marble hall.

"There's too much greed," they cry, but greed
Is but the same as it has ever
Been. These blind think a noble deed
Is merely good intentions. Force is never
The source of virtue. Those who have misled
Us will soon zero sum us 'til we're dead.

The crowds are filling Main Streets in
The cities and demand their god
Perform a miracle. The sin
Is ignorance -- they hear the lies and nod
As those who have misled us all just laugh
At them and steal their money for their staff.

The staff of Mercury is bent
From market order to the thief
By the mob's god whose force has rent
A further failure from certain relief --
The ones who have misled us will delight
As witches light the ever-creeping night.

Mating Ritual

The sun shined slivers from its gold-orange
Sphere, breaking through the trees as to avenge

The makers of Stonehenge, tied to the sun
And sun-made oaks, in cloaks that hands had spun,

Ensuring purity with their pure hands,
Hands pure from human blood as the demands

Of deity are met, to find the one
That does not rhyme a match -- or is there none? --

A match that doesn't match and therefore makes
A more engaging mate, until it takes

Its final line of light below the lip
Of land and light releases its last grip.

The Missing Goddess

In Athens, land of Athena, I see
The most beautiful goddess is not here –
The one I worship – sacred Anna – know
I will return to you, don’t ever fear.

My Aphrodite, you no longer live
In Greece – how were you reborn in Texas?
Yet your features are just as delicate
And lovely as this ancient Grecian lass.

The Muses, all nine, are now turned to one –
Embodied every one in you – you bring
Inspiration to my thoughts – I create
Everything for you, every song I sing.

You pluck the feathers of all the sirens,
They cannot lure me the way that you do –
Nothing can lure me from the course I’ve set,
To ensure that I will return to you.

Yes, I am your Odysseus – I will
Return to you – I’ll fight off all monsters
And giants – none but you shall ever do –
I’ll return home, defeat all imposters.

On How to Be a Man

Son, stand and be a man, responsible
And virtuous and kind. You will not find
A man of worth who’s listless, cold, and cruel,
Who lives a life reptilian, not of mind.

Don’t live an anesthetic life; embrace
The senses, beauty of the world and life
And art; reject the bodiless and soulless,
The hatred of the world in strifeless strife.

A man of action is a man of words;
A man of words will always listen well;
The poetry of thought will see its source
To train you so that you can always tell

The wisest way to walk, traverse the waves,
And fly on falcon wings when you are sure
Your feathers formed, both soft and firm, for both
Are needed if warm winds you will endure.

A man of wisdom is a man of worlds –
The worlds of simplest physics, chemistry –
The complex worlds of life, emergent systems –
All; cultures, art, and true economy.

A healthy man is one of healthy loves
And life; a life of beauty unifies
Diversity, transforms each soul it meets
To light, gives feathered wings so each one flies.

The opposite of manliness is not
The feminine. The feminine is truly
The complement of manliness. The boy,
So irresponsible, unkempt, unruly,

Is the true opposite of manliness.
Embrace the fullness of both sides of life,
The feminine and masculine, and you
Will have the truest virtue, not one rife

With hardness when you really need to show
You flow and bend and, flowing, show your strength,
Nor softness when you must stand firm and show
That you won’t always bend to any length.

Yes, son, to be a man you have to stand
For right and virtue, knowing when to bend
With strength and knowing when to love. Be true
And good, a soul of beauty to the end.

Holsteins

The cattle stand upon the hill at night
And moo the moon to milky white delight.

Quatro Quatrains (of the Prophetic Kind)

The fiat virus grows relentlessly
To sicken, poison almost all the herd
Until the herd itself is blamed -- the three
Shall kill the herd, supporting the absurd.
_____________________________________________________

The fire shall sweep the countryside to ash
And singe the eagle's feathers, threaten her
Young eaglets in the nest. The nest will crash
Into the flames and crush the moral cur.
_____________________________________________________

The island nation lights the lamp of liberty
As it goes out in the devalued, dying west
As they embrace lies' leaders and frivolity,
The promise they can all suck from the common breast.
_____________________________________________________

Two Scotsmen and a saint provide the light
And tension needed for the growth of man --
Behold their paradoxical delight,
The source of growth from when it all began.

On Tony Hoagland’s Poems

Shall I compare them to good poetry?
The lines are most atrocious, bordering
On adolescent ravings. Gallantry
Is pissed upon by a limp phallic spring.
They bravely condemn racism in the
United States in all their college lines
Ink-jetted in the racist century
Obama was elected, hate declines.
But surely, despite this, they have a point?
But, no – their mindless Marxism is flat,
Pathetic, most embarrassing. Anoint
Yourselves, you silly lines, with flames grown fat.
Such self-important poetry’s not art –
It's nothing but a psychopathic fart.

On Leadership

I cannot write about our Caesar –
Napoleon, we’ve never had –
We’ve lacked a Hitler, Stalin, Castro,
And such a loss makes many sad.
Democracy can never give us
Great leaders such as these, and so
We fight to tear it down, implode it –
No leaders rise, so it must go.
The awful people we’ve elected
Won’t be as bad, so we feel spurned –
Instead, our leaders rot so slowly,
And from the swamp, the swamp’s returned.
Our greatest heroes? Just pathetic –
Jack Kennedy could never be
An Alexander or Augustus –
That’s why we’re still just barely free.
And that is why each poet, artist
Loves dictators and praises them –
A poem praising complex systems? –
Too many facets in that gem.
Each poet wants to be Propertius
And praising Caesar endlessly –
Pathetic politicians are not
Worth lines of valiant poetry.
But what the poets lost, the people
Have gained, so keep great men at bay,
For order made by law brings freedom,
Makes possible the dawn of day.

A Lifetime

The sunlight softly shined in through
The breakfast window pane. The sliced
Half grapefruit glistened in the light.
And he began to drink the iced
But barely cold tomato juice.
And he began to tell his wife
The story once again, the same
Of many stories of his life
That she had heard over the years
But ten or twenty, fifty times
Or more, and yet she never tired
Of hearing what he said, like rhymes
That we have heard and want to hear
Again, the voice delivering
It being his. The stories told
Repeatedly, cold shivering
Whenever he began to tell
Of when he fell into the lake,
And when she told that funny tale,
He’d still begin to laugh and shake
Between them, all the stories known,
And still they tell them once again –
And sometimes slip into a high
And playful child voice. The sin
Would be to interrupt the tale
Once told, these stories told in dull
Late morning sunlight, its soft glare
Reflected off the cereal
In milk. The lives lived once again,
Again in each of their love’s ears
Without a fear of boredom through
The days or months or even years.
And so she told her story too,
A story she forgot she told,
A story that he knew she had
Told ten or fifty times, so old
That he had memorized the tales
She told before on other days,
And over morning milk, or nights
As they would fall into the daze
Of sleep, both happy just to hear
The voices they’d remember, fill
In all the coming years when they
Both knew and feared the air’d be still.

Elemental Rebirth

In a caldera, ancient, the paint pot
Contains, together, each of the four ancient
Elements; the deep heat from very recent
Magma-fire pushing air up through the hot
Mixture of earth and water, thick mud bubbling
In earthen vases, all the splatter-rings
Not settling before the next bubble brings
New splatter-rings. Each bubble slowly troubling
The surface, viewer standing there above,
Magma shallow enough to make its fire
Turn water soon to air. Does it require
Our fear of this beautiful land we love?
These paint pots bubble, hot mud giving birth,
To old forms: fire, water, air, and earth.

A Tale of Two Disasters

It took about three days for government
To make it in to New Orleans. The flood
From hurricane and weakened levies, blood
Of people shot by criminals, have sent

Out a diaspora of citizens
To increase crime in Houston and make flow
A new jazz scene in San Antonio.
A media-created rosy lens

Gets a corrupt man re-elected mayor,
Though he was most responsible for all
The deaths – the buses did not get the call,
The money “somehow” gone. It was a day or

Two of such terrible existence – sin
And graft, corruption was rewarded, death
The image reinforced each day. The breath
Of vast incompetence was not reigned in.

The ice storm in Kentucky displaced more
Across a larger area, the lights
And heat were gone in freezing cold. The sights,
However, were of houses of the poor

And trees enwrapped in shining crystal ice.
Who cares about a bunch of hillbillies
Who had to live in hotels or else freeze?
You bet that most of them are full of lice.

It took about three days for media
To cover Kentucky’s disastrous storm,
Ignoring it almost until the warm
Winds came to melt the ice. The area

Was hit by something nameless; it was not
Katrina – named and thus something that we
Could talk about. Is that the reason three
Days passed? Can lack of naming change the lot

Of people, suffering? We still refer
To 9-11 with a number – it’s
Without a name. Perhaps it hardly fits
The stories that the media prefer.

On the Wealthy

We learned to hate the wealthy when
The wealthy were all thieves
And rulers with the strength to take
Whatever they should please.

The wealthy, when they gained their wealth
From voluntary trade,
Were thought to get their wealth the way
The ruler thieves were paid.

So then we turn back to the thieves
Who promise that they'll take
The wealth from those who earned that wealth
Then lie: "It's for your sake."

We've come to trust the ones who made
Us never trust the rich
And, rather than take a hand up,
Lie beaten in a ditch.

Exchange is new and power's old
So it feels natural --
But if we keep believing that,
We'll live still in the Fall.