Ode to Solitude

The first hour I was left alone I sat
In silence, silent room and silent house,
And listened to my heart just beat. I found
It wondrous, sitting in the silence. Spouse

And children gone (one gone to sleep), my mind
At rest, with no demands, complaints, commands
To rule me. Just my slow and steady breath
Accompanies my heart and my still hands.

Beloved solitude, where I can think,
I've missed your silence and relaxing flow --
I've been away with other loves; they fill
My life. And yet, I need you both to grow.

No television, music, politics --
No screaming, running, playing -- not for me
For but a while, for but a short, short while --
But in that while, enough. Now I can be. 

Ode to Gravity

You cause the toilet paper to fall in
The toilet water; I must fish it out.
You caused the scab there on the baby's chin,
Bring to their knees in prayer the world's devout.

You are so weak that I can overcome
You with mere muscle movements, lift my son
Up off the Earth. And yet you pull the plum
From off the tree the moment it is done.

You pull the Earth in orbit and rotate
It on its axis. Pulling asteroids down,
Destroying land and life, you change the fate
Of life itself. And yet you make the clown

With pratfalls make us laugh; he trips, he falls
And you're his straight-man -- there, invisible.
Without you things would fly apart, yet walls
Will crumble at your feet. And all is full

Of you -- the Earth and I, this phone, these keys --
In spacetime folds you bend each object, curve
All lines; you pull us down and bend all knees --
To overcome you you we first must serve.

But do not think that I've forgotten you
Have made me more than once plunge hands into
The toilet water to retrieve a few
Wet rolls that melt into a soggy goo.

On Teachers

Walt Whitman says a teacher must be overcome
By those he teaches; Friedrich Nietzsche says that when
I reject him, then he will come to me. Yet, some
Of my own teachers are living in the dark den

Of cool postmodernism; meanwhile, see, my latest
Rejects, surpasses the postmoderns, flies on wings
Above their ironies. Rejecting which? The greatest
Postmodernists or he who taught me how verse sings?

If Nietzsche is my teacher, ought I then reject
Rejecting? Ought I then embrace my teachers, whole?
If I embrace my teachers, dead and live, elect
To integrate them all, revel in all I stole,

Become the merchant of all art in me, reveal
Myself as Hermes, Mercury -- I'll overcome
Dear Dionysus who now rules. I want to steal
His throne and give a singing voice to those long-dumb.

I'll take this turn, return to bring the future light,
Delight, insight and fight the night, bring forth a new,
Revealed, and open art, an art of truth and might
And may, a poetry that makes you know you flew.

Undrinking Lethe

I speak a language you forgot, the words
Of dreams, the words of fairyland and trees
And animals. Have you forgotten birds
Who speak in rhythms you know? Hear the breeze.

It speaks a language you'll remember if you
Are willing to just listen to that voice
Originating deep inside. We're true
To life, ourselves, when we hear stones rejoice.

You do not think that you can hear the stones
And serpents when they speak? You do not think
That you can hear this language in your bones?
Unless you do, your world will only shrink.

If you can truly hear this little song,
Then that forgotten voice will become strong.

Wasting Words

The only words I write that matter are
In rhyme and rhythm. If you think my thoughts
On politics are worth your time, you're wrong.
Don't waste your time with all such pointless naughts.

Don't waste your time with things that pass. Find life
In timeless things, in words that are transcendent,
Beyond the everyday and transient.
No, seek out words and sounds that are resplendent.

Seek out the rhythms, rhymes, and roundaboutness
That build in blooms of breathless bounty borne
In poetry partaking of deep wisdom
In complex webs that never can be worn.

So why are these, my lines of poetry,
Unread compared to silly surface things?
It seems we all prefer the superficial,
The comfort that all frivolousness brings.

Cosmogony

Out of the chaos known as Nothingness

came Love, which then gave birth to Strife, because

creation must precede destruction in all things.

Then Love and Strife bred Competition and

Cooperation, who then married and

gave birth to Knowledge, Action, Wisdom, each 

hermaphrodites -- so knowledge bred with Action

and each produced a child; the latter, Wealth, 

the former, Science -- Action bred with Wisdom

and each produced a child; the former, Justice,

the latter, Virtue -- Knowledge bred with Wisdom

And they produced the greatest child, great Beauty,

at whom the rest would always aim to please.

Together all gave rise to the great Orders:

from Science Math and great Technology;

then Money, Catallaxy, Governance,

Philanthropy, the Sociologies,

Religion and Philosophy and Art,

All bred from Action, mother of them all.