The Oppression of the Future

Suck in the fetid air
You're sitting there
Right in a chair
You look as anxious as a hare
You're glancing everywhere
Full of despair
Afraid because the world is unfair
You're withering beneath its golden stare
You fail beneath its silver glare
And wonder if you dare

Here is another version.

Forgiveness

You need to do something most difficult:
Forgive yourself for being human--flawed,
Imperfect. Yes, life is hard, virtue rare,
But love is best of anything and hate's
A waste of energy and time. Live full,
Imperfectly your life--always perfect
Yourself with joy and fill your life with dance
And poetry and song. The beautiful
Has never been the perfect--love the flaws
That make your life, all art most interesting--
Remain in awe of nature and the wealth
That you enjoy beyond subsistence, rare
In human history, and all the knowledge
The peace, the global trust that we enjoy.
And yet, because you won't forgive yourself,
You live in misery among abundance,
Condemn the tiny things, and seek out hate,
Anxiety, and fear, replacing all
We lost with our imaginations. Love,
And you'll be loved--give, and you'll get the gift
Of happiness--forgive, and live in joy.

God and Goddess

The moon is goddess of all poetry--
Except the poetry of Greece--the sun,
Apollo, stands surrounded by the Muses--
His is a poetry no light shall shun.

In other realms the darkness rules the verse,
The poet hides in shadows, hides in lies--
Apollo shines the sun of truth through lines
And in his wisdom everything defies.

Apollo's poetry is prophesy--
The future speaking to the now in rhyme--
It brings enlightenment and its warm glow
Will bring the mind beauty's fullness in time.

The Muses' poetry is Memory--
Plurality of knowledge--and sets loose
Great wisdom to make beautiful--
Such is the power of their father, Zeus.

But do not think the virgin goddess dim--
She finds her way into our rhyme and verse--
Without her you cannot give birth, your lines
Will be stillborn, delivered in a hearse.

The Still Life

What is this skull beside the cactus, white
Beside the epiphytic green--death-dry
Beside the succulent. In nature high
Upon a limb, white flowers will delight
Nocturnal moths out of the barren sight
Of empty eyes whose rigid bones should lie
Beneath the ground. This table will deny
The desiccating dirt, the airy height.

Has life and death been tamed by still life art,
Domesticated on our tables, chairs?
The painted orchids clipped from off the tree
They grow upon, beside the cactus, part
Of our desires, hold our fears and cares
In stillness--they are safe where we can see. 

Dance of the Gobies

To feel the music in your body--birds
Displaying fancy feathers, antlered elk,
The poets with their rhythmic, rhyming words,
And kings with purples from the ocean whelk--

All art is dancing, subtle glancing, dark
And light in most modest movement, necks
Exposed to bloodstained blades, the meadowlark
Up on the line will serenade your sex.

The fish is dancing in its territory,
It's showing off its colors just to chase
Away and to attract--you read its story
In Bach and Baudelaire, the Muses' lace.

A vase of genitalia shows I feel
The oxytocin dancing in my brain--
The colors, nectar bring the bees, unreal
As butterflies in heaven's deep domain.

The bird of paradise displays its feathers
And we display our minds in art and song--
We dance among anemones and heathers
To find a fellow soul where we'll belong.