My poems...

First lines or titles of my poems main page There are a series of poems I wrote during the summer of 1985; that was a great summer where I couldn't seem to write fast enough to write down all the poems that were bubbling up in my head. I thought that this was an embarrassment of riches and wished it would slow down or quit; unfortunately, the inspiration largely did stop. Sanctuary I walk the night alone, wrapped in darkness and quiet. I see without being seen. I've become a part of the night. My skin merges out with it as it flows around the houses lit like lanterns in the sea of night. I move apart from those within, aloft and safe from harm. They cannot touch me nor I touch them. I watch and walk as through a dream. The Hollow People Last night, I went to "THE" party: In a room with a shimmering mirror, where all the guests wore smiles and elegant dress, hardly touched their drinks and looked only at each other's faces. They were so lively, yet their smiles seemed so sad; then I noticed their backs were bare and looked like the inside of cast figurenes: dull gray and contoured to match their fronts. Fearfully, I touched my back and it felt solid. In that room, only I was real! I looked at them and felt pity. I frowned and found I disliked being surrounded by these hollow shells. My back faced the mirror and I glanced back towards it. In shock, I turned away and gulped my drink, trying to forget the dull plastic where my back should have been. Finally, I doned the sad smile of the others, sipped a new drink and thought: I am real? Insects I sat watching as an insect slowly walked across my arm like a hiker in a forest and I was godlike in size and intellect compared to it. Casually, I brushed it from my arm and killed it - then felt annoyed as I went to wash my hand. The Great Wheel The great wheel turns; dead winter burns away the old; leaves appear like green jewel arrays on trees of coat hangers made. Flowers spray their need in red and blue and white display. A special language only bees can read: They slip into the flowers so smooth - casual in approach; take a bit, leave another's seed and flitter off in lust for renewal! It! The boy clenched his mother's hand as he dragged into the kitchen to see the monstrous dog bought for him. This nightmare creature sat balanced upon his father's palm and whimpered. The boy stuck out a shaking finger; the puppy sniffed it and began to nibble as the boy giggled in delight. Mr. Happy Mr. Happy walks his garden weeds it, waters it, watches as: A ship burns in the sky, A bum freezes on a grate. Perfect fruit for the picking, in Joy he gathers his Crop. Prometheus Teacher/bringer of fire, White smoke chases you. Writing your name on the sky in glyphs spelling death. Cranes Giant young Cranes perching today, they say whale eating, drinking from the Reflecting pool. Nesting in the Pentagon wellway, just grandly perched on Condo roofs...broken things! Giant young Cranes chasing aircraft away, when they go brunch or munch the City Zoo! Whose mating rites are sights to see, I say to awe and thrill or chill cynic me or you! Time 0. Time flows like honey, slow, sweet, full of bubbles and twisting like a rope in a golden haze obscuring everything but itself. We're the bubbles thinking that we've always been there, always will be there, not knowing or caring how short our lives will be, falling in the sweet golden haze that seems to last forever. Time I. I feel time, time like a giant strobe now flashing in my youth, now flashing in my manhood, now flashing and I am gone. II. We are nothing, nothing but frozen images among the multitude in a scrapbook or sparks flowing upward from a fire that glows brightly for an instant and they are gone. III. We live in a now, now "knowing" tomorrow will never come, living in a frenzy feeling that endless tomorrow's await us and scarcely noting that days past piling up like debre in a small prison cell from which we cannot escape. An Old, Uncomfortable, Suit Fear is a suit I wear when under pressure and stress; it coats my thoughts like batter on deep-fried scrimp and slows my thoughts like some bad drug that's still legal. Fear fills my mind like steam filling a shower stall and I see it, feel it coming like a small boy watching the belt fall during a whipping and I can't will it away. Or when I've surprised fear in a crisis and calm fills me insides like a cold glass of water on a hot day, fear can lunge at me like a shit-covered spear impaling it's victim without warning. Fear is like a thick coat of paint and now I have a paint scrapper and I scrap and scrap but the removal is slow, inefficient and only time and weathering finishes the job. Middle Ages When we were young, our parents told us: "Grow up!" "Quit acting so childish!" "He's sucha big baby!" "She's such a little girl!" And so we grow up to become adults and be told: "You grew up too fast!" "Remember the things you lost, in the carefree days of youth!" "You've lost your childhood!" Too young and now too old is our crime, we've lived our lives at the wrong time!

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Back to my homepage. ***************-Back to the top?-*************** I wrote this poem as an exercise in Bob Bauche's class; you will note that it is in iambic pentameter and is the first eight lines of an Elizabethan sonnet. I threw out the last four lines and the finishing couplet because Bob Bauch didn't like them; pity! The last four lines were about human lust and the couplet combined the themes of the first three verses. An Elizabethan sonnet consists of three verses each of four lines and a finishing couple; fourteen lines in all. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The lines are in iambic pentameter (and actually are in my poem!).BACK A neighbor's dog scared me badly when I was in 1st grade; this dog was almost as tall as I was. So, my parents bought a minature dashshund. This dog was as described as was my reaction to it.BACK This poem was written around 5:30 am one morning on Guam whilst I was sitting on a roof and watching the weather. We were in the midst of an anti-terrorist exercise on Guam called "Operation Bulldog". The cloudlet was a bit of strato-fractus that boiled up from some morning cumulus.BACK These two poems were written the day of the Challenger explosion. I heard a couple of "jokes" that same night! It is amazing how fast people people can come up with bad jokes... The middle two lines of "Mr. Happy" refer to the mixture of rich and poor in out country. A shuttle is a very expensive system and representative of a wealthy culture. The poor are representative of a poor culture. "Mr. Happy" is a reference to the grim reaper. "Prometheus" brought fire to people and Christine McAlee (I think her name was) was a teacher. It did upset a lot of people that the press talked mostly about the teacher.BACK Since I wrote this for his class, Bob Bauche asked the class: "How many of you did your fathers beat with his belt?" Every man (including Bob) raised his hand; none of the women raised their hands. Some of the women said they had trouble believing us. Lucky them!BACK The title of this poem is "Cranes"; it is a joke. I wrote this poem when we lived just south of Washington, DC and I had just started in Bob Bauch's writing class. They were using the giagantic construction cranes in the Washington, Dc area that look like a "T". That is, a verticle post with the crosspiece on top. When this cranes dipped down, they reminded me of living Cranes in a Zoo. So, I used the image of birds effectively 150 feet high. The Reflecting Pool is a very nice place to visit (or for hugh birds to drink from!). The Pentagon Wellway is in the very centre of the Pentagon. (There is a cafe there called "The Ground Zero Cafe; this graveyard humour reflects the reality that the Pentagon is an ideal target).