Whispers

The wind outside rages,
laying low all the birds,
keeping them at bay
as they whisper magic words.
Rain pours down, ceaseless,
soaking cold autumn ground,
dripping from the eaves,
it whispers out its sound.
Winter peeks at us
from behind fall’s disguise,
letting us know it’s there,
as it whispers how time flies.
On such a day as this one,
cold, and raw, and wet,
one sure laments the summer
that whispers its regret.
And above the rising din
of another approaching year,
we sit inside our silence,
whispers are all we hear.

Ennui and Ashes

Ennui and ashes
are all that’s left
after the final
fiddle player’s tune.
For our lives
have passed us by
in the cold light
of a fool’s moon.
Song and laughter
have given way
to perseverance
and the pain.
We no longer smile
and clap our hands
or dance happily
in the summer rain.
We just get along
in order to get along
and live our lives
just not to die.
It all comes down
to ennui and ashes,
and in the end
we can but wonder why.

Who is This Stranger?

I don’t know who the stranger is
who lives inside my mirror.
Everytime I challenge him
he seems not to even hear.
He is so much older
then I imagine I’ll ever be.
Thinning hair and saggy jowls,
he just stares back at me.
He even seems to mimic
every move that I make,
every blink and twitch,
each nod and each head shake.
It just seemed to happen,
this old man living there,
for just a few years ago
’twas a young man with no care.
What happened to him,
and why he’s been replaced,
the obsession to find out
seems to be a total waste.
For no answers come to me,
I cannot figure why,
the young man in my mirror
is now this old, wrinkled guy.

HOLLYHOCKS

Hollyhocks and morning glories,
their colorful sight tells the stories.
Tales of carefree, youthful days,
and hints of fun-loving ways.
When I was a lad, blonde and tan,
eons away from being a man,
rain-soaked earth, new mown hay,
their scents just wafted in this way.
Carried on that breeze so fresh,
memories which return and mesh,
thoughts of days now long past,
when a boy’s shadow I still cast.

If a Whisper Had an Echo

I put the coffe on,
pull a cup down from the shelf,
I sit and stare out the window,
silently thinking to myself.
If a whisper had an echo,
and the wind another side,
would I know where to go,
a safe place to abide?
Where I’ve been is in the past,
I think I know that place.
But right now I’m sitting here,
a tired look upon my face.
The sameness of tomorrow
is a difference that’s yet to be,
but from the shadows of today,
I just can’t seem to see.

Invocation at a Ministerial Conference

Let’s bow our heads
and let us prey…
upon the weak
as well as the strong,
upon the meek
and upon the proud.
Let us prey
upon the poor
as well as the rich,
upon the whore
and upon the chaste.
Let us prey
upon the gullible
as we do upon the skeptic,
upon those in trouble,
and those without a care.
These things we ask
in the blessed name
of the father,
and of the son,
and of the…
Holy Smokes!
It’s time to eat!
Amen.

DUST AND MEMORIES

Choked by dust and memories,
I cough to clear my throat.
The sunlight through the pane
illumines swirling mote.
It undulates around me,
it’s difficult to breathe.
Just below the surface,
a primal urge does seethe.
The need to touch the past,
to escape from today,
to get back to a time
when things were all o.k.
Back to an innocence
that we all lost long ago,
to another time and place
when things moved so slow.
Here among the memories,
the dust, the smiles, and tears,
my mind can take a journey
not of miles, but of years.
To a time of promise,
to a time when I was young,
when I wished no one ill,
no curse escaped my tongue.
To a time of acceptance,
when I knew no foes,
when everything was poetry
and pastoral prose.
To a time of longing
for a future yet to be,
and before the knowledge
of things I had yet to see.
Oh to be taken back
to days now so long gone,
before an age of cynics
who hold back the dawn.
To soar above this place,
o’er remembrance and dust,
to live the life I want
and not the one I must.
But youthful visions shrink
and reality claims the day,
replacing black and white
with several shades of gray.
So what use then are memories,
and things that came before?
Are they just places
where we live in days of yore?
Or are they the best
of what our lives could be,
and if that’s the case,
why then can’t we see?
For memory’s imperfect vision
leads us to a spot
where today’s reality
meets a time long forgot.

BEST FRIENDS

Playing catch and climbing trees,
ridings bikes and skinning knees,
the things we did those years ago,
made us friends today, I know.
Who knew then, or could’ve known,
we’d still be friends, old and grown?
Fifty years back to those days,
a glimpse, a shadow, longing gaze.
I see us then, with youthful hope,
backward through a telescope.
So far away and yet so near,
youthful faces filled with cheer.
Those simple things and simple times
forged a friendship so sublime.
We stuck it out, thick and thin,
knowing for sure where we’ve been.
Grown friends, once boys at play,
from bright dawn to dimming day,
Our lives are like that metaphor,
an open gate, a closing door.
At opposite ends of these years,
through laughter and through tears,
one long line with no ends,
we call each other our best friends.

Truth and Lies

Where sound and silence
come together,
where light and dark
are not defined,
where temerity and fury
make their peace,
that is the spot
where truth begins.
Where yes and no
cannot agree,
where black and white
become gray,
where one and one
does not add up,
that is the spot
where lies vanish.

THE GREAT WASTELAND

The air smells of rain.
I should turn off the TV;
I’m quite sure that it would be
pretty much the same
as turning off my headache.
But I didn’t turn it on
(the TV -nor the headache-),
so I just let it drone on.
I’m at peace with my headache by now,
it’s become just some friendly humming noise
in the back of my head.
Or maybe that’s the TV, too
with which I will make no peace.
The thing is simply this:
it’s just annoying enough
to ruin my evening, hence my day.
Even the music on my iPod
is steeped in melancholia,
and yet my body didn’t assimilate it
through the usual alchemy
that ends up with me being (at least)
as melancholic as the music I’m listening to.
That’s an unmistakable sign
that my day was way too long.
Or so it now seems
in this last hour before sleep.
Well, so be it.