Poetry Archives - Page 2 of 5

Old and in the Way

Yes, Jerry Garcia, I know, I knowBut you must admitIt’s a good lineOne that bears repeating and re-use Maybe it’s just in the twilightThat one understandsThat there’s no last gleamingThat was gone long ago It takes age to realizeThat no one wants oldBecause as Jerry …

St. Nicholas and the Tanks

A poem from On Driftwood and Oblivion Children’s smiles spread to the menWho presented joyAfter a long nightmare’s sleepTo the girls and boys. Tanks, raged as a floodAcross the snow-covered fieldsNow stained with their blood. This is a Seguidilla based on a true event that …

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Winter’s Edge

Sometimes the thoughts of wanting to be dead
Come to me when the tribulations of the day
Are better left unsaid
Like the flakes of snow silently floating
As if they never want to kiss the ground

The dogged memories of yesterday’s failures
Pace a slow creep, as if molded by the clay
Of tomorrow’s scriptures
Like the unwanted knowledge of death
From those closest to you among the drifts

Sand

The wind has removed itself from our presence
But the sand still lingers, as an obstinate thick fog
Permeating everything it touches
Including my long returning thoughts
More galling, my deepest protected memories

Riding, like Bedouins coming out of the desert
Not seen for an endlessly hopeless time
Once so organized and stored
Now moving again, ever relentless
As grains of sand stinging my leathered face

Each of those grains a dirty nightmare
Of the horse drawn sullied history
Coming out of this tin shack dive bar planet
As if Gertrude Bell herself came home
Drawing boundaries to forever haunt this place

Castles enter and slip away once more
In dreams of ghost riders, swords drawn
Erasing history’s EtchoSketched footprints
Left by kings and queens of purple sage
Tumbling moral virtues into Damascus

Silence breaks the quiet of the sunrise
Spreading like winged camels across Wadi Rum
I saw Mr. Lawrence among the dust strewn bodies
But the magnificent seven would not stand
They slipped away, as time momentarily halted

Disappearing through the Ottoman’s looking glass
Toiling away in the universe’s inner sanctum
As the final notes of Jericho’s horns fade to black
Searching endlessly for the meaning of it all
Only to re-emerge on the broken streets of Babylon

And the sand lingers still

Curve of the Wave

The curve of the wave clutches my soul
Barreling down a moonless black hole
Then, as if desperate to console
The surf relents, in a quiet roll
Back out to sea, yet angry to return
I know surely, for whom the bells toll

Winds Across Pamlico

A new Poem from On Driftwood and Oblivion

A haunted wind through his ship’s hull ground
Brownstone horses in the sand danced ‘round
Wisdom worn footprints sought, never found
In the shadowed moon, her thoughts were bound
As the tidal clad laughter crept alone
Silence swept across Pamlico Sound

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High Lonesome Again

A Hir A Thoddaid The valve pumped cold red, on through the boreAs screaming neurons opened the coreI reached the knob of life’s closing doorStone silence, as my soul hit the floorExhale, breath abandoned lungs mattered notIdle chatter breeze, lonesome no more The new collection …

There Goes the Sun

A poem from the new collection On Driftwood and Oblivion Shall we go now, for later it should be too hotEclipse the stars, traverse the moonsLeave all behind, take nothing but the plotUnder the watchful eyes of your baboons Your place setting awaits, a table …

Under the Shade Trees

A poem from the new collection On Driftwood and Oblivion

I once lived there, under the shade of those trees
Peaceful and happy, never hurting anyone or anything
Why do you say these vile and evil things about me?
You know not what you speak, or whom you speak it for

We do not have the means to wage war that you have
And so, we move like the wind, but neither here nor there
I hope you enjoyed the shade of the trees you took
No, I truly do. At least before you cut them all down

Read more in On Driftwood and Oblivion…