“Nor”

Maybe I'm not a spectacle. 
There's nothing here that is amazing, or astounding: 
I am not the best or brightest, 
Neither the strongest, the fastest, nor best to look at.  

Maybe this is not a historically significant place -- 
Nor a place of current interest or intrigue -- 
Not just the right thing 
At just the right time. 

In a world and an age full of grabbing, 
Whether of attention, or hair, or opportunity, or money, 
I am a being of releasing: 
Of letting go, of setting free. 

None may stop to view such a lack of drama, 
Indeed, I scarcely pay it much mind, myself -- 
Maybe I'm neither all I think I am, 
Nor as little as I fear I've done. 

Maybe I'm not a spectacle, 
But I can honestly be what I genuinely am: 
Used, homely, full of purpose, faulty of execution, 
Closer to the dust than to the cradle. 

For I am neither angel nor demon: 
A digital bard from an age of paper coupons, 
A song no one listens to anymore 
Although there are forty-five hundred versions available. 

There is a genuine you of sinew and heartbeat, 
There is an actual me of skin and breath, 
But without the right dash of cavalcade, 
Do we qualify for real existence?

 

A March Quartet (IV)

DEATH will have its night; Life will have its day. 
 This is the world we're born into, this is the mortal way,
 
AS FLOWERS feel the sun despite the vast all-over cold -- 
 We're born to live, to learn, to feel, and maybe, to get old, 

WHEN WE must put our petals down, and give in to the earth;
 For death will have its night, and day will have its birth.

A March Quartet (III)

THERE'S ONE DAY cold, the next day warm, 
 The Spring, capricious in its whim; 
  The child runs and plays in snow, 
   Then sees a next when all will swim
   In streams and pools of sunny March,
  Beside green fields of Summer-soon:
 There's one day white, the next day green; 
It's all a ludicrous cartoon.

THE FIELD, it beckons to the young, 
 And to the old, the in-between; 
  But soon the wind will keening come, 
   And gray and white will cover green. 
   There is a rhythm, mad and great, 
  That all must learn and feel to know 
 We think that we're in charge, when we 
Are just part of the ebb and flow.

A March Quartet (I)

THE WIND blows hollow, from the South; 
 The mind shrinks back in wondering -- 
   Yours was the waiting, Winter heart, 
   Somnolent hopes, all slumbering -- 

There is no din, just Nature's voice, 
 Clear as the stab of stricken pain: 
   Those who you call, won't come again, 
   Those you have loved have moved away. 

The Cold's not gone, it's in your bones, 
 It's in the way you slowed-down move; 
   Yours was the Heart that gave, and all -- 
   Body and mind and cash and food -- 
 
In chapters written sans regret, 
 You spent all the Spring you had within: 
   This wound is the sword of grief's sharp edge, 
   Ubiquitous part of human kin.

it’s my way of seeing things

you judge that i have nothing all that important to say 
and look down at your ringing phone 
thinking maybe that person does 
having already made your choice 

undivided attention 
is for storybooks and movies; 
give or take the word 
"undivided" 

but what should i expect? 
there's always something better out there 
there's always someone new and 
someone 

wholly other

The Prism of Thought and Heart

Oh, I am sad and broken, like 
The intermittent waves that cross
The frozen sands of straggling winter;
I am homeless, lost and seemingly evermore
Sad and broken.

Oh, I am one and many, like
The friendless waves that stream
Across the lifeless shores of empty cold;
I am all and nothing -- all that is, and
Nothing that could be.

Does this span and upset
Portend something?
Or, are emotions just things
Sent to remind of us of
Our inherent insanity?

Am I all things,
All broken things,
Or does the prism of my thought and heart
Break the light before it
Can warm me?