Tag: Vanity

Her Father’s Vineyard

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Within the vineyard of her honeyed youth
The red wine flows through long and draping vines;
From sharpest grape it runs to sweetest tooth,
Down where the soil and the sun combines

To bring about a type of miracle.
A marvel that she’s not thought on for years:
A thing that’s not the least satirical,
A sober thing of ancient engineers.

For light and flippant are her thoughts these days,
Of vanity and life amid the stars;
The latest trend, the hottest fashion craze,
And all the best of nightclubs and of bars —

She stops and blinks, a teardrop to conceal;
Within her father’s vineyard, life was real

.

Picture / Photo Credit : © Mikhalevich | Dreamstime.com – Vineyards. Watercolor. Photo

The Enlightened Ones

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments 
The only symptoms that we see
Are those expressly chosen for our eyes

The diagnosis we arrive at
Has been shaded and shaped
By clues deliberately dropped there for us
And even more by what hasn't been shown

So we recommend treatment
Not knowing

Anything, really

Not the nature of the disease
Nor its real symptoms

We have no hope of finding a cure

And we genuinely, fervently believe


That we are the enlightened ones

The Cliffs of Diogenes

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

What matters fame? The world is dumb and vain,
And if you do not see, I can’t explain.
For we live complicated lives, and steal,
And lie to make ourselves look more ideal:
It’s foolishness, a flapping in the wind.

The rich make noise, but then die like the rest;
It can be hard to tell then worst from best,
For all, alike, have secret maladies,
And stand accused by old Diógenes
Of emptiness, and flapping in the wind.

For where now is the king, the financier?
Where’s the conqueror, the privateer?
And how much can the dead afford to spend?
Investing is just one means toward our end.

What matters is a day of honest toil,
And some connection ere the day we pass;
It’s knowing that our lives are like a breeze
That ripples gently o’er the summer grass,
For yes, we are but flapping in
The wind

A Bumper Crop

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

A bumper crop of hubris
Mid acres of conceit,
With honeyed drips of fresh revenge
Upon the tongue so sweet

Then winds blow through the midland;
We wake to find, at dawn,
The bumper crop we bragged upon,
Just like the night,

Is gone

These Secret Dreams

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems4 Comments

For years these secret dreams my very waking soul would haunt:
To make me into someone, and to give me all I want

But in my dreams, as I’d approach my conquering of all,
I’d walk out for my great debut into an empty hall

The life I wanted then: of glory, riches, fame and lust —
Would prove to be mere vanity; just empty air and dust

I wanted then whatever things to me life could commend:
Not knowing without purpose, I’d get nothing in the end

For life’s more simple – and complex – then I back then suspected:
For purpose, to be meaningful
Must be
Outward
Directed

 

(inspired by this interesting idea.)