In Praise of Your Beauty

Note: This poem was not written at Altoids, but was debuted there.

I think my left lung gets snagged on a rib
When I look at you,
And when I get my breath back
I fear the powerful cords
You've thrown around my heart –
Still straining each rise and fall of my diaphragm –
That draw us together
Yet keep us apart.

For when we talk I know
You're a million miles away.
With me helpless and you oblivious (perhaps),
Who will cut these cords
Of haunting, hopeless affection?

Ah, Nature's lopsides
Always have downsides,
Many of which are prisons.
Nonetheless, few things excel
Your beauty.
That you are beautiful does you no credit,
Though it ensnare my mind and heart;
But it is no small thing to live beautifully:
This I praise!

I suppose the odds are good,
Based on past experience,
That years from now when we meet
I shall remember this poem cum confession
And wonder why I wrote these lines
In praise of a beauty I still see
But no longer quite feel.

But I do now write.
Herein lies my praise.

Sing Not, Muse!

Note: This poem underwent substantial revision between the version of last week's meeting and what I present to you here. I hope you find it improved.

Oh Muse! I ask no song of thee
As did ancient bards (who, in effigy,
Prate out pentameter at Westminster)
When of old thy name confessing.

I entreat thee not to guide my pen
In expectance of Olympus' blessing,
Nor even for tradition's sake alone
With little faith.

I tell thee not of Rome or Athens,
Of pantheons with their immortal trappings.
I do not know the Titans;
The Fates are strangers to me.

Nay, sing not, Muse!
Who in epochs past inspired
Poets most dead and laureate.
Chant not from your crumbling, stony places
Of time stood still, of hundreds of frozen faces
Gazing witless from column to column.

Is it not I who sing
Across the ages to thee?

Sinking the Galatia

The generations will judge us
For what we do this day.
But you and I and one another
Know that it has to be like this.”

Thus quoth the captain,
His navy blue uniform
And white caftan
Fluttering in the jogging breeze,
The sort that foretells a nor'easter.

I bowed my head, remembering the Galatia
's if she were a'ready gone.
“She were a good ship,”
The captain said –
It was a eulogy –
And as the rain came
And washed the grime
Of twenty years at sea
Into the churning deep –
The body prepared for burial –
The crew all sang a song,
A hymn, it seemed,
And all were still.

We scuttled her that night
Without sight o' land,
And all the men abandoned ship and swam without hope.
The craft listed, and the creak of the mast,
As it rolled into the water like a sick dog,
Sounded to me like a banshee,
An' all the cannon slid, scraped petitions ignored,
Into the foaming sea.

Driving At Night

lane lines lead me through life,
like driving at night
talking to him, we exchange pleasantries,
passing with a courteous flip of the turn signal,
and I work and walk beside her for weeks,
accelerating in a one-way choreography.
near-disaster barrels past,
a roaring eighteen wheeler,
a wake-up call to watch the road.
the monotony of tail-lights,
winding out before my eyes,
takes most of the steering out of my hands,
and I follow the traffic,
go with the flow.
the car behind me, headlights glaring off the mirror,
is trying to get around me,
so I pull over a bit and let him by.
and you, in the blue four-door,
with out-of-state-plates,
are driving beside me for hours,
until I wonder if we have the same destination.
then green signs, and seconds later an exit ramp,
and we go our separate ways,
driving through the night.

Friend

Bits of paper cling to a notebook's spine
Confessions to be pulled out of my soul
I need firm hands to tear them all away
and ears to listen as my words spill out
The job is messy, quite undignified
and yet rewarding when the task is done
Fragile, weak, small without my paper bits
you kindly help me take them to the trash

By Very Small Means

A drip, a drop,
Percolate, plop,
Pooling, puddling,
Flowing, flooding,
Torrent tearing,
Eroding, wearing,
Gully grinding,
Chasm winding,
Until is seen from outer space
A Grand Canyon on the planet's face.
And so this thought:
It happened drop by drop.

A poem I heard yesterday

There is so much good in the worst of us
And so much bad in the best of us
That it ill behooves any of us
To talk about the rest of us