Dalloway

She was the kiss of flowers,
and one morning she vanished.
A charming woman one loves in triumph,
and loving extravagantly, would spread open:
tears and sorrows; courage and endurance.
Pleased for this body, and being
loved in the earthly garden.

Sweet smell. Descend to the dignity
of writing her exquisite beauty.
"Go mad. Rather you were dead.
'Fear no more, says the heart,
committing its burden to the sea.'"

Smashed to atoms, the solitary traveler speaks:
"May I never go back to the lamplight;
to the sitting room; never finish my book."

ee um fah um so...
"For there she was."



(Words and/or phrases taken in order from the pages of the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf as an expression of the book as well as of a recent love.)

Gold Leaving (After Frost)

Nature's last gold is fire,
Her shortest worn attire.

Her dying leaf's a phoenix,
A falling, flaming helix.

Yet Autumn leads to Spring,
As every dying thing,

Pursuing chance rebirth,
Must give itself to earth.




(In conversation with Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" utilizing the same format.)

Only We

Envy the stones,
So silent and strong.
Be jealous of streams:
They cannot take wrong
Windings, like you and I.

The sky is the sky.
The birds soar with song.
They've no need for dreams.
Only we don't belong -
And long for our homes.

Romeo, O Romeo

Virile, slime-backed bull of tropic palms,
Prurient passions rising to your throat,
 Ange Adorable asks holy alms,
Demands no quiver in her lover's croak.

She understands her perfume, peril scent
Fires a feud between your loins of rage,
And tadpole instincts pilgrims must repent
To duel the shrieking Frenchman of the cave.

He listens for a lovesong filled with lust,
Indulging in the Sun's insistent taste
For plumper, braver grenouille to suck.
Still, cramming your heroic lungs in haste,

And climbing to her moonlit canopy,
You blast your Aria 'neath her balcony.



This sonnet was written based on the description of the frog Physalaemus in Central America by Diane Ackerman in her beautiful book "The Natural History of the Senses". There should be accent marks on Ange Adorable and grenouille. Ange Adorable is the aria from the balcony scene in the opera Romeo and Juliet.
The "shrieking Frenchman" is the bat that preys upon this frog. As the French eat frogs, and Paris is Romeo's rival, I borrowed this image for the sonnet. The form is a Shakespearean sonnet, for what else should it be?

Aurora, CO Theater Shooting (July 20, 2012)

Dark Knight

The night falls and The Knight Rises.
 In the Dark, the theater screen
Draws a Gothic play of crisis
 Where all that's Comic leaves the scene.
Smoke and bullets. Madness. Mayhem.
 Megaplex of camera plays
Transforms into Dark Asylum,
 Arkham, Riddled with the sprays

Of shotgun shells and rifle rounds,
The screams of panicked patrons down,
And one, mad Joker on the grounds:
"Why so serious? Why the frown?"
The Ledger tallies up the Score.
The puerile madman goes to jail.
The victims see the Knight no more,
And explanations can't but fail.

The gunman but an ungrown boy,
Whose world is tragic fantasy:
A paltry fool we'll now destroy.
Real Jokers, rightly, don't go free.
The dignity of human life,
The love of life, of all for all,
Are they passing in this night
Where the Code of Knights meets gall?



One reader of this poem believed I was aggrandizing the gunman in this poem by making him into just what he wished to be - the Joker. I cannot see how my descriptions of him as mad, puerile, ungrown boy, paltry fool and an enemy of all that is good can be interpreted this way.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Run the good race on Patriot's Day,
It is Spring, and the bare branches blossom.
Near the ribbon's rest, a harvest bray,
And the bare limbs fall in Boston.

No lantern lit in the North Church Tower
To warn Red was coming by land.
No cover of night for the violent hour -
For the bloody work, vilely planned.

"Sweet April!" sadly turned to Autumn,
"Life's golden fruit is shed."
But Patriot's yet run in Boston,
Unlike cowards with bombs, who have fled.

Poem written April 15, 2013, published in Loaves and Fishes, available through bookstorexlibris.com , Amazon.com and bn.com

Clerihews

Clerihews are short poems of four lines, usually describing a famous person. G.K Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc contributed their share of these and popularized them. Thus, I begin with them.



G. K. Chesterton
The paradoxic ton.
He'd twist all nonsense right side out
Until its Truth could walk about.

His name- Hillaire Belloc
A gent of that recent epoch
When essayists wrote children's verse,
Yet the Servile State continued worse.

One way in which I grew is
By reading C. S. Lewis
And wondering as he made me see
The reasons Aslan died for me.

Charles Dickens
Only sickens
Empty-hearted, greedy geezers
In need of Eves like Ebenezer's.

A sailor, Captain Ahab,
Madly obsessed, he may have
Cried a tear in The Symphony
To lessen Melville's agony.

Homer J. Simpson
A jaundiced depiction
Of how so much male adolescence remains
In a land which the art of true manhood disdains.

Christopher Hitchens
A man on a mission
Of showing that God is not great
Thus denying the Truth out of hate

G. B. Shaw,
Thy great flaw,
Born of good intention,
Must surely be forgiven.

Charlie Rose,
The man who knows
Why Arthur's fable
Had a round table.

Martin Luther King
How his voice did ring
O'er hamlet and hill
Blessed dream to fulfill

Silly Dr. Seuss
Had the zaniest muse
Who perhaps was a Who!
Have you heard them too?