The new poets

Employ not rhyme

And barely discernible rhythms.

 

They tell it like it is

Sometimes, only sometimes

Truth flares

Like hydrogen light.

 

The new poets sling

Deadly arrows

Straight to the bull’s eye.

When more relaxed,

They paint canvases of dark, light

With colors hot, bold or both.

 

Through intellectual concepts

They lead our thoughts

Bring insight

That can break a heart

Or twist a stomach in horror.

 

In language plain or rare

As the case may be

Through intellectual concepts

They lead our thought along

Perception’s path

Draw us with them

Into new realms

Expand experience.

Is that not enough?

 

But where is the music?

No one to take note

Of your passing

 

It was a gentle wind

Striking softly at the window

As throwing

Handsful of marshmallows

Wind-gusted

We wandered

In frozen gardens

 

Winter trees

Ice-crystalled

And silvered

Dazzled beneath

The chill moon’s

Eerie heaven

 

Smiling faces

Candlelit and firelit

Eyes beaming

With happiness

But it came time

To say farewell

 

We went off

Into the wind-gusted

Twilight newly-wed

And fragile

As blown glass

I remember a dream

of sunlight melting

into twilight shadows

at the hacienda door

 

Then, the sudden strum

of guitars,

the whirl and swirl

of fanciful dance,

a rhythmic drumming

clip of heels on stone,

high light laughter

and flash of white teeth

a-gleam as stars floated down

 

And I remember awakening

to a slow, hazy shimmer

of rainbow dawn

and the misting, fading pulse

of a strange and wonder-filled dream

Fragrance and color

Enchanting through the day

Each hour

Of roses, roses

With the unlikely names

Of sterling silver

And Eiffel tower.

Arnheim, a perfect reality

A fairy-train that moved us

Beyond mountains

And sleeping hurricanes

And memory takes us backward

On the path to our last wild mountains

And sleeping hurricanes.

He fled

The bounds mundane of Earth

To follow lustrous stars

October nights

Strange and wild

And roamed in Arnheim

It’s always hard to

Say farewell

Especially to one who’s

Done so well

A president par excellance

Is our own

Who’s done so much

Far more than this pen

Could tell

 

 

Someday

Oh, someday

On that wonderful

Dreamed-of someday

 

The children of the world

Who now

Hunger and cry against the cold

Will know the feasting board

The warm hearth’s glow

 

The whole world needs Christmas

 

 

The crystal rainbow

Shatters into glass raindrops

Sending showers

Of iridescence