My time here is just a glimmer

Watch the sky at night and see
the nothing we will come to be
when at last we all are free
to enjoy eternity.

Count the value of a word
nothing else is so absurd
forgotten soon as it is heard

only friendship
is worth the trip

be with me

January 7

Now the Christmas rush is ended
past the business season's peak,
Orthodox joined in devotion
celebrate a later week.

Then without commercial frenzy,
no distraction from The Word:
peace on Earth, mankind's salvation,
Christ is born is all that's heard.

Close Encounters of the Hallucenogenic Kind

Whistling dizzily overhead,
the saucer spins, I leap from bed,
the little green men float eerily,
I watch them waving, wearily.

It's always the same, they seem to say,
we're glad we came to Earth today;
but, don't you wonder, won't they stay?
They drift and tilt and go away.

It's always the same, they never speak:
I never hear a peep or a squeak.
Quietly staring, whatever they seek,
their alien eyes are always bleak.

It's always the same, I seem to dream,
like smoke that gleams in a fading beam,
their eyes aglow, like wisps of steam,
and time goes by like a stagnant stream.

Whistling languidly, singing goodbye,
I wish you a pleasant trip, I cry.
The little green men float eerily,
I watch them waving, wearily.

* ****** **** ******* *

saucers spinning overhead
draw me from a troubled bed

tossing turning aching dreaming
listen to the aliens screaming

see them fly above the town
get your rifle shoot them down

One more time, my hot little lizard

I never saw a purple cow
boogy with a lizard
but I could boogy down with you
and melt the coldest blizzard.

Country is as country does
and that's why God made honky-tonks.
They may be loud but the beer is cheap
and they're friendlier than policy wonks.

It's a new world, whatever that means.

So let's step out and cut a rug
and don't let voting bug ya,
it's time to party till the dawn,
and when we leave and say goodbye,
before I go, I'll hug ya.

Good night, Lizzie.

Save the last dance for me.

Dancing in the sand,
we leave an ephemeral trace;
then the wind blows our footprints away,
as if we never came to this place.

But those with whom we danced
will never forget their delight,
and when the day is ended,
will dance away the night.

On MYKU World

for volchin & his friends

True in what I write to you
despite distractions in the night,
the fears that rise behind my eyes,

I love to read your words,
surprising me with joy of life,
confronting all the world's confounding strife


Alone in the dark
I look down on a burning planet.
Points of light that horrify a mind inclined to feel,

that now must reel to see
destruction fueled by power
better meant to build and grow

(earth at night)

But what do any of us know
when faced with this great age,
when human minds reshape the Earth

and space itself is bent to show us scenes
before our birth
beyond our death
beyond our depth.

Our refuge lies
within the eyes
of each we meet,

friend,
or stranger on the street:

as Auden cried,
We must love one another or die.

Modern Love

Nellmezzo

There is a distance which I cannot reach across.
Your words reach me distorted by time
and shapes and garments,
the Palestinian breeze,
have more meaning that the careening
words that crash on Galilee's shore: What did he mean by that?

Why did he choose those words?
that ring so harshly in a cooler clime,
past millennia of time,
as if they could not have changed their meaning
by the time they reach me?

On this distant shore, undreamt by those more present,
only the sense remains; assumptions washed away
by the moving time,
just the bare words remain,
and some of them misleading.

And yet that sense seems to contain
seamless robes, the glance of a dark eye,
a supple body moving down a road with
one backward glance that is made just for me:

As if you had the time and strength to turn back once each millennium
for each of the creatures that follow you, gasping –
and yet they say you do,
and I seem to see you down that road,
turning once for me, and I am not so great a fool
that I would not say "Yes," and grab for your hand once
and never let go.

Urban Poet

There is no time or distance between us and what we love
whose every true expression is the same below among us as above

Whatever we remember of those days in Galilee is constantly repeated
which is why we still are free: select your path and choose your faith, or not

But God will still be waiting at the end
to laugh at us whatever we pretend
as if we couldn't know He always was our friend.

* ****** **** ****** *

It isn't always easy to be living in two worlds

To watch the groundhogs chewing on the grass
and doves aloft, wings flickering as they pass

We battle petty sins for the sake of truth and money
and forget the six days of the week are the same as every Sunday

To intermix the sacred and profane
to raise ourselves up instead of casting blame

You never have to drop it all to run and clasp His hand
just wave hello as He walks by each day. He'll understand.

whimpering softly

softly the old wolf whimpers as he dreams
vaguely remembering hunting long ago
racing over hillsides, splashing through the streams
running in the rain, plunging into snow

seizing prey in triumph as he hears their screams
never fighting nature, going with the flow

life no longer what it was, nothing left but dreams.

Woodland Lake

the sky above
the trees below
the lake before them all

ignore the cars on roads just out of sight
and all this looks like earth before the fall

with grace the waterbirds arrive as fleets of them deploy to feed
ducks dabble as swans cruise by and geese glide beside every reed

Double Dactyls

Higgledy-piggledy,
palaeontology
studies the ancient life
science has found.

Nothing they find for us
most unsurprisingly,
still lives and breathes, because
it's underground.

* ****** **** ****** *

Higgledy-piggledy,
parasaurolophus
carried a slide trombone
up on his head.

I would invite him to
play on it now for you
but the poor dino is
so very dead.

After hours

After hours,
close the store,
kill the lights,
lock the door.

The walls and floors all come alive
as mice and rats and roaches thrive,
hunting for a midnight snack,
knowing no one's coming back.

Running over shelf and table,
as only tiny feet are able,
sink and counter marked with tracks
as they leap from bakery racks.

In the morning, not a trace
of vermin all around the place.

The sun will also rise

The sun will also rise
If we're not here to see it;
What's precious in our eyes
Is not what makes it be it.

Solipsist introversion
Is sophistry most cruel,
Unnatural perversion
Of nature's Golden Rule:

We must cooperate, and compete,
Take what we need, and share;
And if we take more than we need,
When we need it, it won't be there.