Tag Archives: fantasy

Hope and Despair

How fleet of foot is dream-spun Hope;
and how Despair, her lead-shoed sister,
trips a clumsy way to fill her place!

How fair and rosy Hope’s sweet cheeks;
and how their bloom is lost to mind
as glum Despair’s sad visage fills our eyes.

How fickle, that our foolish minds
oft mark these twins we woo unequals
as we come and go through life’s wide rooms.

How quick to judge, and hurt from judgment,
paint another’s Hope, Despair;
gloat to see another’s sorrow.

How fleet of foot is our sweet Hope;
across the room, her doorway shadow
hides in double dark, Despair.

How soon the tables turn eternal –
spin, reflecting like a mirror;
Hope and Despair mere phantasms.

How we dance, by Hope enamored;
hounded by Despair, we crawl.
Constant changes make life’s music.

24 JAN 2017

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Relativity

Swirling in shadows like an almost barely there
hint of suggestion, reach to touch it if you dare.
Constants in motion all at once, they’re everywhere.
Nothing for granted, but you really just don’t care.

Used to be’s, fantasies,
lost in the whirlwind
where you find that you are free.
Come with me, and you’ll see
if you know anything
of relativity.

Moving ever onward, invitation to the dance;
join in with the rhythm if you only take a chance.
Nonstop celebration, all directions all the time;
never really knowing where to stop and draw the line.

Caution signs, never mind,
caught in a windstorm
where you learn what is to be.
Come with me, and you’ll see
if you know anything
of relativity.

13 JAN 2015

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To be in Kansas, nevermore

Some things exist beyond belief:
one might say angels, gods and such,
the perfect crime, the honest man,
safe diet pills, clean nuclear bombs;

while others, cynics to be sure,
add divine guidance, royal blood,
a true religion, rightful kings,
some kind of destiny, and fate.

For me, the things most hard to grasp
most others build foundations by;
I wonder how to justify
destroying in religion’s name,

exacting vengeance on a child,
enforcing segregated proms,
and with such blind and hateful rage
to claim your way a path of peace.

Why not let live, and try the same,
and when you click your heels, return
to Kansas, where you might just find
the winged monkeys you wish for.

06 APR 2013

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Each moment is a threshold

Each moment is a threshold
hinged upon an ancient door;
we swing between two rooms:
the future, and what’s come before.

Experience, the lubricant
that smooths the rust and squeaks,
we start to use, and learn to hoard,
before we learn to speak.

One room is full of fantasy,
the other, hardened fact;
and though we glimpse both in the frame,
one isn’t coming back.

Each motion scrapes the floorboards clean
of dust from either side,
and pushes it before us.
One day, we choose to decide

which room is where we want to live,
to dwell on history,
or venture into the unknown
and forge a destiny.

We spend our time, hung on this door,
our focus one small arc
that gives us merely glimpses of
what’s out there in the dark:

for one, what holds the doorframe still,
what force compels these walls
to stand erect our entire lives,
while all around us falls?

And what if we should swing too hard,
as if it were a game
to make the quickest, loudest swing?
Is the oak door to blame

if loosened from its hinges,
it should let us hurl beyond
the simple, repetitious arc
we’ve come to depend on?

22 JUN 2005

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A Different Mirror

I was raised on tales of princes, kings and dragon’s hordes;
the books they filled engulfed my world with sights
that to this day affect me deeply. I can hear the swords
(both those of plastic from my youth, and others forged of steel)
that came to clash against their foes each night,
caring more for the price worth paying than what they could afford.
King Arthur, the Green Knight, Quixote, seemed alive and real.

I think that each young man envisions serving some great king
whose cause is noble, pure and just, and worth our life itself.
We seek out those champions, imagining them different from ourselves,
yet sensing that the circumstance of birth, and station can
reveal the king to be a pauper, or make knight of common man.

We claim our independence, fiercely, so quick to deny
such foolish fancies, the great need that does not die inside
but with the years grows stronger, and makes us resort to lies
like “‘that dream world exists no more” or “we’ve advanced beyond
the childlike wish for guidance from some other’s regal hand.”

But it still remains, that longing; and the lucky ones may find
that all that separates us from that goal is our own grown-up minds.

I wonder, thinking on the legends woven in my past
exactly when, say, Arthur, knew how his die had been cast
and sloughed away his peasant’s garb, and found a sword at hand;
how long did he lay wondering, at night, dream-tossed and damned
to live a life that was not his, a pretense biding time
before the dreams that filled his head solidified in flesh?

I’ve often looked in mirrors, noting something in my eyes;
a smoke from a far distant fire that waits, unseen, disguised,
at other times, when I bewail the state of my affairs.
I wonder, who is it, exactly, who looks back from there.

The truth behind these tales is plain:
for those who think of themselves as kings
from birth, are not the regents who
live on in legends, past their deaths.

‘Tis only those who say, “not me”
and would deny their fates,
who step beyond their possibilities,
that are remembered, great.

For chivalry gives no great honor
measured out in gold;
It teaches when to let go,
what to grasp, and how to hold.

15 JUN 2004

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