What is life, unless
it seeks happiness
and the sweet caress
of contentment?
What good is one’s strain
in harness, kept chained?
Is what we each gain
self-evident?
What else is out there
past temporal cares,
waiting unaware
our finding?
How long will it wait,
our ebullient fate?
Will its revealed state
be blinding?
Just how will we know,
in that diffuse glow,
the truth and what’s so
from lying?
Suppose in the end,
that all life depends
on what we pretend
is dying?
15 FEB 2017
Posted in Poems
Tagged #BookofForms, cyhydedd hir, death, goodness, life, perception, poetic forms, time, Welse verse forms
So what is beauty, really?
As a requisite to love
it seems far too subjective,
just some desire’s beguiling
design to snare a victim.
So what is beauty, really?
A figment caught by the eye
(or nature-made to seem thus)
to overwhelm reason’s care,
let loose the reins and run wild?
So what is beauty, really?
One sad half discovers whole,
making the universe sing
a melody so haunting
its croaking voice sounds lilting.
So what is beauty, really?
The eye knows only deceit;
the ear, a fading echo;
the mind, pale comparison;
the heart, hopeful delusion.
So what is beauty, really?
A single moment’s passing,
that folds future and present
up into both shroud and veil
for wedding, and funeral.
So what is beauty, really?
The weak, finite majesty
of illusion stitched in time,
the knowing of unknowing
that is a thing in itself.
27 JAN 2017
Posted in Poems
Tagged #BookofForms, beauty, cancione, daily poems, illusion, Italian verse forms, love, poetic forms, senses, time
It’s only just a little thing;
you’ll barely see it there
along the route of the parade,
the worse for wear and tear.
Not much at all to look at,
hardly worth a second thought;
besides, how much could it be worth,
it being still un-bought?
It’s not much more than nothing;
just some dust that blurs the lens.
It knows nothing worth knowing,
and has unimportant friends.
Just blink, and you may miss it there –
a microscopic speck,
that in its sad, short time achieves
not more than you’d expect.
It’s only just a little thing,
a mere blip on the screen;
but every day is built upon
the moments in between.
26 DEC 2016
Posted in Poems
Tagged grandeur, illusion, insignificance, quanta, time, unimportance
So, on the back of ancient drooling time,
whose wrinkled brow reflects an aeon’s span,
we ride like barnacles with some great whale,
our presence raising neither pain nor care,
and taste the salty froth of cresting waves,
as if some fine repast we have prepared
with skills acquired outside the meager cave
from whence we started and will soon return.
With such impressions we interpret life
as good or bad, as great or come to nil,
and would persuade the universe to score
the outcome in our favor, by and by.
So, in the maw of endless gaping space,
whose vast and silent emptiness we fear,
we speak aloud to hear ourselves alone,
pretending there is something else to find.
2 JUN 2015
It’s not so much the time I think I’ve wasted
or even those things I have left undone
(those grand majestic dreams you hold onto,
beyond their useful life, as could have beens),
the words said I would rather had been left unsaid
and their resulting acts, not wild nor brave,
but thoughtless, more or less, and without purpose
except to further demonstrate a fool.
It’s just another year, why all the bother?
They come and come relentless end to end
without even a moment’s space between them
to catch your breath or lean a day or two.
The moon still wanes and waxes as it pleases
as we each shuffle onward to old age;
each sunset in itself is not nostalgic –
it’s only our perspective makes it so.
Another year: yet more sad days to squander,
convinced of the fatality of life,
to trade in desperation at some pawn shop
for just a fraction of what they are worth,
or worse, to hoard away in some dark cupboard,
imagining you’ll use them later on,
but on that fateful day you really need them
discovering they’re turned to dust and gone?
It’s time again to come to resolutions:
an implication we have figured out
exactly who we are and where we’re going,
the old ways neatly finished, packed in closets
like winter blankets when the weather warms,
or old acquaintances we never bother
to send a note extending our regards,
expecting them to likewise leave us be.
31 DEC 2014
“So much to do, so little time”, or so the saying goes;
as we waste both the hours and doing, pacing to and fro.
Refusing any call to act without sufficient thought,
we fine-tune the social contract – every strophe, caesurae and jot –
while life slips by in seconds grown to decades, year by year,
and what we feel needs done becomes our hobby or career,
a never-ending sidetrack from the job always at hand,
and then the moments are no more, and we can’t understand
why we have not evolved or grown in all that span of time;
and have not learned the reason of it, nor can sing its rhyme.
The meat of life, untasted; its sweet fruits left out to spoil
awaiting us at table while we spin in pointless toil,
imagining importance in such little, vapid things,
we wake up late in winter, having missed so many springs
that we can scarce remember when the world and we were green,
nor count the wasted chances and short hours in between
our hungry, mewling day of birth and stiff and meatless end
where none of what we finish matters, not to foe or friend,
but lingers uncompleted, our great lists of “yet to dos”
reduced to tattered palimpsest and left for rats to chew.
“So much to do, so little time”: the two are never swapped;
The time ends all too quickly, and the doing never stops.
The world’s pace never pauses, slows or even skips a beat,
to celebrate a victory nor acknowledge a defeat.
1 DEC 2014
Sometimes an act itself becomes enough
to satisfy one’s hunger for applause;
and what discomforts must be suffered through
become, to reach an end, at last worthwhile.
That any others witness such a feat
is gratifying, yes, but not required;
to truly find yourself is, after all,
a personal accomplishment for one.
Sometimes the moment of epiphany
can be so subtle, it is not observed
except as a strange ripple in the air
that takes away the breath for just a while.
Then, quickly as it comes, the moment’s gone;
and time, paused by the spell, continues on.
07 APR 2013
Posted in Poems
Tagged accomplishment, epiphany, NaPoWriMo, performance, self-realization, time
