Daily Archives: October 18, 2005

Untitled: an amphigory

She flung away rapscallion locks,
two dozen rare embroidered socks
of carded wool from royal flocks
as priceless as the chicken pox
for separating poofs from jocks
and as her jaw was full of rocks
said, “if good fortune comes, and knocks,
and would remove life’s pains and shocks,
please let it know the privvy crocks
are in sore need of dumping.”

Alack a-day, the world will spin
and at dawn start up once again;
and win or lose and come what may
you laugh or sing alack a-day

To which her stolid beau replied,
“You’ve grace and charm, that’s undenied,
but some things are beneath my pride,”
and further, as if an aside,
he whispered, soft, and slow, and snide,
“and furthermore, this eventide
I plan to stage a suicide
that will slow, if not stop, the ride,
which others methods, failed when tried,
have with good conscience been applied
so much that it’s hard to decide
which way the wind is jumping.”

Alack a-day, the wheels will roll
from dusk until the dawn patrol;
you live and learn enough to say
c’est la vie or alack a-day

18 OCT 2005

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Not Much of Everything

What is belief except a means to reach
beyond the limits safe within our grasp
to learn from the unknown what it may teach?
If in that fertile darkness, courage fails,
as well as our illusions of defense,
what is there but belief until night pales?

Can faith alone provide, as some suppose,
sufficient armor against what we fear:
a deep pervading loneliness that grows
with every hour, behind our cheerful smiles;
a nagging doubt that we are each alone;
that substance fails, and there are merely styles?

It is belief that is our mooring rock:
the tenets that we hold as true and sure,
that mark us individuals, and shock
those who either grasp at fashion’s whims,
or sip from here or there, like butterflies;
the book of life we choose to read, not skim.

But separate belief from life, and it becomes
a rigid set of chains that bind the soul,
that does not fuel, but instead starts to numb
the senses to the underlying truth:
that what we see is only a small part,
akin to how old age is known to youth:

A lantern in the dark, but not the light;
a drop of canteen water, not the spring;
a packet of dry crackers, but not grain;
a piece, not very much, of everything.

18 OCT 2005

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