Monthly Archives: February 2017

No Time Like Today: dithyramb

Oh, come and get your revel on:
    laissez bon temps roulez!
Catch this moment before it’s gone,
’til sorrow’s back to dwell upon.
Parade and dance across the lawn!
    There’s no time like today!

Imagine yourself some great chief:
    laissez bon temps roulez!
Buy drinks all ’round, and find relief
in an illusion, sweet and brief,
that none are high and none beneath;
    there’s no time like today!

Life is a party through midnight:
    laissez bon temps roulez!
Forget the daily fuss and fight,
the might that makes injustice right,
sweep that foul dust up out of sight.
    There’s no time like today!

Come on, then, raise your cup and cheer:
    laissez bon temps roulez!
The time is only now and here,
slowed with the help of wine and beer.
Tomorrow we may disappear;
    there’s no time like today!

Come revelers, and dance and sing
    laissez bon temps roulez!
Who cares what sad tomorrow brings,
when we return to baser things;
let loose the fiddle and harp strings!
    There’s no time like today!

Oh, come out to the Mardi Gras;
    laissez bon temps roulez!
Let winter’s frost begin to thaw;
throw off your worry’s tooth and claw,
and just for now, think life a draw.
    There’s no time like today!

28 FEB 2017

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Glory Evermore: dirge

With slow and silent steps it comes
encroaching on the day,
the shadow of the night that grows
to fill the world with gray.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

War on its march to midnight turns
our grays to darkest black
as on a path to nothingness
it leads us ever back.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

Replace all love with mindless fear,
and on that slippery slope
disguise all lies as honesty
and destroy morning’s hope.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

Hear now the muffled sound of drums,
come through the morning mist,
its slow parade of death designed
to fool those who resist:
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

Come, make believe that victory
through violence makes for right,
that wealth creates nobility,
who pay others to fight.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

Believe that those who sign the orders
seek a better way,
that those who hold the rifles
will all see the light of day.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

War does not make a difference,
with its patriotic zeal;
or make the steam that blows the whistle
ever turn the wheel.
Oh, come and join the battle, child,
for glory evermore.

27 FEB 2017

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Cut the Crap: descort

You seek for “truth”:
for the origin of being,
the thing in itself,
but either don’t look hard
enough,
or waste time looking
in the wrong spot.

It’s right here:
the meaning is no recipe,
it is not the history of a dish
to be rehashed at leisure
to impress special friends.

What a double-edged sword
is imagination!

The way you classify a thing
in theory doesn’t change its lifestyle;
it makes no difference,
one way or the other,
what you choose to call it
when you think it’s out of the room.

To imagine that a thing exists
because we think of it,
and blinks away to nothingness
once it slips our minds
imposes a two-dimensional framework
on the world
wherein our consciousness
is the only proof of life.

You see the dog on your lap.
You see the ant at your foot.

How stupid is that supposition?

24 FEB 2017

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Dawn Patrol: deibhidhe

Soon the sound that breaks the day
comes to chase our sleep away;
and the darkest dreams night grew
blink from black into lighter blue.

The world, barely recognized
through half-open, hazy eyes,
wakes slow with us, its warm glow
buried below the pillows.

Arise again and don your shield,
the ancient weapons you wield
against the dumb drones that come
reeking of rum and humdrum.

Be conscious now! You must choose.
Do not linger, or you lose
this moment’s span; if you can
still stand, battle is at hand.

Until the sound that stills the day
comes quietly to end the fray,
fight on fearless, king or pawn,
at every dawn, until you’re gone.

23 FEB 2017

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The New Idea: cywydd llosgyrnoch

A new idea finds the mind
and digs itself a home behind
what it finds still living there,
rewiring lights and such to suit,
requiring sometimes a reboot.
Then it takes root, without care

for walls and beams it wrests aside,
for contents lost when seams collide.
It takes great pride in breaking
the models of forgotten thought,
old lesson plans no longer taught,
like recipes not worth making.

And in that space it will expand,
imagining the world it plans
not build on sand, but on stone;
its buttresses unshakeable,
its hold on us, unbreakable,
its taproot makes a great throne.

But that illusion cannot last;
in birth, idea’s death is cast.
How fast new seeds demand light
and will destroy without regret
the noble root, and will upset
tradition’s sense of what is right.

And so the tragic, fragile mind
consists of what is left behind
and what is blind and just made.
There, in that pause between the sigh
of death and birth’s great squall and cry,
none deny they are afraid.

22 FEB 2017

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The Subtle Taste: cywydd deuair fyrion

What use worry
with its hurry –
finding danger
in fate’s finger,

and with fear’s gloss
opting for loss
instead of bliss?
Why choose to miss

life’s subtle tastes?
What a sad waste –
seeing devils
in time’s revels,

and in life, care,
not for what’s there
but hidden threats,
not happened yets;

with only death
chasing each breath,
filling days out
with crippling doubt.

21 FEB 2017

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Shape the Now: cyrch a chwta

It’s yesterday we cling to,
that we prefer to what’s new,
choosing safety, not what’s true:
life goes on, us with it too.
It has no rules; memories do,
and don’t shift the world and skew
the facts used to shape the Now,
which somehow is left to you.

17 FEB 2017

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