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Category: Lines

Poetry, including verse and song lyrics.

Good Morning: gloss (glosa)

Published on June 2, 2025

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning – Carl Sandburg

You say you’re woke because your eyes
are open and you’re out of bed,
and yet describing what you see, you fail
to see yourself and choose instead
to catalog the failings of the world
that won’t conform to how you feel
and what you really want to see,
since reality has no appeal.

Your eyes are open, but you’re blind;
the world is what it’s always been.
It spins around each morning
and repeats itself, again.

You wonder why so few around
seem to believe your point of view,
without the benefit of your insight
or the mirror looking back at you.

You say, “Wake up!” to those who sleep,
“and smell the coffee’s sweet perfume,”
but disregard the fact that some
see more than just your tiny room
where stranger creatures come and go
to satisfy your cravings,
and make the world a better place
and something good worth saving.

02 JUN 2025

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Nothing Left to Lose: ghazal

Published on June 2, 2025

When you first discover love, you find something to lose;
not quite yourself, a place apart that you’re afraid to lose.

But then you realize that time itself is meaningless and small,
an artificial sense of space too infinite to lose.

Inside each single moment, in that space between your breaths,
exists an entire universe where we find what we lose.

There is no separation between you and your beloved;
illusions of both time and space become just tools you lose.

And as the lines evaporate, observer and observed
become an integrated, simple thing with nothing left to lose.

02 Jun 2025

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Nothing Matters: free verse

Published on May 31, 2025

If nothing is a thing at all
then nothing comes from something;
that’s logic if you presuppose
that something there is that doesn’t
love the void:
that a thing that is cannot become
if there’s no seed or spark or speck
from which it comes to being.
It could be some eternal mind,
a divine will, or cosmic dust;
the truth is, it is just unseen
by those who claim to know the truth,
or lack enough creative juice
to see beyond what they can see.

The sages from the east propose
that it’s all in the mind.
Perhaps, that’s well enough to pass some tests
but has its own illusions.

A thing that can escape the mind?
How could we even guess it’s there?
The way things work, and intertwine,
the madness in the universe
in which we see some super-mind,
where do such notions grow and thrive,
except in our imaginations?

If a thing is nothing much,
then what is something after all?
There’s so much chaos, anyway,
unless you’re looking at the whole;
then the observer and observed
become just one united field.

If you and I could see the truth,
what good is that, if you and I
cannot imagine something else
that might contain us both?

31 MAY 2025

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No One Writes Letters: epistle

Published on May 30, 2025

Dear reader: do you wonder what
the point may be in all of this?
Why do we bother keeping track
of who said what to whom and such?

On an entire stretch of sandy beach
we seek a single special grain,
imagining some magic quest
in which we play the hero’s role.

All the while, the soundtrack seems
to telegraph our every thought;
instead of showing what we feel,
we let the song push us along.

And in the end, what’s the use?
We focus on the world outside,
where what we do makes little mark
and when we leave, won’t miss us.

I’m writing you, because it seems
the sanest way to pass the time,
and share the world, our hopes and dreams.
You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.

So now, farewell, at least for now.
We’ll muddle through this mess, somehow.
So long as you and I both care,
there’s still a chance we’ll get somewhere.

30 May 2025

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Travel Plans: englyn unodl union

Published on May 29, 2025

In retrospect, I should have known:
if the world changes, you have grown. Doesn’t mean
it’s all neat and clean. You’re shown
maybe a thing or two, alone.

You have a choice. Choose to care.
It matters how you get there; the end
depends on it. So beware:
life’s not a solo affair.

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The Whole Point: englyn unodle crwca

Published on May 29, 2025

What’s the point of anything?
Who knows what tomorrow brings?
Can anyone who sings such sad songs
not feel wrong when it’s spring?

Where are we going to get?
Who knows? We seem to forget
what really matters, and just let pure hate
dictate our whole mindset.

28 May 2025

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The Minute Waltz: englyn proest gadwynog

Published on May 27, 2025

In just a minute’s brief span
the world is made and unmade.
Try as you may, no one can
restore colors once they fade,

nor take back a piece once played.
There is no time but right now;
all the rest is lost in shade,
turned underneath new farrows.

You can choose to grow or die –
to sink a root or wither;
at least you think you decide,
while doing both or either.

27 May 2025

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