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Tag: ballade supreme

Musical Chairs: ballade supreme

Published on April 18, 2025

The road is long and runs for miles
between two fields on either side:
one, sown with soybeans in long files,
the other, fallow, flat, and wide.
Each season, nature must decide
which one will yield the greater crop;
while neither seeks to be on top
it’s still a competition:
year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

In houses, breaking up the wild,
a battle likewise coincides:
between a parent and their child,
the old ways and the new collide.
Somewhere between desire and pride,
in discount stores and online shops
the world of criminals and cops
leads all to some perdition:
year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

In some gray building, facts are filed:
loans pre-approved, requests denied,
and reputations are defiled
to shore up this or that divide.
Morality’s a slippery slide,
religion just a mop.
You’re one chair short; the music stops
and weakens your position.
Year after year, it never stops;
such is this life’s condition.

You work for years until you drop,
as fodder for the ones on top
who just want your submission.
Year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

17 APR 2025

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Not My Fate: a ballade supreme

Published on November 13, 2010

They say that love will break your heart,
that trouble waits along the way,
discouraging those at the start
to risk or even try to play;
so many rise and greet the day
expecting nothing good or kind,
and thus, not seeking, never find
the reasons why a life goes by
in come and go, in came and went:
alone we live, alone we die.

They say the race goes to the smart,
that muscled effort is no way
to push or pull the heavy cart
that is a life’s work, day to day.
And the result? So many stay
so far inside a life of mind,
with limbs grown weak, with eyes gone blind;
Why would one even try to fly,
with wasted wings, worn out and bent?
Alone we live, alone we die.

They say that each must learn their part:
that everyone’s a part to play;
a chosen few are called high art –
the rest mere chorus, or display,
with narrow range, a single way
to move and speak their meager lines.
How in this way can one find
their calling, or their reason why,
typecast as just a single kind,
alone we live, alone we die?

I say love suits the heart just fine,
that life is more than toil and grind.
Their bale pronouncements are a lie!
To their sad fate, I’m not consigned:
to live alone, and alone, die.

13 NOV 2010

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