Not Right: a cinquain
A bit
of sound advice:
if you believe a thing
to be the truth, don’t keep it out
of sight.
For truth
can’t stand the dark.
It pines if locked up tight,
and sometimes will grow sick and die,
or fade
away;
and then, you’ve got
mere memory and dust.
How sad! That your foundation stone
should end
like that.
It’s truth, by god,
piece of eternity,
and you’ve just left it there to die.
Not right.
29 APR 2011
04.28.11
Wounded to the Core: Chaucerian stanzas
If you would comprehend the world at all,
imagine this: a place so pure and wild
it knows just spring, not summer yet, or fall.
Like a capricious, spoiled and errant child
it knows not between sacred and defiled,
but treats all things with equal joy and lust
until their centers start to rust.
Once wounded, everything betrays its core;
the earth, no different from a broken limb
that was fed by the tree, but is no more.
Inside the wound, there is no chance or whim;
just living and then death, which is not grim,
but time to put one book back on the shelf
and start another version of one’s self.
28 APR 2011
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Against the entropy of time
Against the entropy of time, no wall
is strong enough to stand and remain whole.
Though guaranteed a lifetime, it will fall,
reduced to dust and rubble; and the knoll
which it divides will also wear away,
in its old age succumb to wind and rain.
What seems a solid edifice today,
tomorrow is reduced to a sand grain.
Great mountains, bold ideas — all degrade;
each second’s thimbleful deepens their graves,
and every hour reduces their acclaim.
Despite what grand advances have been made.
time serves no kings, nor pities fools or slaves,
and treats beast, man and god the very same.
09 JUN 2005
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Entropy
The walls may rot, collapse, be crushed or fall,
but new dimensions are formed at each fold;
while these temporal illusions may pall,
our grasp will always far exceed our hold.
Brick and bone and flesh may turn to dust,
but from such chaff arises life anew;
the oxidizing properties of rust
serve to remind us payment must come due.
But is that molecule of payment lost?
Or does it simply seek another form?
Why mourn a thing that truly never dies,
but trusting evolution, pays the cost?
A tree that burns to ash, to keep us warm,
transfers energy to another guise.
19 DEC 2002
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