How does this thing work,
living without much thinking
outside your own box?
What a little world
that makes the whole of your life,
with just your own mess.
How does that make sense,
with so much beauty outside,
just past your front door?
What a sad living
you make, trapped with just yourself
and no sense of loss.
02 Jul 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a CommentYou can twist and turn them round
and then pretend they are profound,
but words are just like prison bars
constructing cages out of sound
we carry with us, though we are
fine specks of dust from the small stars
flung out and free in space and time.
We dare not travel quite that far.
We seek the edges, so we climb
until no longer in our prime,
and then, collapse back into sleep,
almost like death, but more sublime.
We use our words to laugh and weep,
and waste them, thinking they are cheap.
By this illusion we are bound,
just echoes in a boundless deep.
27 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a CommentWhat would become of me without ambition,
a driving force to make some kind of mark,
to cast my feeble light out in the dark
and so improve my overall condition?
To otherwise behave suggests perdition,
a life led without purpose or benchmark.
What would become of me?
If I accomplish nothing, what derision
will others heap upon my useless mission,
assuming I’m a bum lost in the park,
my fortune come to nil and prospects stark?
What would become of me?
26 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a CommentWe’re out of time,
past the hour when clocks expire.
We’re out of time,
beyond this moment’s final chime.
We can exist, if we desire,
right now – and never age or tire.
We’re out of time.
We’re out of time.
When the last flame has left the fire
we’re out of time.
In desperation, on we climb,
the dreams to which our hearts aspire
still waiting, listening to that liar:
we’re out of time.
We’re out of time,
past all that counting, muck and mire.
We’re out of time,
Where all the world exists in rhyme
and we can join in with the choir,
with nothing left us to acquire:
we’re out of time.
26 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a CommentThe world’s become a ghastly mess,
and we have just ourselves to blame.
What good is keeping score? The game
we’re playing, who can guess?
There’s no use wailing in distress,
or pointing fingers. What a shame
the world’s become a ghastly mess,
and we have just ourselves to blame.
If we were honest, we’d confess
our guilt in making things so lame.
We hate the rich, but want the same,
no matter who must live with less.
The world’s become a ghastly mess,
and we have just ourselves to blame.
25 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a CommentThe means you use always define the end.
If that end is not beautiful, you know
somewhere beyond the last, most recent bend,
your principles dissolved into mere show,
that sense of purpose lost in “let’s pretend”
where only ambiguity can grow.
The means you use always define the end.
If that end is not beautiful, you know.
There is no point in trying to defend
that act that gave your truth a fatal blow,
the consequence you swore to not intend.
Once you are caught up in the undertow,
the means you use always define the end.
If that end is not beautiful, you know.
25 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Leave a Comment