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Tag: sonnet

Cassandra’s Rejoinder

Published on April 3, 2025

What will we do? How will we carry on
when all around us hate and anger rage
and nothing seems to matter ’til it’s gone?
Who will we be here on the empty stage?

Where will we find the strength and will to fight
as enemies just multiply and grow?
Do our eyes dim, or is there just less light
by which to gather up I told you so’s?

Against such hopelessness what good are fists
except in vain pretense to preen and pose,
and then when danger actually exists
to hide away from any errant blows?

Let our illusions fall away and die,
lest we succumb and they alone survive.

03 APR 2025

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Imagine What

Published on December 7, 2024

Imagine what the world looks like right now: a mass illusion wrapped up in a dream. There are no other lands or hidden gods, nor unconnected causes or effects.

What would you change or wish you could improve, in just this moment while you have the chance? Before you take a breath, your time is done. Before a single step, there’s no more dance.

Imagine this: reality goes on, beyond the small abstractions of your mind. The moving finger finds the waning moon, but cannot simply grasp it in the sky.

What will you do to change the world you see, brave champion of just the truth you know?

07 DEC 2024

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So Many Words

Published on December 3, 2024

So many words for such a thing so small
it barely leaves a ripple at the shore,
and all its no-so-grand comings and goings
are little noticed after, or before.

So brief an episode is this thing life:
a moment’s breath in an eternal now
that being full, is emptiness itself,
containing neither what nor who nor how.

What good is such a nothing span of time?
What works can be accomplished end to end?
Alone, it has no substance to speak of;
it makes no mark to show that it has been.

And yet without it all we have is words;
just rocks that never grow to become birds.

03 DEC 2024

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More Pretend

Published on July 29, 2024

You choose a place and time to take a stand,
although you realize, to some degree
that at the moment you first make said plan,
it’s already missed opportunity.

You take a breath and calculate the cost
with all the tools at hand, with all your skill;
the balance between what is won or lost,
the trade-off between wanting and your will.

What is this mad charade of pick and choose,
that interrupts just being here and now,
and in the end, is just yesterday’s news,
the dust of what some fantasy allows?

It’s all the same, beginning and the end;
fight, flight, and freeze are only more pretend.

29 JUL 2024

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Prajnaparamita

Published on June 25, 2024

With what great faculty would you describe
a something that is nothing in itself –
an emptiness that does not rise or fall,
but is and isn’t, both, at the same time,

and lights, but doesn’t land, adrift in time
(which is not quite a ribbon, nor a wheel),
a thought that thinking has no way to grasp
or shape into a solid universe.

Beyond, beyond, beyond what is beyond;
if you can see it, do not trust your eyes.

25 JUN 2024

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The Undertone: terza rima

Published on June 2, 2017

Underneath the skin, a single notion
supports how life unfolds from start to end.
Beneath the bustle of the world’s commotion,

it floats in just a whisper on the wind.
In quiet moments, it can be detected,
first here, then there, and then it’s gone again.

This song speaks to the lonely and infected,
the disenfranchised and the left behind.
To listen is feel far less neglected,

to find relief to ease a troubled mind;
and in the falling darkness, light a candle
that saves the world from stumbling on, blind.

If you sit still and listen, you will hear
a music that transcends both hate and fear.

02 JUN 2017

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The Notion of Privacy: Spenserian sonnet

Published on June 2, 2017

A private notion turns to public act
when it is witnessed by someone outside
your circle; once unloosed, it won’t come back.
These days, it quickly wends its way world-wide.

Your signal will of course be amplified;
within a moment’s span, your words extend
forever – an opinion, glorified
no matter whether real or let’s pretend.

A single line of text can make a friend,
or spawn a heartless legion filled with hate;
and no apology nor logic can defend
your thoughts, undo your speech. Too late,

expression, like an arrow through the air,
seeks out its target and is buried there.

02 JUN 2017

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