up on the cliff, i see stones & sea urchins, unseen from the beach
The Long View [Haiku]
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Monthly Archives: February 2023
Master & Slave [Lyric Poem]
What will be your master,
and what will be your slave?
Will you court disaster
to be perceived as brave?
Will you call your pastor
to hide that which you crave,
or be your own ringmaster
and own how you behave?
And will you choose virtue,
or live in fear of vice?
Will you choose to be true,
or default to being nice?
And when there's much ado
will you jet their paradise?
Or just defer your view,
as act some men and mice?
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DAILY PHOTO: Palms & Tombs, Bidar
Open & Shut [Common Meter]
I pause in woods one winter day when leaves stick to the ground, and twigs and trunks stand stiff & straight - a breeze the only sound. It's a world without walls or bounds, but one can't see a mile. One's sightline is obscured by trees -- their trunks not single file. A world, at once, open & shut to eyes and ears and mind. But I've never felt so at home, for i'm no lonesome pine.
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Around the Corner [Common Meter]
Around the corner, down the street who knows just what you'll find. I often head on down that way when I wish to unwind. A vendor might set up a cart, selling divine munchies, or philosophers might hold court: wannabe Socrates. Or there are those days of muggers, or when painted girls flirt, or when the somnambulist roams in sleep, sans a nightshirt. The city never lacks chaos: always something to see. Sometimes it pulls one forward; sometimes it makes one flee.
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In Homage to Leaves of Grass
You're my Analects,
my Gita,
my Dao De Jing,
my sutras,
my Meditations,
and my Republic
all rolled into one.
You are the scripture by which I live.
You present a path to that rare place:
extreme confidence
which tears no one down,
but, rather, lifts all.
You achieve this by crushing
the ordinary.
Nothing is common.
Everything is a miracle.
(Even those leaves of grass
you repeatedly reference.)
No one is so rough
or promiscuous
or simple
as to be lowly.
Your author's unbridled enthusiasm
glowed with the insane confidence
of an adolescent boy,
but his awesomeness was never gained
by subtracting from others.
Rather by seeing the bright, beautiful spark
in each body,
mind,
pair of hands,
& burdened shoulder.
You are America,
the America we want to be.
The America that labors,
but which takes time to see
its natural wonders.
The America that heard what Jesus said,
and became less excelled at stone-throwing,
and more at cheek-turning.
The America that could see beyond dogma
and hard-edged tribalism,
and could learn from all the
grand & glorious people
who reached its shores --
So that we could be the best version of ourselves
through the strengths of all of us,
and not be stymied by missing
the great beauty & knowledge
among us.
You pair away the extraneous burdens
which tax the mind,
and show us what the world looks like
unfiltered.
You teach one to see a beauty
that is so well hidden
that its own possessor doesn't
recognize it.
You are the song of a life well lived.
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DAILY PHOTO: Primate’s Palace, Bratislava
Willows [Haiku]
slender, sinuous tongues of willow leaf droop at river's edge.
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Breaking Bleak [Haiku]
autumn colors, like a pointillist painting that'll break bleak.
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Spire City [Haiku]
circling the city, the spire clusters change; the skyline morphs
Tiger Riding for Beginners 