There once lived a procurator named Pilate.
If not for but one thing you’d say, “What?”
But his legend, it stands,
because he washed his hands,
So take a hint and be more like Pontius Pilate!
Viral Limerick II
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Category Archives: poem
Viral Limerick [Day 1 NaPoMo: Limerick]
There once was a globetrotting virus.
I can’t say it was meant to inspire us.
But this poem, I wrote.
It ends on a high note,
Bit-coin works for St. Peter or Osiris.
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POEM: Depths & Recesses
a message
unsent
unread
stored in a mind of a million muttering voices
where simple skeletons are stored in an elaborate closet,
and no wise eyes can peer into the depths & recesses
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Flowering Haiku
hectic sidewalk
frangipani blossoms
stepped over
calling bees
scent, color, and glory
unrivaled
the hillside
when rhododendrons bloom
shangri la
for two weeks
the valley flowers,
its spell cast
purple circle
rings the base of a tree
regal shadow
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POEM: Tonton Makout
shambling from fields of cane
Uncle Gunny was their bane
a ghost personified
kidnap & zombify
and so wander the Dead
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Falling Water Haiku
thunder yon
Zambezi rafting
greenhorns beware
cataract
water wind-misted
plume-zone green
terraced hill
rice paddy cascades
depth perfection
dry season
murmur to trickle to
fall-less falls
level rising
the overspill rolls
pulling drops
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POEM: Calypso Facto
For seven years,
Ulysses was hostage to Calypso.
He was like, “Wife is waiting, gotta go!”
“You know, by Neptune, you are still cursed?”
“Being stranded with you was fun at first…”
“Out there’s the ever-present threat of Death.”
“Worth it, to not wake to your morning breath.”
COVID-19, you are my Calypso!
[Anyone got Zeus’s number?]
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POEM: Dark City Sonnet
any city you enter after dark
will not reveal itself until the morn
you’ll see it like a scrawny sheep unshorn
vague blankness punctuated by landmarks
you’ll see nothing in the darkness of parks
not junkies sprawled out in clothes, rank and torn
though you see neon twenty-four hour porn
you’ll know not the dogs by their noisy barks
light makes it more pretty and more ugly
you’ll see it pick itself up and brush off
like shame walkers concoct a makeshift coif
turning focus from the bloody and stubbly
to see a city at its worst and best
catch it when it’s wearing last night’s dress.
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POEM: Tripless Trip
In the outlands lives a shaman,
an unkempt medicine man of some renown.
He grinds some roots with a wooden pestle,
black and shiny on its business end.
His apprentice sits drumming —
soft and offbeat.
You listen deeply,
dead-eyed tranquil,
but can’t wear that wild rhythm
“like a bear skin,”
whatever that means.
The medicine will be bitter, but no matter.
It’s not for you.
Your cure will be sought on a tripless trip.
When the shaman re-inhabits
his sweat-soaked body,
he says only,
“Beware the Jackdaw!”
You say, “What’s that mean?”
He says, “That’s for you to know,
and for me… not to know.”
You say, “OK, what’s a jackdaw?”
With an intense wild-eyed stare,
he says,
“Google it.”
You say, “Seriously?”
Then he shrugs and he nods off.
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POEM: The Silent Wild
Looking through a window
at the falling snow flakes.
Silent is the snow fall
that piles upon my sill.
And though it weighs limbs down,
it doesn’t break the branches.
If there were a slight breeze,
it’d dust it all away.
Out beyond the farm land,
in the distant forest,
lies the kind of wildness
that’s silent at the bone.
