The Power Of Ink On Paper

The cloth-bound book
Grasped in an old man's
Hands, has the look,
With its tattered corners,
Of something perused
Consistently by aging
Eyes, its contents used
To sooth a geezer's raging
Against the ending of
The day, his mind waging
War against the thief
Who steals his memories,
The book is his hope, his relief.

Self Reflection

A mirror does not lie.
But it also can't control,
Distortion by the viewer's eye.

The Reality Of Marriage

Stand-off at the dinner table,
Near the end of supper...
We slow down our chewing,
Refusing to cede the upper
Hand to the other, knowing
Whoever gets up first has
To do the dishes, owing
To a rule we can't remember making,
But now there's no breaking
It, which has settled into our life
As loving husband and wife.

The Tactile Wisdom Of Simians

The key to carrying lots of food,
Is to balance and maximize,
Each according to its size,
While remembering, as you
Lope, the law of gravity applies...

"Curiosity's" Quest

Immense and total silence under the stars,
Where a wheeled remote-controlled robot,
Drills for the first time, into a rock on Mars...
It carries the best technology, and dreams,
Of beings far, far away, who want to find
Hope, in ancient, dried-up, Martian streams...
For if there was once was water there,
It could imply they are not alone, and
There might be Earth-life out somewhere
On a distant place the gods gave air.

As Seen On The Evening News

The approach of a storm
Provides a chance,
For weather reporters
To preen and prance,
And declare to all
That the sky will fall...

False Spring

The wind comes out
Of the North, and
Removes any doubt,
As to whether
Winter is still about...

Fours Walls And A Roof

Silent thanks mumbled in my head
As I walk in the door and out of the cold,
Soon to warm-up and get dry, instead
Of spending some kind of homeless
Icy survival experience huddled
Over a trash barrel fire, or rolling
Myself into a newspaper ball
Under a bridge, barely controlling
The shivering, wedged against a
Lonely hopeless wall of concrete...
So, yes, thanks for a warm room,
Vice eking-it-out on a winter's street.

On Time Arrival

Roger glide-slope, flaps are down,
Lowering altitude and speed,
I'm just about to land on my
Bed, for my peaceful evening read.

The Cost Of Creation

I do not feel pain,
But sadness instead,
As pieces of my brain,
In the form of words,
Fly onto the screen:
Fluttering thought-birds
Landing on the clean
White expanse, where
Nothing was before,
As clear as the winter air.

And On The Seventh Day...

Dying light of a slow
Sunday afternoon,
Moments of comfort,
But ending too soon,
Is this day of rest...
Fading into evening as
The sun sinks in the west,
A lazy, peaceful Sunday,
Leaving me alone to
Face the pain of Monday.

Chelyabinsk

A meteor will fall where it will,
Unstoppable, and undetected,
Its impact will blast and kill
The things that fate has selected.

North Korea's Third Nuclear Test

Numbly watching the evening news,
Aware of a separation, almost unreal,
Between the images and sounds displayed
On the screen, and how I actually feel,
Which is sort of like I'm a rock in a
Stream, with everything flowing by
And over, and around where I sit
Too overwhelmed to even try
To connect to the world events
Being reported with hue and cry...

The Wise Man's Smile

From a corner in the temple yard
The old wise stone man has
Been looking, and laughing hard,
At how many times the wheel
Has been reinvented by men
Who only look at now, ignoring
What happened back when
Things were done, and lessons
Learned, but forgotten again...

  

End Of The Road

He lies awake in bed, a stoic,
Dealing with his decrepitude,
Where it is almost a heroic
Act to eat one's own food
Without a helping hand...
And he'd love to trash his
Diapers, if he could only stand
Up, and walk twelve steps across
The fluoresecent room to the toilet,
But he can't, and so it's the cross
He must bear for living so long,
Way past the time he was
Healthy, happy, and strong.

System Re-Boot

It is time for me to hit
A re-set button for my
Life, but it's also a bit
Involved -- more like changing
A lightbulb, in the dark,
Wrestling and rearranging
The furniture-habits,
In the saloon of my soul,
All of it covered with lazy-dust,
"It's OK in the warm dark hole"
Whispers a voice, but re-set I must...

Blah!

A fact of life in mid-February
Which gives little hope at all:
"No more football
Until distant Fall"...

The Secret Of Venus

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
But it is also something else symmetrical,
Which endures through getting older.