Joys Of Harbor Living

Designed and built to penetrate
Fog, and be heard miles away,
The ship's horn moans me
Awake to face the new day,
It repeats a few times as if
To summon me where I lay,
And I arise, guessing I didn't
Need more sleep anyway.

Writers Workshop

Words, disgorged in an urgent stream,
Onto paper, an opaque, abstract, splatter
Of ink, for deciphering by professors,
Poetry, after all, is a serious matter...

After Effect & Memory

A minor disturbance occurs
On the smooth water, after
The frog jumps, the carp stirs,
And concentric ring-ripples
Expand and intersect each other
Across the quiet pool,
Reminding me of a physics
Experiment back in school.

Ceiling Tile Vision

Lying back, staring at the ceiling,
Trying to ignore her illness,
She imagines concentric spheres
Radiating out from the stillness
Of her room, her sickly fears
Temporarily forgotten
By the vision of others, everywhere,
All happy, bored, or misbegotten,
All breathing the same Earthly air,
In various the states of decline,
Or growth, which we all share,
In the portions our fates assign.

Point of View

Flower draws attention
Of man and bee,
Quite differently...

Man sees beauty
To soften his mood,

Bee sees a colorful
Source of food.

The Methods Of Meteorology

The typhoons passed through
And blasted the Pacific high
Into a confusion of clouds
Which now cover the sky
Bringing rain and landslides
Leaving very little dry,
The hot summer cooled
Down and compromised...

In The Graveyard

Stones to remember those
Now gone to the here-afta,
Marked with paeans,
Poems, and some errata.

Practice Makes Perfect

We are so pumped and full of joy,
The smiles on our faces show,
The simple-pure animal pleasure
That only athletes can know.

Kissing One's Sibling

We play so hard,
To win we really try,
But somehow, it
All ends up in a tie.

The Odd Afternoon Moment

Leaning together, she tapping
The screen of her I-phone,
Me, dozing, and thinking
This sure beats being alone...

Unbelievable

Total unbelief and
Shock to be told that,
Hello Kitty is a girl,
Rather than a cat...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-hello-kitty-in-los-angeles-not-a-cat-20140826-column.html#page=1 

Language

Words fly through the air,
Each containing ideas
From here and there,

On modulations of sound
Words launch, then land,
Or don't, on what's around.

Depending on sequence
And combination used,
Words often leave one
Bemused, or confused...

Realization

Too late, I suppose,
It occurs to me,
That I've lived my
Life too frivolously,
The years now locked
Away, without a key...

 

Drones

Inside the anthill, laboring, and unable
To see the open sky, spread-out above,
We repeat our chores, steady and stable,
In the service of a monstrous queen,
We never learn about the color blue,
As we tend to an egg-laying machine,
Oh! To have been born a warrior,
Fighting and dying, out in the green...

Pre-FOMO

I'm thinking of a time when
We were not overly affected,
By the fear and stress of not knowing...

A time we were less connected,
Happily analog, coming and going...

James Foley

My ship has sailed, without me being
On board, and I watch it disappear,
Over the horizon, as I kneel, facing my
Cruel fate, on the desolate, deadly, pier.

葉月

Steadily, towards the cool,
Late-August proceeds,
The pavement cracks
Hosting a glory of weeds.

Existence

Going out, each new day,
Growing up and out in
Seeming disarray,
Our lives, like branches,
In constant interplay
Start, climb, and break, in
A non-stop biological ballet.

Photograph by Geoffrey M. Hamilton, 1955-2011

Perspective

Our lives, a series of emotional blips
Played-out in small drama, between
Armageddon and the apocalypse.

Serve And Protect

The policeman stands guard
At the scene of a crime
He was unable to prevent,
Not having arrived in time...

Fallen Clown

The famous clever comedian,
Gave up on things, and died,
By his own hand, spurred by
Some unfunny demons inside,
Who chased, and corroded, until
He had no place to run or hide.

Thank You Honey

Under sodden black-gray clouds,
The August air weighs heavy, while
I trudge away from a dog's day,
Soaking with bitterness and bile,
I sweat and wilt, verging on despair,  
Only to be uplifted, later, by her smile,
Her affection a zephyr of cooling air...

Mount Sinjar

Trapped and surrounded,
I can't bother asking why,
Anymore, it's too hard to
Fix, so I don't even try,
Thinking about it just
Tends to make me cry...
But we're safe, for now,
On this place, up high.

The Gift

The notes of a haunting melody
My memory somehow sends,
And I'm caught in the embrace
Of a song that never ends...

In God We Trust

We, the declining middle classes,
Increasingly pressured and abused,
By financial forces beyond our control,
Scrimp, save, and buy our cars used,
And the opportunity to abandon the
American dream, is stoutly refused...

We still trust the red, white, and blue,
What else are we supposed to do?