Maybe Stop Telling This Man What He Wants
"Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long." How often hath that platitude Been strangled into song? By men who do not want, but have Their little and their more. In rhymes perforce, in meter bad, They serve it to the poor. ...
Eight Minutes and Forty Six Seconds on June Twelfth, Two Thousand Twenty
The rain continues. No thunder dares ring. No winds howl. All is silence, save the sound Of distant trucks down on the interstate. I tell myself, pretend it is the sea That all this rain, perhaps, will wash into. And I remain in silence. What must...
Autumn Is A Pagan
Autumn, he is wandering down in the market square Where they are selling scarlet fruit and golden-tassled sheaves Heaped on the fitted cobbles that are cloaked in drifting leaves, And any citizen who likes can see him walking there. He talks of...
I Won't Fear The Sunlight
The waves upon the silken sands Are softer than his breath Where he lies safe below the palms In sleep as deep as death. Soon I will rise from here, and go Down to the opal shore. And I won't fear the sunlight Anymore. I know the taste...
Sunstroke
We heard of him in fairy tales, Unfinished epics, songs in braille. From all ends of the ending earth We tracked him to this place. We each believed the others fools. But all believe: those are the rules. At last his trail, Like...
Ragnarok - VII
"I died not," Varr breathed shallowly, "I woke Midmorning, by a gentle brook. How far I'd skirmished from satanic swamplands I Had no surmise. Three days I nursed my wounds, And then I took the mission meant for Luke, To warn the Old Man. As I...
Ragnarok - VI
"In coolness of that evening we stood guard Atop the knoll our mastery had turned To barrow. As the hidden sun went down We watched the pit as does a mongoose, for The snout of the great serpent to appear. While there we watched we argued: How to...
Ragnarok - V
"Before the sun had crossed the pinnacle Of hours upon the sky's superior side And any nightward momentum had gained, The hall was emptying. The Old Man's words Reverberated still between hard stone Reproachful more the longer that we stayed. Our...
Ragnarok - IV
The day was long departed, and the night Was coming to adulthood. Outside slept The night breeze, snoring soft among the grass. Inside, the boxer felt the darkness close As if it were a change in temperature He had not noticed. "Hold on," he spoke...
Accompanied by Tornado Siren
Let us suppose that all things human fall. That topless tower and tin-walled hovel both Go down, that all the laws are soothless scrawl, That sons of man no longer care for truth. It has to happen sometime. Why not now? What mankind plants,...
Ragnarok - III
"These ruins have been empty for too long. They ring no more with scarlet laughing flags. They echo not the peal of sparring arms, Nor cries of joyful brotherhood of war. They were not always silent. Once they shone Undusty, undecrepit,...
Ragnarok - II
The sun was gone. The only light that shone Was a reflection off the fading sky, Yet faded not the gold out of the roof, For, at the touch of darkness, fireflies, Lit crisp like Christmas candles, Appeared and turned the leaves to paper...