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,...
I Switch Off All The Lights
I switch off all the lights. Those that I love Are all abed, both in the other room And all across the city that I love. I see my way across the meagre room And to the too-tall curtains by the light Of thrift-store stained-glass lamp, by oven...
Obituary Instructions
Do not call me an angel, when I'm gone. Mourn me, revere me--or not, as you choose-- But as the human person that I was. An angel is a pure celestial thing Too absolute and too ethereal For earthly things like woe or weariness, For home and...
Break the Circle
I went walking by the harbor As the day went down to dark. I went searching through my sorrows For a place to rest my heart. Will the circle be unbroken By and by? By and by? Is a better home awaiting In the sky, Lord, in the sky? There...
The Heart Lies Only Once
I trust no more a promise made of words. Not for the many vows long-proven false, Not for the monkey's paw, its fingers crossed, Not for the apathies of old lang syne. There's not a one of us has had no need Of some dishonesties, just to...
Ragnarok - XXVII
Somewhere it was autumn. On the shore Wind-kissed and smelling of soft salt there stood But three alone. The sighing pines atop The dunes were the last trees to wear their leaves. Somewhere it was evening. Heavy clouds Were crimson painted...
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...
Ballade of Paternal Reminiscience
In olden days, our forefathers (there's four of us, you see Counting George, Itoma, and you, and also me) Would tarry by the power tools, the plumbing, and the paint, Where credit card constraining was the heart free of restraint. And we did...
A Far Green Country
How often have I dreamed of such a place? How often have I seen those emerald fields, And in that dream, forgotten that I dreamed, That I would wake, had woken, and my life Dissolved into a peaceful deja vu That cannot be remembered? I can...
Ghost Town Story
September came and ate up all the grass. He took his weapons down into the plain. The leaves fell round the farmhouse in the pass That stood here once. (The chimney bones remain.) Some say he pawned them, needing ready cash ...
The Starling Master
Amid the mid-air rushing the Starling Master stands Invisible to every eye not of his feathered kin. The starlings wheel around him to his soundless swift commands, Above, beneath, beside him they rush out and they rush in, In orbit all about him...
The Past is the Opposite Shallows
The past is the opposite shallows of a river at flood to the lip. And swift do the rapids swallow. And swift are the tides that rip. And that which the past generations have builded on seeming stone Is crumbled in deep desolations, and carried away...