On a Sentence by Santayana

Know that

Its essence lies
Not in how

It is delivered,
But how

It is received by the minions
Condemned to repeat it.

Parnassian

You have not yet begun
The assault on the mountain

And already the air is making you giddy.

Look Homeward, Angel

Remember?

When you were good,
He’d let you stay

Up all night
And raise holy hell.

When you were bad,
He’d douse the lights,

Put you under
A dank stairwell.

Thrashing The Idiotic

This picture is worth 871 words.

Goodbye, Old Friend

So long as you can
Keep saying it,

But never forever.

Antediluvian

How utterly deep and profound
A poem

Unplumbed in the shallows
The deluge left behind.

Scent of Nostalgia

 

Unfolding the centifoliate
Rose, all the way

Back to the singular one.

No Man's Land

Dear Mom and Dad:

Wherever we lie,
The land never

Lies between
The lines.

Definitely Not Lemmings #21

My thanks to Lizeta for signing on as DNT #21! From what I've been able to find out (not much), she's an avid bicyclist and hails from my old neck of the woods, Washington State.

Chowing Down at the Wall Street Mission House

It is not easy to make a simile go on all fours.
—T.B. Macaulay

Like holy mackerel, there—
On all fours, ravenous

Biblical winged in
Sects eating the floor!

The Poet Transmuted

—after Aesop


Crow over

Me with worm
In air do I look

Like a fox.

Unraveling the Riddle

Knock-knock.

Poetry Lesson

And yet, we know something of bitterness—
This draining out of love in syllables
Teaches us, among other things, silence
And how to talk our way around it.

(My first published poem, Poetry Northwest, Winter 1970-71--going on forty and still teaching.)

One More Inspiring Sunset Poem

Ho-hum. How many more
Like this one have yet to be written

On the horizon?
Ho-hum.

On Approaching a Shortcut through a Field of Nettles

Rush,
Rash.

Farce

The plot

Thickened by far
Fetched remnants of earth

Like creatures
Jettisoned

In space, the absence
Of gravity continues

To play a major role.