Why I Get Up Before Dawn

Why 
In such a world 
Of self- 

Inflicted pain, 
To anticipate 
The morning 

Breaking, and how 
That makes one wholly 
One again, that is 

The why and how of it, 
My still sleeping friend.

You Asked For It, So You Better Believe It

I’m telling it like it is 
When I say he was out 

Of his league when he kept 
Insisting his poetry had more 

Punch than a dullard’s eye could see, 
And boy has he ever got a whopper 

Of a shiner to show for it now, 
You see? 

Reaper's Got The Last Word

You sure you ain’t jiving us, 
You’re really on to something 
Big you’re dying to say? 

Don’t 

Let me stop you—get it 
Over with before you drop 
Dead in your tracts 

On the way. 

Poetic Wanderlust Partly Explained

Breathless 

You of the over- 
Worked beautiful 

Voice never faltering, mind that 
Wanders, wonder not. 

Bottom Line Disconsolate Consolation Prize

Terrible and most dishonorable 
Things too dreadful to mention
Are taking place

Now all over a world rapidly
Becoming lost forever and you— 
All you want is for your poetry

To find itself winning, 
If nothing else in the end, 
Just Honorable Mention.








 



 

Know Thyself, Brother

Knowing silence waits 

For the busy man to drop everything
And join it, 

But the busy man has other things 
On his mind and does not 

Know it. 

Machiavellian Drawing A Blank At Eighty-five

Said subject in question being 
In his lifetime a village president
Many times over, machinating

Political animal and owner
Of a coffeehouse having 
The only phone in town, thus 

Suspected police whistleblower, 
Spent his last days lying
In bed staring at the wall, 

And never once spoke, 
Not even to the wall.