CEMETERY - First Robishover and Chelmer Graveyard, NJ

Places of rest and quiet
Places of death
Where the leaves of crowding trees fall;
Where the squirrel buries nuts,
But no new tree will grow;
Where a swarm of tiny flies in the last hot and shaded air
Live short lives
Before the year dies;
Where the grass lives to be mown
Where the bones rot beneath their polished headstones
Saying Chesner and Shaber are at rest
But the dead do not rest
For the dead cannot rest
For the dead no longer exist.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, April 2008

SOME FLING AWAY

Some fling away
Some stay and cling—
Each their own Way
To do their own thing.

Sacrifice meaning
For love of the rhyme;
Know that in dreaming
You make up the time.

Sacrifice meaning—
When thought becomes sight
Your soul from its mole-hole
Blinks into life-light.

Published: Metverse Muse, India, March 2008

THE BUDDHA DIED AT 80

The Buddha died at 80, and they say
That Lao Tzu reached 200, by the Way;
But Jesus, only 33, was stood
Arms out against the circus side-show wood:
His hands first, then his feet and side and heart
Pierced by the drunken dagger-thrower’s darts;
The crowd had lost a man, but, quite unbothered,
Named him a God, and went and killed each other.
And you and I and sanity lost out
With Christ’s name from Humanity crossed out.

Published: Rubies In The Darkness, UK, Winter 2005

THE MORAL AESTHETICS OF POLITICS

The sense of poetry pervades all life:
Intense sensation, far-abstracted math,
Calm observation, passion-fired strife,
The glorious rise, the decadent aftermath.

Forgive me, pitying gods, for loving all
When “all” includes the tortured, starving, mad.
Symphonic raptures round pride’s bugle call
Drown out the truths where glory would be sad.

The very movement of the people lives,
Starring a missionary, or clown, or thief;
The moral climate either steals or gives –
It faithfilled strives, or slumps in disbelief.

So, in these patchwork years of peace and war,
Detached to calm the passionate lies that lurk,
We love life’s good and ill, but, more and more,
Our sympathetic vision makes us work.

Published: The Penwood Review, US, Fall 2005
Awarded Editor’s Choice certificate

NOTHING'S YOURS ALWAYS

Nothing’s yours always, anyhow,
And Time shall lift from off your brow
Your troubles, wrinkles, hat and wig,
Leave you the basis for “long pig”.

Published: Metverse Muse, India, March 2008