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Centenarian

the years flash by

like the frames in a motion picture,

while the days are spent watching

oaks grow from acorns to giants in your mind

with no progress in the day

and everything different in a year-

birthdays seem a month apart

while hours take eternity to pass

during a sleepless night

thinking of everyone known for years now dead

while friends from the next generation die now-

your children dying natural deaths before you

and only grandchildren remain,

while doctors just shake their heads and smile.

Requited Malice

He came with murder foul upon his mind,

His spleen unvented for want of revenge,

Searching with every fiber to find

Who wrought the deeds that did his mind unhinge.

Then he spied the foe he most longed to slay

Standing steady in the street there ahead,

Uncaring for what might transpire this day,

Nor which of them would very soon lay dead.

His quarry did not run, but stood his ground,

As the distance between them grew more near

The seeker wondered where his prey had found

Courage to armor him from normal fear.

The answer was not his to understand

As death came with a bang from a flashing hand.

Shooting the Rapids

Times arise in life where

One can only go forward

In a flimsy craft

Loosed on a wild river

Entering a deep, narrow gorge

Relying on reaching calm waters beyond

Secure that peace will abide a time

Placing the tiny vessel ideally for the next trial

Against circumstance and the pilot's fears

To serve well once more while seeking

Here and hereafter until the last rapid.

Genocide

Violent death should be personal

Between two to whom it is all;

Or between one who clings to life

And one who sheds care to perform the deed.

People were never meant to die

Like links of sausage being squeezed empty

Between crushing mechanical rollers,

Or snuffed out all at once like boxes of lit candles.

Nature made death personal and important

To both the dying and the survivor-

Modern man stole credit and blame from one

And purpose from the other,

Making death empty and killing a bother

Where eyes never meet in denouement.

Forever Young

Youths sent forth to battle darkness

Who never age in time's passing-

Recalled in May and November,

Absent from the empty strkness

Of the fields we still remember

With paper poppies and colored bunting

On grassy slopes sporting white stones

While bands generate brassy tones.

Our crowds grow older and smaller

As they grow younger and taller.

Ultimate Idolatry

Not a moment's whim should lack fulfillment,

Nor companion shade his light in the least.

All should labor for his sole contentment-

Life his solitary movable feast.

Ladies are charmed bending to his will

Yielding expected cooing and friction,

His chums hang about never standing still

All swearing to any passing fiction.

The world is his to spoil, steal, or toss out

And when by chance he fails to have his way

His is the given right to rage and pout

Should amusing mortals fail to obey.

Making Light

"You make light of death,"

They told me, disapproving,

As though death were sacred."

"I make light of death

Every morning with each heart beat

And shall do so until we are one,

Death and I, joined together.

Then I will make light of life

Until we unite anew

To make death once more a joke."

In the End

Scandal, rumor and slander

Are writ large on page and screen,

Yet, facts are stubborn things

That survive the harshest clime

To root and sprout and grow

Until the time has come

And they creep to center stage

Silent on soft cat paws

To become evident to all

For truth is persistent

While malice perishes

In the clean, clear light.

Weathering the Whethers

Life models itself

After the changing weather

Day to day

With clumps of years

Acting like seasons-

Bright days and stormy ones

In warming spring

Or a season in hell.

Will it rain today?

What job should I get?

Will the hurricane hit here?

Is this really love?

Is a blizzard coming?

So,it's the nursing home for me?

Chance and choice dancing a merry jig

Of consequence and surprise

From spring to winter

And our final blip on the radar.

Sometimes

Now and then I awake smelling black powder

And tasting alkali dust- wondering why?

Once I floated above myself laying on a bed

Then was back in my body in a flash- perhaps a dream?

Was it a past life or Tarzan movies

That made Swahili come to me easily?

Or is it parts of things I know

Melding together to make a similar, newer life?

Sometimes I think love felt better

Than it ever really has- wishing vainly?

Am I remembering, or creating the legend

That will live after me among strangers?

Perhaps I am a character

In a poorly written tale with a vague ending.

I have danced with death

And basked in bright suns in dark lands.

Then I awake and decide it is but a dream

Yet miss the apparitions visiting in the night.

Wondering/Wandering

People change little from continent to continent-

The odd custom here and there, different food-

But, all love and hate, wonder about life,

And fear what they don't understand.

They all die and don't want to,

Or can't die and do want to,

But they all have regrets and dreams.

Some find hopelessness easier

And live with it longer, or much shorter

As fortune and karma will have it.

In the end few of our names are known

Longer than a generation or two

Lacking great works of good or evil

To make other generations wonder as well.

Then we all go home, or lie forgotten in foreign sod

Having wandered and wondered our last.

flowers sprout early,

dying as winter returns-

then zephyrs spread seed

Lighting the Way

People enter our lives

Bringing radiant light

That illuminates our spirits,

Then dies to mere embers

Before we enter others lives

Bathing them in a brilliant light:

It is then we realize

What we saw as ten great suns beaming

Were coals to the one who lit our path.

How bright are dim embers

When they enter our lives

To banish our darkest times?

Love's Fate

Love, lust and affection

Dance merrily through life

Disguised in human form

For a day, a month-

Perhaps, a year, or to the close of our lives.

In the end as we ponder

All we have done and felt,

It is not the loss of each love

That we return to reflect upon,

But, the moments love held us aloft-

All pain is cast away

On the flood of fond memories:

And, we close our eyes lastly

With a smile in our hearts,

If not on our lips,

As we fade.

Wondering

Dark souls twisting in the night of their own minds,

While shining in the eyes of others,

Contemplate if they are unloved,

Or merely the unloving with yet another ephemeral-

To be sworn to undying devotion,

And to have same extracted painfully

Under mutual duress:

Each saying, "Love me, or learn of Hell."

All that springs from hearts and flowers

Sinks into blood and money.

All that begins with "I do"

Ends with "You will."

And, end it does.

Mage Camp

Three million words on newsprint

For good or ill to the cast of players.

Stories of low adventure

Summoned from a mirror

And high ideals taken from a dream.

Songs of friends long dead,

Foes dead sooner still,

And friends lingering in woe.

Poems of what has been,

What might have been,

And what may still come to pass.

Prose to solve the mystery

Of what builds a self

Over long changing years,

And a double handful of fairy dust.

Time Cats

Some say time is not real,

Just a human construct,

But cats sense time better

Than their owners' alarms.

Scientists say now that

Time stands still in black holes.

How can something unreal

Stand still or move at all?

Perhaps time began with

Cats sleeping in the sun,

In a dream where they saw

How to be fed on time.

Travel

Life turns upon a wheel,

Renewed like spring flowers,

Or trudging to an end-

No matter how we feel,

Despite the counted hours,

We go from now to then.

Imagine

Imagine that each planet

And every moon are letters encrypted,

Each star is a haiku of wonder,

The galaxies all sentences of beauty,

And the universe an encyclopedia

Of songs to every sight and feeling in all creation-

Our purpose is to add a song or two,

Read those of our brothers and sisters,

And learn the knowledge offered to our eyes.

Streams of Time and Space

I find myself seeing time

Flowing like water

To the sea of space

Where they mingle and intertwine

To where here and now

With there and then blend

To create somewhen and somethen

As real as somewhere and now-

Universal recycling

Of time, space, matter and souls.