Ghazal "The Warmth Pulls Me"
The warmth pulls me closer to my dear flame
The yearning makes burning by severe flame.
Brilliant reds and oranges light the void
While your azures cool none, my austere flame.
Scalding heat when excessively deployed
I don’t fathom you, so good bye queer flame.
Threaded true, dishonorably destroyed
The world’s money can’t buy a sincere flame.
Lonely match fuels the candles I’ve enjoyed
First degree burns from a sly unclear flame.
Too attractive for my heart to avoid
And yet I shiver when by the near flame.
At first, enraged and now merely annoyed
Fingers clasp and extinguish, nigh, a mere flame.
Next Steps
Journeys to the Sacred City
begin with a single step
Exist not for the future
nor revel in the past
Walk at dawn,
the sacred city lies obscure
Continue, resolute
Your target Enlightens.
The goal is not the
Sacred city in the distance,
But the sacred city
Under the foot
Of the Next Step.
A Terror Dactyl
Lightning, spurning thy thunder
Arousing awe, yet casts asunder
Those too close to your destination
While in my mind, powering creation
Mania, supply me blissful joy
Unending hope but seeks to destroy
Were I to harness, complete elation
And if not, a false salvation.
ICE CREAM
My favorite dessert is called ice cream,
I think about it whenever I dream,
Sweet and cold,
Light or bold,
Among life’s joys it reigns supreme.
Acrostic: Top of the Hill
40 years’ time, neither old nor new
3 million memories to explain or review.
To go boldly now, not gallant or wise
He might just lament, fearing his demise.
I instead keep climbing, and will make my mark
Nor do my eyes lack youth’s eternal spark.
Get better and better, you not-yet-old man
So you return to your youth, where you began.
Tritina on Sloth
Your life’s outcomes are fair and just
In the end, you are what you do
You get out what you put in it
Time: save it, spend it, or waste it
You only get one lifetime, just
Doesn’t change whatever you do
Warriors struggling to do
Never ending wars against it
The battle, hopeless, fair and just
Just Do It!
Starting Over
Family, friends, a real social butterfly.
Connections were easy to find.
But, then the bottom falls out,
phones don’t ring, none online.
Desperate attempts.
No companion.
A loser?
Alone.
Me.
Kyrielle to Time
Oh Nostalgia! Am I remiss?
Betraying you, to reminisce?
Do not borrow to repay debt,
Future’s fear, lose the past’s regret.
Sentimental, echoing past!
Get thee behind me, at long last.
My words to those I have not met:
Future’s fear, lose the past’s regret.
So if you for history yearn
Consider, no man can return
Road to wisdom, do not forget:
Future’s fear, lose the past’s regret.
Ainam
Quoth Emerson, inspired by the Gita
“within man is the soul of the whole”
as with the gazelle, as with the cheetah
in penning this lyric you have a role!
Nondualist Oneness renders me manic,
Just like Karouac’s Dean Moriarty
rushing from Pacific to Atlantic
but more a completeness, and less a party.
We are born and die; not yet an Arhat,
We enter the Ides of our earthly time
Divinity behind all, I Am That,
Without opprobrium, toward the sublime.
Prayerfully I turn, from illusion toward home
True to my Dharma, I transcend to … Aum.
Tree - (Tanka)
Still, immobile
The tree speaks my yard’s tale
I still yearn it, still
Listen to the mind
Long to meditate.
Mizu Yasashii Mizu (Water Sweet Water)
hitotsu kawa
ao to heikatsu yo
shika nomimasu
One river
blue and flat!
A deer drinks.
The Path
Wouldn’t I get there faster
Following someone who went before?
Yet why must search the forest
for the knowledge I ignore?
The Path will clear the Way
Look back on your Destiny and
The Path will clear the Way
I can teach you living
While you flout your laws
My smile makes me happy
The effect is the cause.