Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Unproven

 Theories? I got a million. Just ask my wife. 

At this point she’s listened to them for most of her life. 

Evidence? Yeah I do have some. But as for full proof,

It’s often just out of reach, somewhere up on the roof,

Like a squirrel that chatters and taunts me - hey, are you sure?

Unproven conjectures are teasers that I must endure!

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Ultraviolet

 I understand that birds and bees

See ultraviolet frequencies. 

I cannot say the same for me -

I must make do with normal colors. 

The bees may say my vision’s duller,

But let them buzz about - just let them!

I’m still happy with our spectrum!

Monday, June 17, 2024

Vocab of the Bard

 One of the puzzles about Shakespeare, that playwright from the past,

Is that his vocabulary appears to have been truly vast,

Including technical terms from different arts and trades. 

How could so much learning be displayed

When he hadn’t really spent much time in school?

My guess is he studied while sitting on a stool

At local taverns - that his brain somehow stored

Material most people would have ignored. 




Wednesday, June 12, 2024

I Often Think

I often think 
About the Sphinx 
Which almost defies comprehension. 
 It’s a humanoid cat 
With an odd-looking hat 
Designed to attract attention. 
 How were they skilled 
 Enough to build 
A thing of such dimensions?

Friday, June 07, 2024

Cost

 Rich and powerful people, dragged through the dirt,

Hauled before judges, haughty but hurt,

Some of them seem like their souls are just lost.

The money sounds good... but what was the cost?

Thursday, April 04, 2024

Cardinal

 I inquired of a cardinal,

What’s with the red?

Wouldn’t camouflage brown

Be safer instead?

He pondered it briefly 

And breezily said:

My breed’s really not

The cowering kind. 

We like to stand out,

Easy to find,

Ready to fight

If you’ve trouble in mind,

And let me just add

That the females I know

Are very selective 

In choosing a beaux,

But seem rather fond

Of a feathery show.

Sphinx

 You might think that by now the Sphinx

Would have sunk into the sand,

But it sits and never slinks,

Never scratches, never blinks,

Looking out across the land,

As some ancient sculptor planned.

Holding Holiness

They build churches

To hold holiness,

But then we worship

Things measureless,

And uncontainable. 

Still… sometimes attainable. 

The song of a bird at sunset,

As the evening star pokes through the blue,

It will not stay, and yet,

It plucks a string in you,

No words, all feel,

Just real. 

Rabbit Stew

 When we were kids, my father thought it was funny

To claim that he would catch the Easter Bunny,

And make a rabbit stew - a tasty way 

To celebrate a happy holiday. 

When Sunday came, he’d say the news was grim -

The bunny had again outsmarted him,

First stopping by our house with candy and eggs,

Then hopping over the trap with nimble legs!

Wednesday, April 03, 2024

A Sort of Skill

 Love is a feeling,

A force of the will,

Perhaps revealing 

A sort of skill

At truly discerning 

Beneath the skin

The fire burning 

The heart within.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Dostoyevsky

 Dostoyevsky was an addicted gambler,

Whose best characters are loquacious ramblers

Who frequently verge into the absurd. 

But since he was getting paid by the word

And was on a personal moral mission,

He brought great novels to fruition.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Consolatio

 Boethius called the Muses of Poetry names:

“Whorish stage girls”. In this way he defames

An art that he himself had long pursued 

In terms offensive and incredibly rude.

On the other hand, if we want to be perfectly fair,

He was being held in some kind of confinement where

He awaited a sentence of torture and brutal death. 

His book “Consolation” is sort of his final breath,

In which he tried to set his learned mind

On cosmic truths, hoping there to find 

Relief from anguish. And oddly enough this book

Is studded with poems. It’s certainly worth a look.

It bridges the ancient world and medieval times,

Profoundly affecting both Dante’s and Chaucer’s rhymes.

Monday, February 12, 2024

It Is

 Some say that existence exists,

And I’m not here to tell you they lie. 

The universe surely persists -

Without sign of soon saying goodbye. 

Parmenides said Being Is,

Albeit, he said it in Greek. 

All agree he was a whiz,

But did he provide what we seek?

It is what it is, we now say,

When urging recognition 

Of facts in the present day

Which present in a sorry condition. 

Existence Exists, I admit

Has a tautological sound,

But still we keep using it

As an evidentiary ground.

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Seneca

 As a philosopher, Seneca promoted

Maintaining tranquility in the face of trauma,

However as a playwright he emoted

All over the stage with tragic bloody drama. 

Scholars question which is the truer side,

But I imagine equal parts of a whole:

The stoic Jekyll and the dramatic Hyde

Springing together from one tormented soul.

Thursday, January 04, 2024

Stopping by the Library on a Frantic Evening

Whose words these are, I think I know, 
Some author who died years ago! 
He will not see me cut and paste 
His paragraphs in horrid haste. 
My paper’s due in twenty hours, 
And it’s beyond my paltry powers 
To write the whole darn thing myself. 
But here are books upon the shelf - 
Upon the topics I’m supposed 
To explicate in lucid prose… 
And I prefer to see quotations, 
Without the clutter of citations! 
For I have many pages due, 
And hours to go before I’m through.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Ceres Above Lasalle Street


Goddess of Grain, standing among the clouds, 
Atop the tower called the Board of Trade, 
One hundred years, almost, you’ve watched the crowds 
That fill the streets below, like a parade 
Of hungry life, the market-makers hustling, 
The lawyers squabbling as the deals get made, 
And back behind the scene, the bankers bustling 
To pile the money up, and then to lend it 
All out again in hopes of getting more. 
Life must go on - unless you want to end it - 
It must keep cycling through a central core: 
Production and exchange keep people fed, 
The bounty of the harvest widely spread.

Ask Your Doctor

 Ask your doctor if X is right for you!

That’s what they say - and so that’s what I do. 

I call my doctor every week, you see,

To find out if each med is right for me,

Especially when I cannot figure out 

What X is for - I give my doc a shout. 

And here’s his oddest recommendation yet:

He said I should get off the internet

And skip through all commercials on TV

That show a happy person running free

Through open fields with some mysterious glee

While droning voices list the side effects

That fall upon poor patients like a hex.

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Said the Maple to the Oak

Said the maple to the oak,

Fall is here and that’s no joke. 

I’ve put on my scarlet cloak. 


Said the oak tree to the maple,

There’s a shade of copper cable…

That’s the brightest I am able. 


Said the trees then to each other,

Soon we’ll face the winter weather,

Standing proudly, bare together.

Monday, October 16, 2023

Unclear

My speech was rather unclear. 
 Somehow I didn’t hear 
The shimmering sounds of words 
Quite like others heard. 
 This struggle went on for years, 
Let’s say till I was eight. 
 And so I grew to hate 
Not being understood - 
Which lived on, as an inmost fear, 
Long, long afterward.

People of the Book

They had a book that other people loved,
A book that showed a way to walk in glory
By following a law. A book of stories
Succinctly told, that seemed to rise above
The moral tone of all those pagan tales
Of gods whose virtue mostly seems to fail.
The other people loved the book so much,
They took it on, but with some alterations,
Taking the form of yet more revelations,
Which somehow made it easier to clutch
Close to the heart, and less a thorny thing
To argue over endlessly - as if
Anything less would give the text short shrift.
At least that's how it seemed to them, the tribe
That owned the book - that testament of passion.
They could not go along with this new fashion
Of modifying what they had imbibed
As mother's milk. And so they stood alone,
And tried to keep the law that was their own.