Sanctuary

I am an awful Catholic, it is true. 

I disbelieve. I do not go to church. 

Except, and this is strange, sometimes I do. 

I go into the building, on a search 

For something that I felt when just a boy, 

The sense, perhaps of solemn dedication, 

The sense of sorrow wrapped in promised joy, 

Maintained through centuries of aspiration. 

I bow my head, a gesture of submission, 

Not to what I believed in as a youth, 

Nor yet in token of some deep contrition, 

But rather in acceptance of a truth: 

That in this changing world, we give our best, 

Then hope it's good enough to pass the test.

Silent S

The s is silent in island,

Although I'm not sure why, 

Unless it's to trip up foreigners... 

Our spelling humor is dry. 

Our language is a collision, 

Cluttered with odd debris. 

Oops, another silent s... 

Just crept up on me.

Skala Eresou

To swim in the sea where Sappho might have swum, 

To spy the fishes nibbling in the sand, 

To listen on the whisper of the wind 

For words she might have spoken in a dream, 

Or sung in liquid tones while she would strum 

The strings of her tuned instrument, a stream 

Of feeling, both intensely personal 

And somehow, thereby, strangely universal. 

I know, from a fragment, she walked along this beach. 

The languid waves pulse on without a rest. 

The horizon hovers, always out of reach. 

A boundless longing lived within her breast. 

We have new gods from those that went before, 

But what has changed within our deep heart's core?

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!

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!

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. 



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?

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.