A trembling soul - May 2013

As laughing wavelets pull the cleansing dawn
Across our souls to life long woebegone,
Our poet grins and flirts on with his muse,
Their lovedrunk dreams seducing truth’s long snooze,
Away from bed and other forms of art,
The ink sleeps true, the poet’s pretty part,
A happy hand, true from hope’s booze and song,
Draws well the world with words so used to wrong.
Our burning calm and sleeping furry race
As brothers born across the mirror’s face,
And fight til growing tired, we shift our gaze
There on the sea of days unsailed we graze,
The lovers look to extasy and age,
Great castles floating in the soul off stage
The flowers flee the fall and coming storm,
The hero all he knows just to conform,
To fit the story, he hears the call and song,
And follows true the hero’s path to wrongs,

How long it has been - May 2012

How long it’s been, since I have played my part,
And graced my muse with hollow verse & art,
How long I’ve slacked & left my pen alone,
For want of verse my paper’s screamed and moaned,
Called back, I write, compose and bawl,
For lack of topics, better or at all.
And yet, this muse shall work, though I forgot,
This topic - just as graecian, as I’ve sought -
Suffices, works and is my subject now,
Congratulations Clam, you’re like new snow,
As Alexander Pope once wrote, let’s go!
“In beauty, faults conspicuous grow;
the smallest speck is seen on snow”
A long, long time ago, I saw you play,
Your fingers danced on piano keys like fey,
And thank the lord I do, I do not sail,
Or else I would have struck some rocky gale,
And lost my life, though but another sailor,
Life taken by a Siren’s song, a whaler,
A fisherman or pirate could be but a corpse,
Strewn all over the rocky shores and warfs.
Although my vapid verse grows weaker here,
Please do not fear, but please persevere!
For want of aim, of topics, words to write,
I’ll compliment you as is true and right:
Your golden locks could never be replaced,
Less I were to follow Jason’s pace
And find the golden fleece, or else like Loki,
I could find some dwarves and gold and form some gnocchi,
But no, for pasta’s not as pretty, no,
It’s hard to write these things, when I don’t know,
Just how you move and smile or gaze at things,
Those little idiosyncracies,
They make a person’s beauty breathe, you see,
And well, I don’t know how you are,
But your mind, that’s what I know, it’s now the star!
I like the way you like good things and stuff,
So rarely, seldomly I hear enough,
Of music, see nice paintings talked about
Or love of books, if still by quacks called out.
I like your taste, lament how little we speak,
You’re far too busy, you could fix and tweak
Your schedual for when your school starts up,
And do it all like me, in a few hours,
Mind numbing, but quite short and roll in flowers,
Lay down in meadows, see the clourds and stars,
Make note of how much smarter you are,
Compared to all your brethren stars above
And have enough free time the world to love.
But either way, I’ll live, because… why not?
As I’ve written of the sea, I’ll write of yachts,
Of diving seas for pearls white in my youth,
Those good old days, of salty water, truth,
And jewelry to be, how I miss them!
Oh wait! I call you Clam, and whence that stems,
I’ll tell you now, instead of yachts, you see…
Your poodle, Perla, she’s a pearl, I’ll be!
I’ll dive for her, just like those good, old times,
And look at that! This whole thing even rhymes!

Of mist - Apr 2007

In ethereal veil of mist,
Clouded to hide from all she is,
Life has she to grief forlorn,
Abandoned cries life on her’n mourn.
Hopelessness comes upon the light,
Consuming all in sorrowed might.
In despair’s jaws is she taken,
The beast descends with all forsaken.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - May 1750 - Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Essay on Criticism - May 1711 - Alexander Pope

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss,
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.