Mirror of the Summer pond Reflecting all the living, Coupling calls which some respond And some continue giving. Stiller now than Summer's day When warmth becomes much dearer, Calls still echo on their way About the Winter mirror.
Author: Nick
Roundelay for Tyler
A friend from yesteryear was here, A figure from an erstwhile dream. Companion of the times of sere Bereavement, how is it you seem To be with us despite the years, The many years, of death supreme? Companion of the times of sere Bereavement, how is it you seem In arm's reach or behind my ear? A whispery remembrance teems, To be with us despite the years, The many years, of death supreme. In arm's reach or behind my ear A whispery remembrance teems, And voices from the past I hear. Suspended loss; the eyes still beam To be with us despite the years, The many years, of death supreme. The voices from the past I hear. Suspended loss; the eyes still beam From out the photograph so clear. Sometimes I fear I hear him scream To be with us despite the years, The many years, of death supreme.
Spontaneous Combustion
Spontaneous combustion– One day existing lamely, The next in some construction Macabre explode insanely. A normal life unravels, The sudden moment's mortal Ignition casts the gavel With flaming rage immoral. A ticking bomb awaiting Beneath the surface, flicking Abruptly, detonating So many lives–a sick thing. The symptoms go unnoticed. The temperatures are seldom Surprising say the closest In contact with these venoms. Demise is now endemic, The cases ever rising, Society's aesthetic Is terror-yet-arriving. No questions, no prevention, No scrutiny, discussion, Just ever unrelenting Spontaneous combustion.
My lover the sculptor in weary creation
My lover the sculptor in weary creation, Abstracting the postures of stones and their stations, Designing oft bodies unsuited in nature, Chimeric constructions in future danger That hearken toward an internal cessation. He toils in his labors of ceaseless duration Dismayed and unnoticed, without a relation Or patron whose willing to bargain his wager; His vision remaining opaque in persuasion. More monsters metallic that mime the purgation Of every ideal he aspired to, mutation In nightmares of decades that twisted the picture With nothing to focus on but his denatured, Lamented career of peregrination, His vision remaining opaque in persuasion.
What if actions rise up swaying
What if actions rise up swaying And, unsure, outreach without base, With conceit so hungry, baying For the bloody chance to give chase On acclaim? The footprints one's paced On the sand eroding mutely Needn't overwrite sublime grace Resting soft beneath the fruit tree. They continue unallaying, As when children by a footrace Start spontaneously playing For their tiny glory. Come waste Or success we keep the same taste: Fame, and to be noticed truly For our strife, to find our own face Resting soft beneath the fruit tree. Growing from the sands, surveying, Some within, without; a sad case: Fears of stasis and of staying Hands and minds unlearned, a far place Distant from community's brace; Knowing ever so acutely That we seek mirages not space Resting soft beneath the fruit tree. When they wither will a dumb trace Still persisting resolutely Maybe find another someplace Resting soft beneath the fruit tree?
Two Roundels
His sword Joyeuse, the battle cry His noble French crusaders used. Their enemies in ruin lie Beneath great Charlemagne's Joyeuse. Through shirts of mail and flesh it hews Its fiercely killing exercise; Through muscle, bone, and sinews too. His cavaliers to battle hie, And those who see it are enthused; They look toward their native sky And cry for victory Joyeuse! Sir Roland brave and good Olivier, For God and kingdom everything they gave. They never once did hide or shy away, Not any Peer and not Sir Roland brave. Before the mountain pass they made to stave Four hundred thousand off, or make them pay; Although they each were killed the host was saved. And in the shadow of great Roncevaux lay The foothills where there is a Frankish grave. And there the shadows of high valor play, The recollections of Sir Roland brave.
Another time away, a wilderness
Another time away, a wilderness Where you alone are writhing, fiercely touched In broaching infinite bewilderedness; And all the parties search, but nothing much Turns up. We brothers in arms march the road, I wish it lightened or removed the load. O pray, I say, when you have disappeared; It's seldom someone vanishes but once. I many times went up in smoke and neared The ultimate undoing of a dunce; None other than my shame which shamefully Appraised me of my friends disdainfully. Along the promontory where you walk, How distant do the mighty waves appear? Its sparkling vastness, does it make you balk Like me? Does its immediacy hear Your frantic self-calumniations in Compulsive condemnation of a sin? If only it sufficed for one to wear, Like wretched martyrs to obscure our dreck, A bramble and a tunic made of hair To be a martyr with no background check. Though I should like to have some saintliness, I'm more than blessed to miss ungainliness. Alight on water and the ripples pulse. In certain soils and trails one leaves a trace To varying degrees; it still results In leaving an impression on the place, But since imperfect the residual It's often wished to be invisible. Aloneness keeps perfection as its goal, Its prized possession is a furtive show Where it can be itself without the role It self-assigns; it wants someone to know Its substance, but for fear of what that means It keeps its sordid details out-of-scene. The tight-lipped tyrant in the citadel Of self-abasement locks in bonds and chains, Pronounces any thought as infidel Which holds compassion for the human brain. Those doubts and flaws it hates beyond compare; All small shortcomings are beyond repair. Proclaimed a little insect, just a bug On fragile wings of chance and charity, And is it instinct or a lucky tug Outside the many mirrors, clarity Of insignificance how they avoid The means through otherwise they'd be destroyed? Peregrinating bones beneath the domes Of holy cities who were left unnamed, The penetrating moans that no one homes From gutters emamate in curse of fame Who made them or waylaid them, or the worst, Left them ignored completely from the first. A future time with its magnetic eyes Looks back into our own, and swiftly snaps Its lids and so have caught the poor, dumb flies. It closes on a present tossed like craps. When real life deviates the mask slips down; A demon whispers of a fated crown. The absolutist instinct overcasts The gentle flaws of gems aflame on night's Horizon, and the blackened cloud outlasts Perception as the eminent un-light. The lust for an elusive fact in mist, Ideals are petrified and actions list. The eye of indecision is afraid. The ears that fear derision sensitize. The hand of visions grand is stayed, And in real life is disincentivized. Their less-than-perfect is a less-than-whole, And they beholden to a stillborn goal. What can I say to praise imperfect things? I cannot add or take from what they are. What I could add more value doesn't bring; If I detract it's not a further scar. So I shall sing that greatest virtue sees Their value is that they exist with me.
Dayjob Sestina
An hour away from one more hour away From freedom, when the melancholy gray Will surreptitiously become serene As though our autumn traveled back to green To grant a weary head a respite soft While zephyrs bear their leisure up, aloft. The songbirds' twittering outside, aloft On waves unheard by one who works away Their Sunday afternoon partake in soft Imaginary ballads over gray Delays, or so they feel; like Time's gone green With jealousy to lend to states serene. Though Time is changeless to the true serene, To harbor this one's soul would float aloft, Be big enough to then contain the green Outside from which it feels so far away; To pacify the soul, then all the gray Of concrete as of clouds would feel as soft. The hours continue to expire, a soft, Inviting bed on which to lay serene And careless waits. The schedule on the gray Old page fulfilled and folded, sent aloft Transformed into an airplane, flies away And bucks before descending on the green. One nearly sees the day in all its green Excitement, like a beautiful dress soft And elegant. If one could go away With her forever, could enjoy serene, Unlabored moments that are held aloft Above necessity ignoring gray Reality, who wouldn't trade the gray To go eternally with lovely green? What offering would one not hold aloft Exclaiming, Here! if one were granted soft Sensation in exchange? Alas, serene Experience could carry one away. Well, finally that time has slipped away, The golden day reclines to tender gray. Fatigue gives way or comes to feel serene As one imagines lush and downy green That soon their head will rest upon, as soft As earlier thoughts they had held aloft. The gray of labor wends its way to soft Green pleasures in due time. To glean serene Composure one might fly aloft, away.
We turn around, another face is shown
We turn around, another face is shown That differs on the die we cast before. They say it's all the same old shit y'know. I traveled down to where the brownleaf, flown From bough to gutter back to gust to soar, Has turned around, another face is shown. We walk in winds which menacingly blow Cascades of leaves and slam the open door; They say it's all the same old shit y'know. But when the wrath of transience is sown And the crescendo stoops to subtle roar We turn around, another face is shown. The tendency of energy to go Towards creative ways up off the floor, We say it's all the same old shit y'know. I go to work like everyone unknown And in community commune, once more I turn around, another face is shown. They say it's all the same old shit y'know.
Adelphopoiesis
If Love is that which casts the shroud upon The mindful eye that sees the Cloud in pain; If Love or his the name which focusing On blinds the eye, but then awoke to song The spirit hears the Word of excellence, Then praise be heaped upon this gentle sense. If steadier the loaded pillar's held When two more hands enclasp, fulfilled or healed By how the bountiful creation lives; To see a soul of beauty's face in Love Allows them the Forgetting benefice, So may we sanctify those sentences. This affirmation in that Lordly Word That turns one to a path affording wide Acceptance that envalues every sod, And felt alighting just as He had said, "If Love is held between thee in my name, There I reside as well the holy flame." May we in loving love all things as much, And see the ways the spirits' springs are matched; Call it agape, happiness, or what You may, we feel it when we’re blessed to wait. A beacon though it's not beatitude, May we accept it with due gratitude.
A place for my poems 