Pearls and Platitudes

Good men are not made by law,
Nor wise men made by books,
Beauty is an attribute
That's sometimes matched
with looks.
Love is such a lovely thing,
It makes the time fly by,
But it’s a sad song that we sing
When it's time
that makes love fly.

 

 

 

Getting it Done

February’s last hurrah —
wind rattles through bare limbs.
Birds fluff their feathers
and sing a glad song.

Spring is on its way…
Mother Nature seems to be saying,
Stop labeling me!

There are no compartments
to contain me, not even
on calendar pages.

In a monologue
without fences
she blows cold breath.
The meadow waits for April,

Bees wait for flowers,
Back streets bask in neon.
Fake mystics practice levitation
without success

and then there’s poets,
pen in hand they whistle
and write the sun.

Inspired by Chagall

Synesthesia

          Mist veiled sky and seawall,
          an expanse of ocean, gray
          as the fading sight
          of soaring wings.
          The tourists have gone home.

          White sand as hard as rock
          beneath booted feet
          lines  winter's frozen shore
          and yet
          August voices resound.

          Tang of salt scent escapes
          the ice, recalls sunny days
          of summer fun
          as sounds of laughter
          ring  in memory's  ears.

Overnight Success

 

 

They asked me for a poem.
I’ve been waiting for years
on stone benches;
suddenly
I am afraid.
Life is full of contradictions.
I roll down hillsides
trying to catch butterflies.
Some would say
it happens to the best of us.

One of these days
when Spring blossoms
fall to a hard rain, 
when the parking lot
is full of gulls
and the grass is crushed
by growing pains,  I’ll take pen
in hand and write a poem
about jello. Maybe then
they’ll understand.

 

 

 

~

Places I Have Been

     In the morning when the dew
     is frosting on the lawn
     before the day has had its way
        with dawn and fragile dreams

     we speak of traffic and the sunrise
     as we hold tight to memories
                        of faces seldom seen
     and the sky becomes an ocean
     and the day becomes a sigh
     and the morning sun keeps rising
               'til it reaches noonday high

     and the song becomes a melody
     that rambles through my mind
     of faces that are seldom seen
               and hearts that intertwine.

The Best Is Yet to Be

Shallow the worries that well within
When fondest dreams are foolish whims,
Gray the skies and dark horizon
When wasted days come to an end.

Brighter the light of lessons learned
When inner thoughts are outward turned,
When bother seems to overwhelm
A feeble captain is at the helm.

With shoulders squared and jaw line set,
The best of all is coming yet.
Smiling eyes and glad hearts that sing
Will take away that awful sting

Of blinding tears and deep regret.
The best of all is coming yet.


 

Gone Missing

The wind blows warm,
The wind blows cold,
Summer comes and Summer goes
and the tides keep rolling in.

Little Jenny had a vision
or maybe it was just suspicion,
A bit of hell, a bit of heaven and
she was somewhere in between.

People with their fishhook hands
pulled at her with their demands,
Jenny tried so hard to understand
that's just how people are.

Caught up in their silly games,
the cake was left out in the rain
and Jenny's heart was filled with pain.
After all, she was just a little girl.

In this life I'll never know
what broke the straw
and made Jenny go, I only know
that Jenny doesn't live here anymore.

The wind blows warm,
The wind blows cold,
Summer comes and Summer goes
but Jenny doesn't live here anymore.

Memories

Echoes of a Rose

Displaced Poet

for Joseph Brodsky who said:
“The dolce vita is chocolate and champagne.”


He bought bread
in the little shop on the corner,
had it wrapped
mostly for the mystery
and the precious paper,
a blank slate for his poetry
inspired by mingled scents
of poppy seed and yeast,
and a yearning for his homeland
where loaves were crustier
and poets were noted
for their hunger.

smzang

Willowdown 1953-2016 (memorial pages at) http://www.wordflair.net/willowdownmemorial.html

A Lasting Gift

Hark! I hear the silver bells,
the joyful carolers caroling.
They sing about a wondrous birth;
such love their song is sharing.

Many paths have brought them here
where all have meshed as one.
A happier sound impossible
than voices raised to praise the Son.

Even now (two thousand years!)
though peace has long been riven,
we celebrate that Holy Child
and the miraculous gift He’s given.

Before the News

With sleep in its eyes
a new day yawns
Mist swirls

Pines stretch
like great specters emerging
out of the darkness

A symphony
of morning sounds
the orchestra invisible

This could be
the time before man
before madness

Freeze frame
this moment
of peace

In the Days Before Winter by smzang

The stark blue hills,
                   smoky soft at dawn…
Painter, poet
save them as they stand today
                                          unknowing

 

of the forest’s thinning,
unaware they’ve been mortgaged to the hilt
by guilty men who lack the heart
to stand up in a storm.

 

Even the kind hearted grow small
against the rising sun.
Smart and modern
we adjust creation until we have no home,
but I babble…

 

It is the hills that stand the test of time,
Soldiers fall like leaves, trees become poor poems
and those stacks that belched their smoke stand idle.
Bricks fall, fill the empty belly of the beast that fed us.

 

Ivy tangles and turns brown, but every evening
in the shadow of a day that’s done,
the hills stand tall in tortured stone,

They do not fear the dark.

Come morning when the sun is at a softer slant,
the smoky haze of day gives gentler hue
to hills that cup their hands
to catch the thunder.

 

 

 

Obligato by smzang

Fathers' Day by smzang

A Series of Near Misses by smzang

The razor edge
of brutal honesty
takes its pound of flesh

You wince
when it hits too close
and I

 

feel the sting
of martyrdom
when your aim finds home

 

Then
as if ruthless truth
is not enough

 

there are the lies
the flung arrows
venomous as any bite

 

but these
are just the odd moments
of discontent

 

We retreat
then reunite
a truce

 

born of more
than pinkie swear
this better and worse.



 

A Withering Revision by smzang

In the rush to revise
truth fades,  Like history
the vision is rewritten.

Once luminous,
it is growing dim,
that day in the sun

that caused me
to pick up my pen
and write