What was created to expose
is now a fortress just to hide
A bastion of higher learning
within a haven safe for lies
Where discourse once was treasured
the ivy droops and sighs
With comfort their true measure,
the dilettantes still cry
Plato is disgusted,
John Locke is more than riled
As a millennia of learning
is mocked in false denial
Students weak and wounded
from those lessons never learned
Their tomorrow’s but a doomsday
their futures sure to burn
Those words were there to save them
both the hated and revered
All truth in dialectics
—now abandoned by their fear
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)
Between Two Lies
The past doesn’t pass away quickly enough
with the future on the run
The present now an echo between two lies
—as the moment never comes
(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2018)
Eighty Years Undone
I was not alive in 1910
yet things were pretty good
No sleepless nights or stomach aches
always understood
In the quiet calm a promise lay
a portent yet to come
And born I was despite myself
—now eighty years undone
(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 1991)