Lost In Dismay (+10)

Do you spend twenty percent of your time

  acquiring your beliefs

 

And eighty percent of your time

   in defense

 

Do you have blinders on

  about what you conceive

 

In fear of the critics

  pretense

 

Are your views narrow focused

  and then watered down

 

As the truth disavowed

  slips away

 

Is your memory tainted

  in times left to waste

 

As your efforts

  —retreat in dismay

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2019)

 

 

The Answers Rebuffed

 

Can you own the present,

  while renting the past

 

Can you steal back the truth,

  from the future at last

 

Will the reasoned excuse,

  ever be reason enough

 

For all questions to merge

  —with the answers rebuffed

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

 

The Cloak Of Forgiveness

 

With death on the floor,

he tried to hang up his salvation

 

But the coat hook to eternity

was full

 

The closet door to redemption,

 locked from the inside

 

The cloak of forgiveness

—for someone else to wear

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

One Question

 

The beginning of all beginnings,

the end of all ends

—one question in-between

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

 

Centered Return

 

Memory of light,

vision of God

 

Centered return

—orbit of love

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)  

 

 

Thy Lord

 

Where fixes the point of no return,

fixes the point assured

 

Where fixes the point of no return

 —it’s there you’ll find thy Lord

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

Threads

 

The tailored line,

bespoken Poet

 

With needle sharp,

to hem and sew it

 

Where thoughts as threads,

stitch out as whole

 

Whose words once seamed

—contain my soul

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

Scorched And Burned

 

Seventeen children

on a highway to hell

 

Thumbs out—noses down,

perdition rings their bell

 

Seventeen children,

their backs now fully turned

 

The piper calls them blindly

—their futures scorched and burned

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

 

New Space

 

It’s those desolate interludes

that create the new space

 

For our souls to exhale

—and our dreams to escape

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)

 

 

The Mask

 

Do you synthesize your anger,

do you cauterize the burn

 

Do you anesthetize the wonder,

as your dreams are drugged and scorned

 

Is your judgment tempered badly,

with emotion fiery hot

 

Is your vision colored madly,

by your choices—sold and bought

 

Does your music play reclusive,

do your words fall off the page

 

Does ego kill your last excuse

—that mask you can’t explain

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016) 

 

 

Last Verse

 

I never chose to live among you,

and choose to die alone

 

My thoughts in writing here beside me

—last verse my ticket home

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)