Category Archives: 1, poem, poetry,

NEW BEGINNIBGS

the theme of
the poetry competitions
was “new beginnings”

so I worked
on my entry

my poem
on new beginnings

but try as hard as I might
could not complete it

every
single line

a new beginning

COMBATANT

not sure
if I am.a
combatant

not sure
if i could
fight my way
out of any
dark space

but when
it comes to
combatants
you can’t, best
not
take any
chances

need ro
send me
back to my
maket before
I can utter
a word

out of my
lyimg, treasonous
treacherous,
dangerous mouth

or here, on this paper

CRIED AND DIED

Empire
he called himself

he was
Ragnar Lothbrok
on steroids

Gengis Khan
with an
attitude problem

at age five
he took down
every toy
store in his
home town

at age twenty-six
the inmates of
a maximun security
prison
broke out
in order to escape
from him

he had the whole text
of Titus Andronicus
tattoed across
his body

and when
the war of final
days was declared

he laughed so loud
he cried and died.

ENTIRELY

getting so thin and boney
that ghosts and spirits
pass right through me

magic, quantum
tunneling, near
death experience

I leave it to you
to call
it what you will

and
depend on you
to put yourself in
my shoes
before they

disappear entirely

SO

moonlight scattering
its silver
across what
was earlier a
turquiose sea

night
has now turned
dark and forboding

sharks out there
maybe more hunting here
than when
the Sun was rising
or at its zenith

you are not thinking shark
but strumming the chords
of a tune on
a battered guitar
you have had since childhood

somehow
    it strikes up a harmony,
musical counterpoint,
with
   the roar of the waves
as they release their energy
crashing
     onto the white beach
as boiling surf

surf and your song
         so sad of
a sudden

our planet
      really fragile and
we
  have made
it so

a rogue rock
     might do it

vast as a cathedral
as it hurtles through space

pre-empting some
           quietly insane member
of our
species
    depressing some button
launch codes
checking out

and yet
the roar of the waves
hits us with such power
that we
    cannot but conclude
it will last
until
   the end of time
forever and ever

even though (as indeed
the sharks
       might tell us)
it is dying by degrees

NOW YOU DON’T

I was thinking of
the lucidity of a winter haiku

waiting
for the season to change

but the Earth
changed the seasons

the weather cataclysmic
and haiku
and let it be said

the writers of haiku
all disappeared