Dammed if she didn’t

Slowly building mute frustration:

Will it ever flow again?

Sometimes words come swift and giddy;

Sometimes no ink in my pen.

Hours that turn to days, unanswered

Questions from my twitching hands.

Over time, wild space reserved for

Writing falls to life’s demands.

Nestled in warm breeze and scratchy

Grass, I sit and feel the page.

Now, on mud-cracked basin, flows a

Stream released from my mind’s cage.

Like the fractious cry that soars from

Tiny lungs first tasting air,

Words, cascading, flood me with

Relief from hope’s expectant stare.

Rebel for Life

Roots crushed by asphalt, Iris stands her ground.

In everything hopeless, hope can be found.

Troy

We saw humanity itself,

Cut into flesh and bone,

Of young and old:

That love and love’s self-righteous fire

Ignite the icy flame

Of hatred cold;

That cowardice and bravery

Alike can end in tears,

Or beauty hold;

That jealous rage and parents’ love

Are sibling seeds to sow

The end of days.

Competing vanity of gods,

Like clouds in still water:

Our mirrored ways.

The tide is changed by whim, or turned

By heartfelt quest for truth,

But wet it stays.

In Homer, just as now, we live for show,

And miss the mad adventure as we go.

The richness and the poverty of all

Is in the savage beauty of her fall.

Underground Poetry

To burst through the blank:

It’s harder now.

Quick full days that laugh

At slower life

And suck the spark,

In thrall to life’s quick call.

To find the thought space:

Long moment where

Noise fades and my eyes,

To finger point,

Find their click in

Dream haze of writing ways.

On hot London tube,

With resting heads,

And all the world in

Smells of spice, dry

Smoke, leather and

Old flat seats. My mind, at

Last, can nestle in.

It’s sweeter now:

For long empty wait.

I write the old

Inkwell of tears

And heart spring joy of art.