Aren’t We Lucky?
“I love you”
Between two lovers
May get said
A thousand times.
Today my love
And I exchanged
I Love Yous
But she looked
This time into
My damp eyes
And added this:
“Aren’t we lucky?”
We are indeed.
naught need caught freed lot
we were nothingness and then we coalesced
from nova to planetesimal to moms and dads to us
..
then we had need after need
air water nutrition shelter love purpose
..
we were shanghaied into school systems
some thrived in captivity some were warped
..
we were freed when we were graduated
or let slip
..
now we do not tempt fate for fate is indifferent
but we wonder what place we hold
and what will happen
and how long we have
..
Our next-door neighbor has done voluntary yardwork for Donna without being asked, and turns us down when we offer payment. But when I offered her a drawing of her favorite flower she said OK.
My endeavors as a pencil artist have been fraught with stutterstep start-stopping. It is only when I get stubborn that, rusty and arthritic as I am, I put in enough time on a single drawing to get beyond the teeth-clenching frustration and into some true joy, building tones and feeling the image stir with life.
This drawing was only supposed to take a day or so, but I kept hesitantly scratching at it, almost throwing it away a couple of times. Now the graphite is finally beginning to cooperate, and the path to completion has clarified. Three or four more hours ought to do it, maybe, depending how the erasure phase goes.
Glad to be back yet again. Here’s hoping the next few days see a new, different drawing well started.
soldiers dig
trough becomes trench
and diggers hunker down and huddle
peek and fire
fortify and advance
dig in bug out die heroically
or inadvertently
with outmoded munitions
bought under entrenched conditions
to perpetuate a madness
that seems to be here to stay.
..
it is time to dig
a different way.
absolutism absolution
there is a central limit
and eke a second law
and if your headlights dim it
may not be due to flaw
..
the circle has no endpoint
the oval has no teen
the hyoid has no bent joint
some pintos never bean
..
some mountains are not rooted
some fountains come from pens
some woodwinds are not fluted
and ifless elses thens
perambulate in limbo
and percolate unbidden
a truth is falsehood’s shim though
and most fine sites are hidden
Diabetics Gone Wild
Two adult-onsetters
Going, going, gone
Throwing good sense to the winds
Bringing Sugar on.
Ordering four waffled scoops,
Calories galore,
Glucose level through the roofs–
May we have some more?
Oaths
I pledge my effort to this day;/May zero lassitide dismay.
I affirm that I will do my utmost to seek truth for the rest of my life.
There are sources of joy beyond impulse satisfaction, and I will value the former more than the latter.
Every person is distinctly different from me, and I will do what I can to respect that difference.
I swear with all my heart I am not done.
I’ll Tell You the Truth About Love
(A response to W. H. Auden’s “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”)
A poet named Dubya Aitch Auden
Once asked for the Truth about Love,
Untarnished, unsoiled, unsodden?
We hope and pray heaven above.
I think of a Hepburn named Audrey,
And then of another named Kate,
Who prove that Truth needn’t be tawdry,
And that Love is both wild and sedate.
..
So I say, late lamented friend Dubya,
That the Truth about Love is elusive.
Sometimes Love may seduce and then club ya
Sometimes Truth is not gladness-conducive.
But the Truth about Love is it’s needed,
And can beckon and cure the uncouth,
And the Truth is it’s lovely when heeded,
And is much that I Love about Truth.
My work in progress has progressed to its final stage, not as polished as it might be but also not as artificially slick as it might be. On to a new one!
