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Best Poems Written by Nicholas Rao

Below are the all-time best Nicholas Rao poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Dystopia

Here a mansion, there a metal cube,
Now a street, and now a numbered route,
Here a faith and there an attitude,
Now pajama bottoms, now a suit –
So many colors blended into white!

I watch the people pass like frantic ants
All vaguely trusting that they share a hill,
As if in some symbolic foreign dance,
Seeing no end, they yet possessed the skill.

Details un-wed by purpose flood my sight.
What shall I make of this strange unity,
Both cause and balm of modern man’s frail soul,
That drowns his need of meaning in a sea
Of diverse efforts toward an absent goal?

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Epistemology In Fog

When I look out on a fog-swept night
Of black abysses and milky light
Seamlessly, softly inter-curled,
In human knowledge I see the world.

For the boundless pit of the human plight
Enshrouds the knowable, stops our sight,
Save where bursts from the light below
Speak the insatiable quest to know.

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10-22-14: In the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle

In the beautiful, grand stillness 
Of a place for the transcendent, 
Like a lately-faded illness 
Seems the ugliness of now,
And I dare not look behind me, 
Lest the simpering of the finite, 
In the form of unctuous daylight 
Beat its hatred on my brow.

The solemnity enthralling 
Captivates imagination,
And I hear the ages calling
That wed purity and youth;
And I dream, however briefly, 
That the evils that surround me, 
That the hostile world around me 
Vanishes for want of truth.

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The Shelter

A home am I for friendless thoughts,
	Lonely thoughts that are centuries strange
	And wouldn’t a hostile country range,
For they fear her frigid and mindless taunts.

My face is pleasant, and strangers smile.
	Most walk past, but some look in
	And catch the shadows and hear the din
Of the outcast thoughts and a faded while.

But, hearing the voice of the new and known,
	Wordless, they turn from the thoughts within,
	For they are the moment’s kith and kin,
The thoughts eternal, and I… alone.

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Anticipation

Curtains for the romance when the fellow’s got the girl –
And for the ocean’s beckon when the sails at last unfurl –
For the lure of things familiar – for the worth of what one wins.
The adventure always ends when it begins.

We strive to own those things alone that wither in the quest,
And when with mystery they mock us most we deem them best.
For courage dies in victory, temptation dies in sin.
Adventures always end when they begin.

And ah, my wild mind creates so much to be desired,
I wish my own destruction when I wish it all acquired,
For adventures always end when they begin,
And what hope exalts must fall when disillusion settles in.

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Past the Pane

Past the pane, the newly-risen sun
Embodies hopes to rise, to peak, to wane,
And here within, the music has begun:
Fearful, aggressive songs of despair and pain.

And on my mind’s horizon swarm
The strange possessors of my form,
	A-bustle to the rhythm of the sounds that sting my soul.

And, as I gaze into the blue beyond,
The universal of my heart’s pursuit,
I call to God and pray my echoing voice…
But ah! my voice is mute.

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10-16-14: In a Conference Hall

The grey chairs form a perfect line of grey,
Like stagnant, grey-clad businessmen at work.
I have no life to give this lifeless day.
Blind, blundering Heart! Will you drain everything to grey?
My longings grab the life from surer joys,
	Shunning what is and grasping for what seems,
	Restless for self-elaborating dreams,
Tossing aside my gifts like they were broken toys.
Poor heart, how will you ever know your end
When you have dreamt yourself into a cell
Gazing on shades of all your fear and fancy spell?