Musician's notes can sound unearthly powers,
Astounding hearers' eyes with blinding thunders.
The painter's brush can stroke insightful hours,
Surprising viewers' ears with deaf'ning wonders.
Presenting sounds unviewed and sights unheard,
The writer's pen can eyes and ears astonish.
Art's trinity is music, paintings, words;
Yet oft do artists' senses numb, admonish.
Rehearing sounds, musician's ears indict.
Reviewing sights, the painter's eyes confound.
Resenting words, the writer's senses spite.
Their art's at surface false, in truth profound.
So spite despite, for musing faults and flaws
Do grace disgrace with rousing earthly awes.
Categories:
artifices, art, muse, music, writing,
Form: Sonnet
Balance of time slights the recurring vigil
Country's pride gleans the depleting residual
Annual tears water the artifices above manicured ground
Unextinguished pyre of tinseled youth still seethes 'neath clodded mound
The drum roll of spent days serenade each, muted mime
As ceremonial taps grant ingratiated minds trite stime
Into heroic feats rendered in soldiers' splintered prime
Human shadows hover in the solace of peace sublime
Sodden warriors' token sacrifice remains layered in lime
Sentient wreaths shroud shallower graves
Each, calcified bone now jading memory's slave
Stoic crosses reincarnate the souls of the fallen brave
Devoted progeny patriotic reserves from depleted fibers shave
Categories:
artifices, dedication,
Form: Rhyme
Standing before this refulgent pool of reflection
Rhythm obviates the need for a new direction;
Ocular atrocities; I view my deeds in serious light
Cursed mortal, deigning his will in frantic flight.
Quotidian lies have splendid colors in retrospect
See them pass my way; artifices of hell I suspect,
The mettle to steel myself from these horrid sights
My request inside, my importunate yet buried plight,
Turgid notes I play, to insist granting another day;
I for one can hear a Seraphic call when I pray,
But forgiveness that is not ordinary my only asking;
Allow me then to palaver you with the daily tasking.
Beg? No I shall never do such a wasteful thing;
For my disdain shall undo a most beautiful sting.
Standing before this fuliginous pool of speculation
I see him stand beside me, and ask for my invocation.
Categories:
artifices, faith, introspection, religion,
Form: Rhyme
Lo! Death resides atop that lofty hill
Expanse of Donn, the ruling god of death.
With eponymic marble monoliths-
Desideratum prodigality.
Profligacy! A lifeless lavishness
Which doesn’t make a damn difference
To the conquering worm. Your loftiness
In life, that once encompassing delight,
Is pallid, ghostly in your present stead.
Your measured qualifications decreased
In spite of your chiseled artifices.
Alas! Piteous mortuus somes
Your heighten tombs on top that highest mound
May be as close to heaven you may get.
Categories:
artifices, death
Form: Prose Poetry
Early in the morning do you sometimes get up
and hear everything
from the dog's cough
three yards down
to the lone car on the freeway
way crosstown?
Early in the morning do you sometimes get up
and see everything
from the vacuum in your way
to the bathroom
to the lone star still left
in the lightening sky?
Early in the morning do you sometimes get up
with a mind so clear
that everything you have
ever done or said,
heard or seen,
lived or dreamed,
is perceived in a new light?
And you can understand
as never before
the web of lies, half-truths and artifices
that you have woven into the fabric,
not just of your life but
of so many others,
and the truths that you have chosen
to ignore nudge you in the shower
and cause you to resolve,
as you count out your morning
with coffee spoons,
grab your juice and toast,
to make this day the one you live
as you were meant to,
without guile,
generous in thought and deed,
open to all righteous possibilities.
And early in the morning
as you back your car into the street,
switch the radio on to
"the news you need to know"
do the early morning resolves retreat
with each revolution of your wheels?
Categories:
artifices, allegory, introspection, philosophy, car,
Form: Free verse