Your eyes have grown tired
hunting the fox and owl
You no longer hear peace
when the ball is in your court
Pay attention to yourself
The fields have grown trees
you walk bare footed on sandy loams
As the World seizes and falls on itself
The voices stand 40 seashells away
Wanting to walk on water
Are you taken in by their promises
Give me the hardy breed that thrives in the arid wild
The tougher kind that walks with a sure unfaltering stride,
The restless heart that without fear the mountains roams;
Not the sissy softer variety that favors the mushy loams.
I need those manly swines with sun-burned sinew
Not the convenience-seeking boys stained with dew,
I reward the uncertain gambling of the wandering type
Not the sure stocks invested with opportunistic hype.
I have been here for years but a generation comes and goes
And yet some think they can predict me with their fake laws,
I read the speculative greed of fellows from a safe mile away
For my expansive experience spans a million years and a day.
I pick a man of valor from the faking crowds,
In his quiet among the city’s clambering sounds;
None can ever cheat my heart-scanning eye that sees
Beyond the snow-capped peaks and the roaring seas.
And my ears are ever un-waxed to listen
To the crackling labors of any gifted pen
That scribbles this account of my fickle nature
So men may know the traits that give me pleasure.
Villanelle : There are more poets than there are poems
There are more poets than there are poems
Eveybody writes with some poets’ tongue
Do duckweed and mugwort breed well in loams
If only those who teach could write poems
The world will be spared many gasps in lung
There are more poets than there are poems
And there’d be less of those who push poems
And even less of those who parse the tongue
Do duckweed and mugwort breed well in loams
Who says this be damned ever in dungeons
Let billions rant and rage in their own tongue
There are more poets than there are poems
Words mean what they seem beyond their poems
To hell with those who demean words with dung
Do duckweed and mugwort breed well in loams
Every human has a right to write poems
As every bird empties its sing-song lung
There are more poets than there are poems
Do duckweed and mugwort breed well in loams
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
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