Short Tamped Poems

Seeds of remembrance.
Bulbs and tubers
tamped under soil,
a burial that isn’t death....

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Between your fingers slip the diamonds of each day;
Seconds, minutes, hours as well
Are strewn like cinders in the muddy mire away,
Tamped and trampled where they swiftly fell.

Inside your palm, faint diamond shapes remain—
Outlines, etched from clutching tight—
These lines remind you of gemmed years upon the wane…
Diamonds gone. Soon comes the onyx night....

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ODE TO MY PIPE

Whomsoever doth smoke this pipe,
Should be prepared for an easier life,
For the stress and strain of the troubled soul
Are as but vapour in its bowl.

When filled to brim with fragrant stuff
Then tamped well down, and lighted up,
The essence from its mouth will flow
To ease your path where ere you go,

For the guardians wrapped about its stem,
Are the nemesis of weaker men,
And all your pain shall be but sod
Beneath the feet of your chosen God....

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Ashamed
   I see what you have and I want it.
I am immediately ashamed.
   Indignant over the fact that these feelings could breed with in me;
dismayed at the buckeye of truth that may lie dormant.
   Time has a way of encouraging one on their way.
To feel crowded and herded onto the paths that are tamped down before us.
   Expectation in the abstract is just a thought.
However, once that possibility comes anywhere near, it is time to move on.
   An epiphany cures all....

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