My Favorite Personal Poetry

And Some Doodles

Ad Beatricem

Oh Dante, how long is your journey?
Someone waits for you, do not forsake them.
The fruits of your labor are worth the toil.
Do not curse your parched lips.
Do not grumble against weariness.
For they urge you on.
Though thorns tear and stones impede,
Your feet carry you onward.

Who shivers under sunbeams?
So your soul yearns upwards,
For the mind is led astray but the spirit's thirst is focused.
Your lips will be wetted from the wellspring of Beauty.
A font everflowing awaits.
Oh Dante, how long is your journey?

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I get great pleasure from the pedantry of the next poem. Much of the meaning is unlocked by careful attention to each line’s grammatical construction. Don’t let grammar scare you though, read it out loud to balance the grim industro-maniacal commentary with tongue-twisting alliteration.

Man Made Makes

I'm made of man, men make up man.
Most men make.
I made a man, a metal man.
In metal man made many of his mini manly makings.
Man made makings.
Many manly makings means man made for men.
I made a man a metal man.
In mass men made many mini manly makings.
Mass mini makings made many manly makings mean.
Many men took mini metal makings, and mean mini makings made many men a mini mean man
Men making metal means made meanly.
I, made a man, make manly.

A Familiar Tree

The weather has finally begun to change. I sit outside writing this in a still cool evening, finally the trees and I breath a mood in common. After the recent showers, the grass bursts out in verdant verse while, staring down, the solemn branches put on their winter vestments.

What is this? This is not the tree I knew, 
                    the sky is cut so by its branches.
These are not the beams I clung to,
                    I can but steady the arm of this aged ent.
You used to lift me up, wasn't it your top that split the cloud curtain for the sun each morning?
Now I notice the whole dusk above your silhouette.
What is this? This is not the boy I knew.

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This last poem is a reaction to the moments after a goodbye, to the moments after an end. Even pigeons inexplicably waiting on pavement “do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

Untitled

After everything to say is said, sit with me.
I might try to fill the silence, look with me,
We don't need another thing broken.
All the ground is slabbed in dead stone,
But still the birds have their bread.
Whether by bough or beam a nest awaits.
From earth to wing and up and up and up,
He can see over all stone towers
And down and down and down every trail and track
A home to rest and nest to alight.