perhaps I die ignored
            silence my reward
                   neither from nor toward ...

                                  but waiting.

I'm bipolar
Which means I'm sick a lot
Wish to be a wounded healer

Haven't seen her
In almost 30 years
But yes, inside I feel her

Poetry is honesty
It crosses every border

Frodo Lives!
Sam does too
The Ring destroyed in Mordor

A difficult to manage gift
Says the Nurse re: bipolar disorder.

Life along the Liffey
Riverruns and keeps on running

In this misty musical city
I keep playing, praying, punning

Post-modernity arrives
I reJoyce and am not shunning

Though much is taken, much abides
Including silence, exile, and cunning

my at times excessive momento mori
  so today we play, swimming story
     cucumber sushi, not yakitori...

                      arigato

Midnight train to Georgia
      Atlanta aquarium
        hello, old friend

Adonis in Atlanta
I too need a creed

Adonis in Atlanta
Soul to soul I bleed

Adonis in Atlanta
Be strong and take heed

Adonis in Atlanta
The endless aching need!

Sacramento when I was young
Lovely Ms. Kathryn Orr
California sun
Sacramento Bee

Basketball with my friends
Top 40 radio sung
1980s well begun
Distant memory

             xie xie ni

That quote out there, I say
Edmund Burke still true today

Not much you can do about evil, he replies
But like Zacchaeus, give up your money ties

I mention Fr. Greeley and madness
No way to know if he knows my sadness

My mind anxious, troubled, fairy-filled
Illusion? Confusion? Mystery - willed?

Still unsure, but the Book of Kells is divine
Like to think they might give me a sign

                          ☘️

           Good luck in rhyme!

The time of science fiction
The time of science fact
The time of aliens?
How would we react?
I post a bit of Facebook
I mail my Uncle Jack
I take a few steps forward
Sometimes I do look back

              I attack.

My despair
My desperation
Dread sensation

The architecture in DC is interesting
Politics, influence, beauty, money
City at Night! City at Night!

Worth the drive
Worth the cost
Gratefully my son

Michael Gerson is thankfully dead
George W. Aging
Andrew Greeley was right

53 and she still wears boots
Maybe a sportswriter turn the paging
The Valley of the Gun

                       Protection!

someone to love you
in all your damaged glory

someone to listen
to your most intimate story

someone in the Silence
when the angels do implore Thee

                              yearning!

From one perspective mental illness
From another mysticism, synchronicity
                  One not-two

     The doctors cannot separate them
                        Can you?

Lifelong religious obsessions
But religion not for me

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
In Seattle 2 did 3

Springsteen in Louisville
Dylan in DC

I walk alone in solitude
My children yearningly

             Cedar tree

tired, long and lonely
grateful for the rest
ambiguity
even at my best

European trains
Sunlit Italy
Latin, a little Latin
Shakespeare's tragedies

                JMU

Poets live, not critics
Making in the night

Wait with private patience
Wait upon the light

Centuries may pass
Centuries. They might.

Rescue me, dear reader
Hummingbirds in flight

Americans living in mortal terror
The invasion force within

Residing in the Empire of Error
Trump their Evil Twin

The Other they hate is themselves
Walled within their sins

They had their vote, the world took note
Isolating the ICE they’re in.

Says Bob Dylan

Kali lives, watches melt
     time decays, she’s not svelte
            amidst despair, Hope is felt


resist, resist - as Kaepernick knelt.

The ascetic medieval saint
Noticed Mr. Chesterton
Is indeed all skin and bones
Much like other religious men

But if you look quite carefully
You may become surprised
For in his evident torture
You see he opens wide his eyes

His gaze it ventures forth
A world is what he sees
He kneels as Christians do
But when he rises from his knees

He walks upon the Earth
Sees creatures large and small
And if his name is Francis
He loves them each and all

We have mysteries within
I can feel them too
I revere true Buddhist wisdom
No dualism between me and you

But Chesterton is quite right
A mystery most profound
When we open wide our eyes
Being itself indeed abounds

The very Soul of the Universe
Still yet another name for God
Contracts and then creates
Gives birth to things so odd

Hummingbirds and herons
Chartres cathedral found in France
My uncle Marty, a man for others
Beautiful women who love to dance

We awaken in a world
We ourselves did not create
We gaze in wonder for a brief moment
And with joy we patiently wait

What will we discover?
Are cosmic seas near distant stars?
Do they also teem with Fish?
Is their Creator One like ours?

mestizo shamans in the shantytowns
up to the sky, from the Abyss that’s down
     souls grown sick, trouble all around
         ecstatic kiss, health rebounds

work we speak of Scotland, Turkey, Spain

   the Pope is in Panama, me in the rain  

 the broken grace of Leonard Cohen again

                 his words, my soul
              strong Hallelujahs roll!

Mis amigos at BP
We talk a bit
Both Spanish and English
And Spanglish we say

Little restaurant
Little statue
In green
To Our Lady of Guadalupe

In Oregon, In Spain, In Mexico
                   In Carolina

We pray.

The Jesuit kicked me out
No more Catholic book club for me

I posted Mr. Markson
He didn't like to see

Got my car to travel
Travel quietly

Just live my little life
Prince and Sting cds

No cosmic battle
daily destiny

Soon to see my 3!

also an any old kind of day
   just work and lunch and the drive away
       nothing, Dad, my children say
           and then the video games they play

And yet, in Scarlet Town where he lay
         Sweet William in the month of May
        and like Mistress Mary, I too pray.

I slowly drift towards death
The sadness comes on strong

Not sure where to go
Not sure where I belong

I have no career
I like the old school songs

I am 52
Am I late along?

first as tragedy, then as farce
American politics on its ****
Who could possibly the President parse?
The population needs an angry divorce.

3 days in Vienna
All that beautiful snow
2 days in Tel Aviv
A wedding, doncha know

Don't really have friends
Grateful for my dad
Time tick tocks
Sweet Sir Galahad

Vegetarian nachos
Basketball tv
In my solitude
Wasn't meant to be

            3733

amidst my life’s mess
      to put myself to the test

daily work, daily rest
      Galaxy Quest!

Sincerely,

Todd Witherell

Fibonacci sequence, Dali’s curious kind
          Last Supper lingering
     our photo there easy to find

The Golden Ratio in nature
         galaxies, hurricanes, cones of pine

Which clearly leads to the question:

     Is the Universe an Idea
           In God’s mathematical mind?

Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
Both atheists
Both French (sort of - Camus from Algeria)
Both live through the horror of World War 2
Both believe life is meaningless.
Absurd.
Both have lots of affairs
(But Camus is handsome
And Sartre is, um, not)

Both resist the Nazis
But Camus says Sartre
Was a writer who resisted
Not a resister who wrote.

Sartre's titles: Nausea, No Exit, Being and Nothingness. And he believes that
Hell is other people.

Camus: I rebel; therefore, we exist.

Rollin’ and Tumblin’ on Farrington Road
Who could have known future-foretold?

In Corvallis it started
Marijuana was sold

Been drunk just one time
Victor quite bold

Jeffrey Dahmer, she threatened
Then God bless you, she told

Weird mystic madness
And still I grow old

Don’t know what it means
But the moonlight - Behold!

Incomprehensible life stories
Ponyboy, stay gold!

Please help me relax
When anxiety attacks
The sound of flowing water
Safe inside my home

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
In Santa Fe did I
Silence of the Lambs
In the Y the Life of Pi

       relax. relax. relax.

                     try

I've moved too much, moved too much
Moved too much, I know

Kamakura Buddha
Freshly falling snow

My son is gentle joy
We wander to and fro

A little Christmas gift
New for you yo yo

      little. flow. slow.

If my private life ever suddenly explodes
Phantoms, fires on the road
Keep me calm, courage, caring code
No big deal. Fox Theater - Tom Joad.

Wanna be read, but fear American fame
Yes, I confess, obsessed by names
Philosophy like a Canadian basketball game
Toledo, Ohio - I stare at the blue flame

                 Green Arrow. I aim.

I quote T.S. Eliot
Saying that true poetry
Can communicate
Before it is understood

She says
It doesn't have to be understood
True poetry
Is a kind of shared privacy

Perhaps. Probably so.
But I still reach out, dear reader.
She once thanked me for reaching out
But then said I romanticized First Love.

Capital letters can be Platonic
The Form of First Love
Exoplanets spin above
My hands, her gloves

               Andy Dove

I don’t deny delusions
not all who claim do see

but I do perceive the love drops
come from the Cosmic Tree

I ask not for perfection
far less for certainty

just adventure, moonlight, sunlight
music’s mystery

despite my fears and failings
Mother Mary, Let it Be!

I too have the judgmental thing
Take it easy. Take it slow.
Wait to see the truth.
Speak it yoko yo yo.

Peace come rare for me
Peace like falling slow
Torment does torment
Up above, then down below

My favorite color is green
Vincent's was yellow
Carolina blue
Maybe I'll never know

Time it keeps on slippin'
Moonlight still does glow
The deer appear at night
In the trees the wind does blow

                  So...

Thich Nhat Hanh
Walks through Prague
Hears the tolling bell

Moon aglow
St. Charles snow
Summer rolls as well

        Saigon, Ishmael.

It can always get worse
And it most likely will

George W. Lied
So that he could ****

California sun
Mansions on Fire

Suffering, Suffering
Caused by desire

Zen Center silence
Distant is Rome

Hagia Sophia
Kublai Khan pleasure dome

Philosophy fails
All is unknown

Americans make you
Go it alone

           Apophis!

we meet at the playground and converse
      Ramanujan, Ramayana, Bharata
          Sanskrit and Latin connect
              Thailand and Ireland
                          as well

we share, a bit more aware, and disappear
              into the grey blue rain

                 temple song refrain

                  towards the sky
                      Quinlin Jai

      O graceful heart, grant us victory!

I'm not an Academic
Cannot give a lecture
When I die there will not be
A Witherell Conjecture

Once I was a teacher
Teacher of the tweens
Now I live alone
Rothko blues and greens

Women are unkind
Smoke gets in your eyes
I.P. Freely
George W. Lies

2 prayers for Chicago
3 for Susan Meek
7 for my sons
7 days a week

     ****. Nerd. Absurd. Geek.

Tonight I take the Downbound Train
Plato’s Phaedo as it rains
Is my Quixotic Quest in vain?
Is it I, or has my country gone insane?
Regardless I relentlessly remain ...

10 Cloverfield Lane, Midnight Special
            I duly did go to Houston
                 ever-lovin' light

hopelessness is strange
it’s true and isn’t true

leads some to suicide
leads some to sing the Blues

decay, decline, despair
I sense them all around

I’ve sought hope all my life
I’ve sought what can’t be found

Time degenerates
Born downward toward the grave

A brutal but careless thief
What then can be saved?

Endurance and persistence
And Impossible Dreams

Fantasies and jail-break plans
Things not as they seem

Yes, we’ll be defeated
Time will be no more

Traceless, placeless, faceless
Nowhere, Nevermore

Yet in this given moment
I call forth to create

A couple rhyming couplets
Like pairs, they procreate

Kindness is true courage
That’s what makes life great.

sensitivity, despair, weakness
timidity, internal terror, freakness
love, pain, philo Sophia, meekness

                        agonia
                don’t know whya

Within I sense a silence
Too deep for any names
Unheard, Unseen, Unknown, Unless
It lingers and remains

Above, beyond, before, beneath
All words that humans speak
Searching ever always for
The other silent ones who seek

In solitude and dailiness
Apophatically Greek
Ascending Mt. Olympus
Mysteriously meek.