What is the value of being old
if you’re not a cheese,
a wine,
a vintage car,
or an oil painting by some dead Italian.
A graduation corsage pressed flat in dear diary.
Love letter bliss-scented with ignorance.
Yearbook incantations remind you that you could have been…

a contender.

Why are some old things revered and others reviled?
Some adored and others abandoned like treasured toys we’ve broken or outgrown.

I see a future of stewed prunes,
crude rooms, rheumy eyes
filled with vacant stares
and the smell of things
I’d forgotten, I’d forgotten.

We all dine at the mortality table
but some of us leave early
so as not to get stuck with the check.

© Copyright 2017 Robert C. Leung

Is the nature of egoic fecundity
a reflection of human profundity?

Or is it just that we are blessed
with ourselves to be obsessed.

And thus to give no further thought
to all the wrongs we have wrought.

In spite of all the things we’re taught,
Even though the sacred we have sought
No peace of mind have we bought.

And no true purchase have we yet found,
Upon the steps of higher ground.
Hollow though this promise sounds.

Perhaps as humans we’re bound to see
if there’s a chance that we might be
Better than we thought we’d be.


© Copyright 2018 Robert C. Leung

O mighty, tiny heart,
One thousand blessed beats a minute,
beating time, beating gravity, beating death
O mortal metronome
ticking seconds into that certain future
Little wonder Aztec gods bow,
and Nazca lines testify to your
glorious, thirsting, bursting
hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm of life

now still

An opening closed you could not see.
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm

O purple thud
O feathery fall from grace
cradling leaf and Gulliver’s hand,
hourglass of heartbeats run out,
lived and gone as never was
Are we responsible for the things that die
because of things they cannot see
things we cannot see
things we cannot

(The Nazca Lines  are a series of large ancient geoglyphs stretching for miles in the Nazca Desert, in southern Peru. One portrays a hummingbird.)

(With apologies to Dr. Seuss aka Theodor Seuss Geisel)

Green eggs and ham is what I pick
I like my poems un-iambic.

To much pomp and circumstance
Has me gazing quite askance.

I ask your patience Sam I am
For poetic posing I must slam.

My poetry I like to rhyme
In simple form and simple time.

And have it held with just the same
Respect and even mild acclaim.

A birthday card I shall not ****
For that to me would be a sham.

Nor baptism or bar mitzvah
I just do not have the chutzpah.

No wedding notice or get well
Poetic arrogance we must quell.

Each greeting billet I shall defend
As one of our true brethren.

Yes poetry indeed I’ll slam it
No synecdoche* or enjambment.*

I’ll have no Haibun* or Kyrielle*
No Triversen* or Villanelle*.

Is simple rhyme anymore silly
Than didactic forms we praise so shrilly?

I do not like to follow forms.
I do not like these contrived norms.

It is the freedom of poetry
that first attracted me to thee.

And why can’t all poetics be
Of an equal equality.

Perhaps it’s not the forms I hate
But the pompousness they doth dictate.

I will not stand for Seussian abuse
I relish odes to eggs chartreuse.

And so I say to thee dear Sam
My poems are happy as they am.

© Copyright 2018 Robert C. Leung

Please consider us poets.
What a novel conceit
driven by our desire
to occasionally eat
of the fruit of validation
the wine of faint praise,
and the ephemeral haunt
of one worshipping gaze.

Tell me that I matter.
Pay attention to me.
Just see what I’ve done
and in it see me.
For on just such a thread
my esteem dangles dear.
In hopes that dense strangers
will treat it with care.

We seem willing to throw
our words worth to the winds.
On just the sad hope
that we might be let in.
And if we are
what can we hope to find.
But inevitable proof
we’ve lost more than our mind.

© Copyright 2018 Robert C. Leung