I

i am so much smaller than you
and i can ever
                            believe...
and you are so much smaller
than you and
i know.

i sit within the winds,
those summer breezes,
some gusty gales, perhaps,
feeling
'the tug
               and toss
of its fabulous force
     rippling
     churning
combing the thinning grey hair on my tired head,
my clothing,
                          so indistinct,
flapping,
                  furling,
floating, --filled with this seen-un-seen presence,
     and i know

a am so small,
and my life so
ludicrous,
like the air
that comes
                      and goes
out of its own control,
but,
                                               i am too small,
and unable
to stop this, its invisible assault.

II


when i am a-float upon
the great lakes, the oceans
the
      rolling
                    rivers
i live
like a tiny slab of flotsam or
     driftwood
sailing
             slowly,
circularly,
(oh-so!) quietly
                                running,
reeling the peeling painted oars of my boat
against
the grainy flashing surface of the waters
                                 rumbling,
                                                                                  rolling
                                                                                       away
this insatiable yearning
to go wherever it takes me to go, but
i know
              i am very small,
and cannot control the eddy's creeping currents-
constant-currents
thus
          submitting
my wayfaring self
to the
unfathomable.

III
__

these trees towering
                                         above me
around me,
the sapling,
the blanketing
                              (in my lifetime)
                                blooming branches
creating
an emotional, outer, physical, inner, spiritual
                              dwindling
like the leaves left shivering beneath the cold winter's frost,
once casually
                falling,
                              dropping,
drying up around my soul
slipping
into silent winter slumber,
to awaken
                     again...
                                    --and then!
(to the dismay of my self-enlightened discovery)
i see
how small
                                            i am
only to return again
from that brownish-moist
soil-bed
                like a seed
beneath
                  the ground
                                        never sprouting,
only fogetting,
the once and always forvever
and ever
the natural
insignificance
                                                                 of being.

Coffee and Tea, I'll take them both,
Light me up another smoke,
Have a piece of Shoo-Fly pie,
Hear the birdies in the sky,
Take my pen in trembling hand,
Compose some poetry, if I can.

I am,
however, no hero,
just a lowly poet
in the always
and forever
quest for the pursuit of
truth...

On the streets of heat and movement
lie the evidence of pain,
she walks, he talks, the children run
throughout the burning rain.

I can smell the smoke of lifelessness
along the living death,
we talk, they walk, the sirens wail
today may rob our breath.

In the rooms of waste and apathy,
sit silent the insane,
she writes, he writes, the samll hand ticks
the hours fast away...

There once was a poet called D,
stopped in with some strange poetry,
he began to write,
caused a pub-room fight,
then fled the scene with mad glee!