It's been some time, a lengthy while
Since I've written poems freestyle
Rhymes, you see, are pretty things
But they're like birds with broken wings

But when freestyle starts feeling fake
And no longer relieves my ache
I take refuge in dear old rhyme
Till my music can truly chime

Laced with historic allusion
Confusion
Don’t know what to speak of
Or how to exude it
A presence relentless
In its mystifying
Perplexities tantalus
Solace undying
Engaged in the way
I fall prey
To her spell
When I’m under the cover
Of darkness
I dwell in

Let youth have its day
To grow bold
Be in charge
Put your trust in us
Not to **** up with this
Task
This menial, mind-numbing
Question we ask
On repeat to the tune
Of each day is our last
Pass the class
Graded not for creative potential
Brain blast
But robotic performance enhancing
Ideas
Conceived in the rusting machine system gears

Shall I Compute 1 Thee to a Summer’s Day?

                              A Lament for the Unlettered

They launch no voyages of discovery
To sail beyond the sunset 1 of their dreams
No pages open to them; no books, no boots,
No paths lead them to Constantinople or Rome 3

For the horns of Elfland 4 they listen not
Nor for the unheard pipes on a Grecian urn 5
The Red Book of Westmarch 6 is forever closed
And lines of lyric verse sing not to them

They cling to their precious palantiri 7
And launch no voyages of discovery


1 As Shakespeare did not say

2 From Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Heinlein used the phrase as the title for his final novel.

3 Patrick Leigh Fermor and Hilaire Belloc

4 C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

5 Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

6 Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

7 Tolkien again

For thirteen years one’s life is organized
By Mom and Dad and the glorious state 1
Passive behavior rewarded and prized
Just work your sums on an electric slate

Bubble in circles with a number two
Glitter-glue posters for every right cause
School’s all about state scores, not about you
And state exams, according to state laws

For thirteen years you were controlled and toyed -
Today you’re just one of the unemployed



1 You are the state. A school will be exactly what you and the other citizens want it to be. Always vote in your local school board elections; self-government is not a spectator sport.

A proper English Communist, I say,
Should drink only that tea called Comrade Grey

You dance within the reveries
Of loves I’ve left behind
You cry my river flowing elegies
Of broken valentines
And in the shadows I reside in
There you are to light the way
You sway like seasons in the changing
Moody climate on display
And with an avalanche inferno
You ignite my icy gaze
And your embrace
Is of the glaciers
Melting me like microwaves
In which the minutes
Are mirages
An oasis from the thaw
And with your worldly imperfections,
Rectify my mortal flaw

Given to mortals
To spark a rebellion
They used it instead
To drop ****** oppression
Reducing to cinders
And smoldering ash
Their symbolic salvation
And piles of trash
Unabashedly brazen
Emblazoned in races
Their banners and books
Conflagration hate nations
The forests consumed
In the climates of change
As the engines of war
Dragon hunger pangs rang
Like the rockets ascending
To bring them to me
But they crashed and they burned
And returned to the sea

With Poe-try you can surely
get your Words' worth
So many words are waiting
like a Wolfe at your door,
for their Cummings into being.

If you listen, they Pound
upon your brain
They Lamb-aste your viscera,
making you Nash your teeth.
They create a Millay in your head.
So many shapes, so many Hughes

Lusting for Moore they Lear
at you when you least expect.
Look back at them!

Like Frost upon the windowpane
they write themselves,
then, when all is said and Donne
melt away too soon.

Grasp them when you can.
Put them in a Rowe
Taylor them to your muse,
use your Whit, man !