Bury what you can with words
  —and remember the rest

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2019)

While calling to the ages,
  I gave up on today

All voiced precipitation,
  for someone else to spray

Writing above what’s forecast,
  with readers yet unborn

My words beyond the thunder
   —to ride on distant storms

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

People are afraid of what
  they can’t understand
  themselves most often assured

In the depths of their wandering
  a voice cries out
  a voice too close to ignore

People will bolt from that thing
  that pursues
  that thing that augurs to chase

With blinders on tight
   and running in vain
   —to flee what they’ll never escape

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2018)

To share in Creation
  —is to become Divine

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2014)

Like eating your own cooking,
  do you favor what you write

Do the words digest completely,
—the stove again to light

As you walk that final mile,
  in those shabby cobblers shoes

Will you then embrace at last,
  —what was never yours to lose

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)

The jaws sing
As the drip, drip, drip,
Of the petroleum chorus
Dances across
The inverted aluminum
And the hissing starts
And the hissing stays
Its smell a warning
A final omen
Like the last rose
Of summer
Or the fragrance she wore
For that final goodbye
The teeth tear inward
Like the regret for today
And the regret for yesterday
And the lament for tomorrow
Its promise broken
And your khakis red
And baptized
A stigmata
To self infliction
As the music plays constant
And the rushing you feel
An emptying of sorrow
Onto the crushed ceiling
Of a dream in reverse
Of all life in reverse
Until two arms grab you
And you fall from the sky
And you fall from the sky
Waiting
For the ground
To coronate the outcome
And for one more answer
To a ‘why’ unquestioned
And to love you one more time
But the lights are now dim
And the voices muffled
As an ***** can be heard
And store bought flowers smelled
And an old woman cries…
As a young woman cries…
And a stranger pronounces
What you feared the most
They didn’t know you
And couldn’t know you
The exit sign flashing
But there is no door
“There Is No Door”
  —and then the music stops

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

How many sons
  have we lost

How many demons
  have we found

How many graves
  must we dig

To make the ‘Fatherland’
  proud

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

The tightness of the words
   protects the freedom of the thought

Whose voice when spoken gently
   —can silence thunder and dragons caught

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

The night I gave in to
  reckless abandon

Was the night I embraced,
—what I’d never understand

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

Easily measured,
  not clearly defined

Often lamented,
  more often unkind

Its loss we all mourn,
  searching heaven to find

The time to become
  —a new past to rewind

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

Married to introspection,
  we left for Paris

And with fools and dilettantes
  got carried away

Living on melancholy,
  our quarter was poor

The Seine’s romance but fiction
   —our fantasies played

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

We never safeguard our progeny
  by overprotecting our kids

The blankets that we spread
  and fences we build

Imprison,
  rather than defend

Ensuring weaker and hapless offspring
  —inside a diminished and helpless world

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2019)

I was walking in March
  when from under the snow
  —Spring reached up and grabbed me

In my path was a stem
  pointing up from below
  —a lone daffodil reaching toward me

My darkness was gone
  a single robin in song
  —with the cold still freezing the air

As my mood had been changed
  all life rearranged
  —my steps treading nary a care

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2018)