When eternity is mortgaged
  —your soul its true cost

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

The Self, Free Will, and Love…
  today’s three illusions of life

Without just one our lives negate,
  a charlatan’s delight

For the Self to Love most Freely,
  this Holy Trinity must preside

What Plato ordained and Kant reframed
  —modern thought tries most to hide

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

The older I get…
  the closer I become to the things I can’t see

The older I get…
  the more I’m amazed by the things that surround me

The older I get…
  the longer the nights and the dreams that they bring

The older I get…
  empty words falling mute—each new season to sing

The older I get…
  those women that I loved I now carry inside

The older I get…
  that child I once was to return with a smile

The older I get
  the deeper I embrace the reason I’m here

The older I get
  each moment a gift—with its vision so clear

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2018)

The picture worth 1000 words
  is priced only one way

Its value screaming
  —until eyes close

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2014)

If all there is…
  —is all there is

         (then)

All you can do…
  —is all you can do

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2019)
      Listening to James Ladyman

If you’re trapped in silence,
  and the words won’t come
   —go live some more

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2014)

Pilgrim of love,
  the journey far

The road unclear,
  its turns unmarked

Faith to guide you,
  belief in charge

As voices call,
—within your heart

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

“Don’t write for Poets,
  their knives unclean

With jagged edges,
  whose cuts demean

Their opinions frayed,
  by wounds unseen

Whose righteous selves,
  reflection preens”
  
Write for those listeners starved and wild,
  with hearts not carved of jade

Call out to those aliens of the light,
  still trapped within the shade

With words to christen and words unwashed,
  no listener disowned

Each verse a prayer at best when sung,
—by voices not your own

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2017)

Real poets do not hide
  behind ivy covered walls

But write within the maelstrom
—of those voices that call

(Villanova Pennsylvania: December, 2015)

Marooned inside the shallows
   —stalked by the next rising tide

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2015)

In a region divided
  on a hill far away

A last echo subsided
  quiet ruling the fray

The soldiers asleep
  fate waiting for dawn

New blood to be spilled
  ever right—ever wrong

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2017)

Identity,
Born from a kernel of inheritance
Planted deep within a furrow of pain
Growing in the light of new discovery
Reseeding itself
  —waiting for the rain

(My Son Trystan & I: May, 2016)

Within the tragedy of a broken dream
   rages a fiery lost inferno

Where we burn in fearful anticipation
  —waiting for the alarm to sound

(Las Vegas Nevada: January, 2016)

My eyes were diverted
  my mind taken back

Her presence upon me
  her breath down an attack

There’s no sense in running
  with no place to hide

Although rare in the daylight
  her message alive

My pen comes out quickly
  and drawn like a sword

Each word spoken plainly
  and pointed toward

My life now a capsule
  exploding like hail

The light towing blindness
  the comets new tail

Last phrases are written
  my senses return

I feel her leave slowly
   my pen it still burns

I look down at the page
   to see what I wrote

The handwriting foreign
  familiar once spoke

   “Your life but a dream
     between wisps of my breath

   “Once spoken inside you
     beyond life and then death”

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2018)