hopelessness is strange
it’s true and isn’t true

leads some to suicide
leads some to sing the Blues

decay, decline, despair
I sense them all around

I’ve sought hope all my life
I’ve sought what can’t be found

Time degenerates
Born downward toward the grave

A brutal but careless thief
What then can be saved?

Endurance and persistence
And Impossible Dreams

Fantasies and jail-break plans
Things not as they seem

Yes, we’ll be defeated
Time will be no more

Traceless, placeless, faceless
Nowhere, Nevermore

Yet in this given moment
I call forth to create

A couple rhyming couplets
Like pairs, they procreate

Kindness is true courage
That’s what makes life great.

also an any old kind of day
   just work and lunch and the drive away
       nothing, Dad, my children say
           and then the video games they play

And yet, in Scarlet Town where he lay
         Sweet William in the month of May
        and like Mistress Mary, I too pray.

Please help me relax
When anxiety attacks
The sound of flowing water
Safe inside my home

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
In Santa Fe did I
Silence of the Lambs
In the Y the Life of Pi

       relax. relax. relax.

                     try

I can see connections
But I often can't explain
It's not only in my mind
But it is bipolar brain

St. Bruno the Carthusian
Stephen King in Maine
Silent Daoist hermits
The Man of La Mancha, Spain

Wendy in the silence
Mad but not insane
My postcards to Alex
Ride the Tucson Train

Soren Kierkegaard
Melancholy Dane
Help me reach the single one
Miles Morales y Lois Lane

           I am a window pane.

first as tragedy, then as farce
American politics on its ****
Who could possibly the President parse?
The population needs an angry divorce.

Tonight I take the Downbound Train
Plato’s Phaedo as it rains
Is my Quixotic Quest in vain?
Is it I, or has my country gone insane?
Regardless I relentlessly remain ...

I've been to the mountains and to the sea
I hope that the gods go easy with me
Me too, Bob
7273

Christmas coming soon
December 25
Still ain't got you
But happy to be alive

You in the black dress
DC metro near
I didn't speak your beauty truth
Too much repression. To much fear.

But I tell you now
So someone at last can hear
You looked like a vision
You are dear to me, my dear

           Whisper in my ear

                      Appear.

Arrival
2. Galaxy Quest
3. 2001 A Space Odyssey
4. I, Robot
5. I Am Legend
6. Blade Runner 2049
7. Star Wars ( All of it )
8. Star Trek
9. Midnight Special
10. Minority Report

I've moved too much, moved too much
Moved too much, I know

Kamakura Buddha
Freshly falling snow

My son is gentle joy
We wander to and fro

A little Christmas gift
New for you yo yo

      little. flow. slow.

They asked if I hear voices
I said that’s not quite it

Just search within for words
Words that rhyme with wit

I’ve been reading lots of books
Students and teachers do

The words are now inside me
So I go searching for a few

I linger on those letters
Ponder quietly

Put them in my poems
Then breathe - let them be

Yes, I’d like to live
As a Warrior Poet

But I’m quiet shy and solo
Do these couplets perhaps show it?

A Pirate Looks at 40
She played for my birthday

Now I’m 9 years older
50 on the way

Arriving a bit too late
The sacred in decline

An Unknown, Hidden God
The only One to find

But what the future holds
For us and my time left

Uncertain and unclear
As I drift unto my death

Music lifts me higher
Fills my yearning soul

Drives me through the night
Starshine rock n’ roll

Silence also summons
Wordless walk and wonder

I wai the wandering deer
Recognition thunders

For the animals
I send up a peaceful prayer

Future fellow feeling
May we meet in care

Who can comprehend
the intense Immensity?

I live without a why
Where? - this the quest for me.

If my private life ever suddenly explodes
Phantoms, fires on the road
Keep me calm, courage, caring code
No big deal. Fox Theater - Tom Joad.

Wanna be read, but fear American fame
Yes, I confess, obsessed by names
Philosophy like a Canadian basketball game
Toledo, Ohio - I stare at the blue flame

                 Green Arrow. I aim.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Walks through Prague
Hears the tolling bell

Moon aglow
St. Charles snow
Summer rolls as well

        Saigon, Ishmael.

ascend the Space Needle, O starchild!
             though lonely, lonely!

Salman Rushdie when ask decades ago
Why would you want to America zoom?

His wonderful answer:

          awop bobba loo bop
                                         a *** bam boom.

Alas, today,
           the White House a corrupt sepulcher
                  America’s whitewashed Tomb.

The ambiguity is my friend
Wait o wait o wait!

My letter to you is destiny
Destiny, not Fate

Emily, Melville, Mr. Markson
The hidden holds the Great

Little way, next step next
2037 is the date.

be ignited or be gone, wrote Ms. Oliver
I was hired at JMU by George Toliver
       for me philosophy’s dawn

O Mary, help me be ignited before gone.

Within I sense a silence
Too deep for any names
Unheard, Unseen, Unknown, Unless
It lingers and remains

Above, beyond, before, beneath
All words that humans speak
Searching ever always for
The other silent ones who seek

In solitude and dailiness
Apophatically Greek
Ascending Mt. Olympus
Mysteriously meek.

Probably it doesn't make sense
But I still pray
At times
Even when I can't believe in God

I like Albert Camus
My favorite French atheist
Unde Malum?
North Africa. Berber Mother.

Me at JMU
Lonely as the rain
Her boyfriends studlier than I
Might place Life of Pi

The Shinkansen is impressive
Chesterton aggressive
I tend toward confessive
Like Augustine. But still shy.

               Thank you, Ry.

Postcard poet today
Maybe Studio Ghibli
I was in Nara once
Spirited Away

I keep hanging out
In la oficina
I think something's coming
But I also have my doubts

               Guanajuato

I too have the judgmental thing
Take it easy. Take it slow.
Wait to see the truth.
Speak it yoko yo yo.

Peace come rare for me
Peace like falling slow
Torment does torment
Up above, then down below

My favorite color is green
Vincent's was yellow
Carolina blue
Maybe I'll never know

Time it keeps on slippin'
Moonlight still does glow
The deer appear at night
In the trees the wind does blow

                  So...

Apophenia some call it
As did the psychiatrist

But they do not themselves see it
So they do not get the gist

Hidden connections are real
For those who seek the hidden

Those who only acknowledge the obvious
Find this superstitious, indeed forbidden

But poetry is proof
Words and worlds belong together

The letters yearn for one another
To form their newfound tether

Our universe may well
work like poetry

Perhaps not everywhere
But for those with eyes to see

The word “like” has profound power
Linking one to other

These secret, hidden connections
The artist does discover

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method
May seem to some as madness

But the proof is in the paintings
And the beauty breaks the sadness

Every insight comes with terror
Hence the paranoia

I’ve told you all I can for now
Any more just might destroy ya.

Dogen in meditation all through the night
Udon and shabu shabu we ate
I from hospitalizations I return to fight
Fall 7 times, rise up 8.

America in the Kali Yuga
     decadence will abuse ya
            bad karma confuse ya
                   so lost as to lose ya

           Dharma now to do, yeah?

10 Cloverfield Lane, Midnight Special
            I duly did go to Houston
                 ever-lovin' light

Who cares about the Queen?
So she wears some pretty hats
Exoplanets spin
Americans get fat

Exoplanets spin
Astronomers find water
I have 3 sons
She has 2 daughters

Bangkok has the rains
Reno has the snows
On and on and on an on
On and on it goes

     One man Overthrows!

It's just religious emotion
I have it too
It comes and goes. Overflows.
Rhapsody in Blue

The rain is peaceful sad
Peace for Muslim, Jew
Sweet Sir Galahad
Doo wah Diddy do

               Seattle U.

Panic at the Disco
And I'm at the edge
Thank you for my place
Thank you Sister Sledge

St. Patrick comes around
Chicago River green
Alicia Bobby blue
I read Things Not Seen

My grandma in the kitchen
Look there at Herself
Charles potato chips
Legolas the Elf

My mother in Toledo
And my Uncle Jack
Walnut Heights, Ohio
I lay on my back

              ?

Thank God for Andy
  and also Coach Ganny
       help to be handy
              Forward!

the esteemed professors and politicians
the pundits all paid for power

they strut and fret and swagger
but they only last an hour

the musicians, painters, poets
speak to the human heart

beauty is a need
the need takes seed in art

I seek the sacred hidden
far from official view

kindly, caring, created
mystical, not-two

the news is all now chaos
lies and fear’s exclusion

I simply sit in silence
whisper words against confusion

the stars still shine above us
green flash as the sun goes down

twilight is time for turning
a stranger comes to town

Basketball once more
       Jesuit justice
         Popehope

I'm an amateur poet
And a bipolar dad
Beauty Baltic Sea
Best time we ever had

Then along came Cam
Golden hearted child
Gracias xie xie
O so meek and mild

Courage going forward
Courage unto the end
The silence is eternal
Silence be my friend

               Pretend.

Providence ambiguous
If providence at all

Unknown the Unknowable God
Silence is the Call

The Albino Whale just swims
As time before beyond recall

River Eden in Northern England
And Adam before the Fall

In the misty morning starlight
I curse the Border Wall.

No coincidences for quite awhile
Epilogue of Thomas More
The king's servant, but God's first
Quaint and curious forgotten lore

Not following Chicago now
Philadelphia in my view
He remembers Juneteenth
I remember 2

Gaps in Markson's consciousness
Light, he said. Flooding.
Hovering Adidas
Mexico. Spain. The Strand.

                5th volume? And ...

So America Magazine attacks Thomas Merton
With Wendy
Says that no real contemplatives
Actually find him useful

Christian resentment
That's what Nietzsche called it
These sick religious people
Envious, Bitter, Small

Merton was tormented
And a very talented writer
And committed to peace
And a brother of God

Is that too much?
Seeker, silent seeker
Friend to Daniel Berrigan
Brother to Thich Nhat Hanh

Solo in Kentucky
A writer, Father Louis
7 Storey Mountain
Destined for Samutprakan

Which is where my relatives live
Buddhadasa's Theravada Zen
3710
Christ of the burnt men

             Thomas. When?

All these, all these poems
Because I ain't got you
Vincent's eyes were green
The Baltic Sea is blue

Rounded by a sleep
Forgetting but not forgotten
Staunton aglow in snow
Neil Young's Johnny Rotten

Venice, Verona, Rome
His love for Italy
McCartney in Baltimore
Cell phones. Let it Be.

           Silent Plea

Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian
Isaac Bashevis Singer was a vegetarian
Kafka was a vegetarian
Pythagoras was a vegetarian
Shelley was a vegetarian

Etc...

working at the bookstore,
searching for the words

though I’m 49
still at times a Theo-nerd

poetry beats prose
it’s a truth some cannot face

the unacknowledged legislators
of the human race

Shelley was quite right
a Pythagorean who could own it

the music is the mystery
from the sacred silence shown it

so write your verse quite carefully
and sing from your deep heart

future folk will listen
and live by your true art

don't quite believe in magic
but we had a sweet jet Black Lab

life in the end is tragic
Father Greeley and the cab

in autumn the dead return
he spoke fondly of Samhain

I've got a Halloween Head
wayfaring strangers in my brain!

Europa Report it seeks
Far off hidden places

Bioluminescence
Alien aquatic races

Scifi as its shelved
As outer space in horror

Journey towards beginnings
Science a Neils Bohr- er

Discoveries are made
But astronauts all die

The last one maybe eaten
No one quite knows why

But film sent back to Earth
Shows we are Not alone

A species swims beyond
Our life in Twilight Zone

Terror and Discovery
Greet the Great Unknown

Someone has to go there
Some of us will die

But the sacrifice reveals
Life in Starry Sky

Courage is the gift
And others too will try

Isolation is not true
Alone is all a lie

Albert Camus against the Absurd
  We can too with wisdom words
     A rebel who lives unassured

             Join the Resistance!
             Trumpism interred

Ms. Tlaib is correct
Heard this from a trucker

It is indeed time to go in there
And impeach that *******.

I admit I like cathedrals
Especially in snow
Hagia Sophia
But born too late I know

Grateful for my sons
In my solitude
Did what I did
Now I do not intrude

1 is the loneliest number
And a little peace
Hello Gamla Stan
Farewell Ancient Greece

           Time release.

I ride the synchronicities
They strangely come and go
Rest from the anxieties
Staunton aglow in snow

Walk the way of dailiness
Movies, music, books
Buddhamind in Bangkok
Q and I tuk tuks

Scholem's astral body
Kabbalists in Spain
Sandor Marai in Budapest
Stephen King in Maine

Me in Mary's land
But lookin' way down south
My hands upon her hair
My words within her mouth

            Dixie Chicks!

Like Batman
Emily Dickinson was reclusive
Like Superman
A Fortress of Solitude

I spend much time alone
But I am not a hermit
Drive my son to work
Eat at the little diner

Unde Malum?
Tormented Saint Augustine
Tormented Camus
Writing often ensued

I visited Amherst
This World Is Not Conclusion
Mabel Loomis Todd
World of strange designer

              Wild Nights

A bit dangerous
That's the truth
A bit too far
A bit uncouth

Step by step
By step by step
Take it slow
Need for rest

Madness comes
And madness goes
Emotion runs
And overflows

Step by step
By step by step
Wait.
Leapt.

      Patientia