Cobblestone streets in the middle of a city,
Testament to a generation past.
In addition to the fact that they are quaint and they are pretty,
Its amazing to us now, how long they last!
Phil Lindsey 1/8/17

I dream not of immortality,
But of being less insignificant than some,
Not of being loved by all,
But of being liked by those I’ve met,
Not of changing the world,
But of leaving it unchanged for the better.
For there are many who will have the world changed,
For better or for worse,
Or for no reason at all.

As a king builds a temple in his own honor,
So does a dog establish dominion by peeing on a tree;
The next king builds a larger temple, and
The next dog pees higher on the tree.
It takes only a war, or a rainstorm, or the simple passing of time
To shift the balance of power, for
There will always be another king,
There will always be another dog,
And there will always be another rainstorm.

A baby cries for attention.
He cries, “I am hungry,” or
“I am tired,” or
“I have peed myself.”
And because he is helpless,
We feed him, and we hold him, and we change his diaper.
A poet also cries for attention.
But unlike the baby, his cries are often ignored,
For we do not understand what it is that he wants.

I dream not of a perfect world,
But of a world where there is more good than evil,
More peace than war,
And more joy than tears.
A world where kings build temples for babies,
Where forests and trees are abundant,
And where poets rejoice because their cries are understood.
I dream not of immortality,
But of being less insignificant than some.
Phil Lindsey 1/5/17

Our family had an old blue bus,
It pretty much held the whole of us,
Mom and Dad, six kids and Gyp,
(Out pug dog went with us on many a trip.)
We all thought it was pretty cool,
Back before the seatbelt rule,
To sit on the engine between the front seats.
A blanket on top helped absorb all the heat.
In the wintertime though, we thought it was nice,
When our fingers and toes were frozen like ice,
To warm up on the engine of the old blue bus
Just Mom and Dad and the rest of us.

We went on more family trips than most
Dad drove that blue bus from coast to coast
Kids will be kids, and boys would be boys
Dad got annoyed when we made too much noise.
“Do you want me to stop this ****** bus?”
That scared us to silence, calmed down the fuss.
On the longest trips with lots of kids,
Mom took Mason jars with tightly ******* on lids.
Sometimes Dad would drive through the night,
We’d wake up at morning light
Never knowing quite where we would be,
Carlsbad Caverns? Washington, DC?
At the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,
At the Grand Canyon, South Rim, looking down.
In New York City, a little lost,
Finding out what slots in Las Vegas cost,
A coal mine in Kentucky, Disney World for some of us,
You’d never know where we might go in the old blue mini-bus.

Sometimes on the weekends, Dad tied canoes on top,
We’d put them in the river, and he’d tell Mom where to stop,
Most times she would be there, but one time she went too far,
Since those were the days before cell phones,
We were up the river without a car!
There were ball games in Chicago, ERNIE BANKS was in our bus!!
He didn’t show up in the picture, but you could see the rest of us.
Lake Bloominton, Clinton, and Mackinaw,
Oh the things that blue bus saw!
Boys Scouts, Cub Scouts, birthday trips with friends
Eventually the bus wore down, but the memory never ends.
I suppose somebody bought it – that old blue mini-bus,
But they never had as good of time as Mom and Dad and us!.
Phil Lindsey 12/30/16

I know that I can be a poet. Yes, I know it. Yes I can.
I know that I can do it. I’ll get to it. I’ve a plan.
Mr. Billy Collins says you have to read a lot.
Ten thousand hours maybe more, maybe more, but
Maybe not.
That may seem,
A bit extreme,
Then again,
He’s probably right.
So I’ll start my “Poet Reading Time’ right away tonight.

If I cut out TV, and read, say three
Or four hours every day,
Five or six days a week, I guess,
Fifty weeks a year, I’d say.
I can figure it out,
I guess it’s about,
It’s about, it’s about, oh dear,
That’s over ten years to get started
That’s not what I wanted to hear.

There’s got to be another way,
I say, that way, takes way too long,
Did Dylan read ten thousand hours
Before he wrote all his songs?
Did Whitman read ten thousand hours
Before he wrote  ‘Leaves of Grass’?
Did Shakespeare? Well, I’ll never know, and
There’s no one I can ask.

Maybe I can take a night class,
At a College somewhere near,
The kind where after class you
Meet the teacher for a beer.
And he tells you how he wrote
A book of poems about his life,
And how he’d have had it published
If it wasn’t for his wife
See she wanted to get married
And she got pregnant right away
So he had to get a job, you know,
What else is there to say?

Or maybe there’s a contest
Which is only for beginners
A prize book will be published
Including all the winners,
And for fifty or a hundred bucks
You get a copy you can keep,
Put it on your nightstand, and
Read yourself to sleep.
Read all the other “winners”,
Who bought a slot upon your shelf,
What does it say about your poem?
What does it say about yourself?

I guess
I best
Start reading.
I’ve lost hours as we speak,
Maybe I,
Can try,
To write a poem every week.
Read, then write,
Enjoy, then fight
With words upon blank page,
Tear it up,
Then, start again,
A lion king inside a cage.
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic
Add the hours up.
Maybe by the end of life
I might have read enough,
Maybe too, I’ll write a poem, that
Maybe some will read.  
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe not,
Does a poet pricked not bleed?
Success, I guess,
Depends upon
The goal one sets in life.
To earn a million dollars,
To marry a wonderful wife,
To write a novel poem,
Or a novel, or
A song,
That starts the world singing
Join my chorus, sing along!

So Mr. Billy Collins,
I just bought a book,
A collection of your poems,
I just thought I’d take a look,
And before I laid it down to dream,
I must have read an hour or so
A wonderful start, it was, I thought,
Ninety nine hundred ninety-nine hours to go!
Phil Lindsey 12/30/16

The words rush toward the reader,
Slapping her with an emotion, a thought, or feeling,
Before retreating, and leaving only a trace of that emotion,
As a retreating ocean leaves a foamy marker at the high point of its surge,
The foam disappears in time, or is replaced with the marker from the next surge.

The rhythm of this repetition,
Endless and varied as the tide, in and out, and in,
Customized at creation, powered by the gravity of the moon,
Refusing to be understood, though countless men and poets have
Devoted countless years and hours to doing so, still the mystery remains.

The mystery of life, and love, and emotion and poetry cannot be solved,
And that is the beauty of the world! A discovery produces still
Another mystery, as a line in a poem produces still
Another feeling, or a thought, or an emotion,
Understood by no one, interpreted by all.

Men will continue to live and love, solve mysteries and write poetry,
As each mystery is solved, a poet will add another line
To his interpretation of life, leaving the reader
With traces of an emotion, or a feeling,
Which, in time, will also be replaced!
Phil Lindsey 12/28/16

Oh, to sleep the sleep of youth;
Peaceful dreams, and blissful truth
When every morning brings the sun,
Battles fought, and victories won!
Victory sweet, misfortune ****,
Yet those that bear a champion’s heart
Stand upright, tall, despite the end,
And humbly shake opponent's hand
Congratulations on fine play
To meet, compete another day
Hope the foe will others tell,
“He fought with honor, he played well.”

Oh, how the aging fight with sleep;
Nightmares, abject fears run deep
That life on earth is almost done,
Morning might not bring the sun.
Once strong, the warrior now is frail
In the final battle death prevails,
Though none but God has kept the score
The champion longs for one quest more
Long life results in necessity
To replace lost skills with strategy
We long to hear, at final bell,
“He fought with honor, he played well.”
PWL 12/25/16