Why do we write poetry?
A need burns within us.
The conflict rages between
self gratification and
desire to relate to all.
Cryptic verses gratify self but
plain language verses
stimulate the emotions of others.
The choice comes down to impact,
interpretation, and ultimate feelings.
Cryptic is very effective with the
very sophisticated poets
and those that can glean
meaning from terms seemingly unrelated.
Inspiration is a gift but communication is
an art to be judged by the observer.
Whatever the format, the honesty of the
effort will shine through.

Am I awake or just aware? Am I moving or just imagining?
I’m in the mist, the fog of uncertainty. This is the
world of inspiration. Inspiration, like a thief, comes
in the nighttime and abducts you’re thoughts to another world,
vague yet vivid, where ideas appear in the thinning mist.
Nondescript outlines at first, gradually clearing to
disclose the tools and elements of a poem. I record
my thoughts, describing what my minds eye see’s.
Sadly, the fog rolls in again. The vivid world becomes
vague once again, outlines fade and I am alone once
again, moving or imagining, awake or aware. I’m left
with words on a page from a journey
I don’t even remember, wondering who wrote those words?

The Name...

Lini Solo Altimari, a name I read once in an obit.
I have no idea who she was only that her
life ended at 25 years. Did someone love her
and now they sob alone, tormented by
what might have been? Did she have dreams
that she pursued only to have death step in?
Her name has haunted me for decades. Maybe
I knew her in another life. Maybe I loved her
and shared her dreams.
We go through life with a small circle, a small
group we think we know. All we know is
the surface, what’s deep is always a secret.
But a name in a obit captures us for a reason.
Perhaps this life isn’t our first. Perhaps deja vu
is a real peek into our past. Perhaps, someday
someone will read our name in an obit
and pause to wonder why it seems so familiar.

To understand is to focus. Yet
how do we focus if the
norms keep changing. Do we then
understand change without focus,
just a chaotic spinning existence. Or,
is the quest to understand just a question of
how to understand? Understand what?
I hate the word understand and all it stands for.
I prefer feeling which is true understanding.
You can’t understand love but you can feel it.
We know how we feel but don’t understand why.
Maybe life is a question of why,
a constant question in the fools errand
of trying to understand. This piece
is about confusion. It is confused. There is
the need to ramble without direction or sense.
Every poet needs to stream thoughts. That
stream will make no sense to him/her or to
the reader. If you understand that
you don’t understand, then, I guess,
that’s understanding.

My inspiration comes in the nighttime.
Like the tides, controlled by the moon
inspiration ebbs and flows.
But, the poet is also a victim
of that very darkness that offers
those thoughts and feelings,
then gradually obscures them
from view. I am left haunted
by the ghosts of ideas left
to torment me, love, certainty
and infinity. My heart moves on
but my hand is controlled
by that force unknown, risking
endless repetition of the
same themes. I pray for the clarity
of daylight. But daylight brings an
assault of reality without love
or certainty only infinity,
the great unknown. My hand is held
by that vice of confusion, unable to
function, to explain love
or certainty. The great unknown
wins, devours all and, then,
the night returns.

Lack of choice is a prison. What’s missing is hope,
what’s left defines us. We are what’s missing.
Life is a thief, stealing our dreams and
replacing them with reality, a barren landscape,
desolate and confined. We live in solitary,
bounded by our own thoughts of a fuller life,
a life with love. Love is choice, love is freedom
to feel and dream. Pardoning ourselves
allows love to rescue us. Once rescued we
are free to hope and dream, to feel
and be felt, to pity those souls whom choice
has abandoned.

Poetry can only be judged at a distance.
No poet can judge his/her own work.
No one who knows the poet can judge.
Proximity inevitably mixes objectively
with subjectivity. The writer will be judged
against the backdrop of personality.
The chain of words will be linked to
him/her and not to the message.
Poetry results from a need, a need
to express the intensely personal
and intimately necessary. A need to
announce we exist without expectations,
without claiming a role. Just a voice
in the darkness hoping for some light.

The tent of love is fragile, but a refuge from
the world of storm that swirls about it’s ropes and stakes.
The supports strain and squeal, warn of failure
but the show goes on, in spite of the warnings.
Then, love, under siege from the storm seeks refuge.
Stop the show! Call in the clowns! If the clowns come in
the storm will vanish. I deny it’s there. If so, then
who is the clown? What happens when the tent collapses,
the show stops and the clowns don’t appear?  I am
alone amidst the  props I thought were real.
I was real, love was real but for now it’s
over until the next show.

Guide or friend, guest or host, family or stranger,
all different but strangely the same.
No difference in the beginning or end. Just eternal sameness.
Death is just the beginning of the unknown.
The unknown is so vast we can’t even contemplate it, for fear it’s enormity will overwhelm our small minds.
A mind overwhelmed is a mind adrift on a sea of sorrow
in a storm of regret, while the islands tend to fade
into the fog, leaving only the pain.
Is death the end of beginnings or is it the final beginning, the
end of endings? Is it that bridge to eternity where seas are calm,
our course is set and our destination forever?
Fear of death is the fear of forever. Fear of forever is the
fear that the possibility of eternal life, without strife, just
might be true. Hope is our connection to the eternal.
Life favors certainty, death only offers uncertainty.
Certainty is the gift of yesterday, tomorrow only
offers uncertainty and maybe our ticket to forever.

Before you, life was an illusion, a dream
well, maybe a nightmare.
You came to me, like the great sculptor not seeing
just a block of stone but seeing David in that block
screaming to get out.
You reached into my shell and drew me out
into the springtime warmth of you smile,
the sound of your song and the depth of your love.
I am immersed but I do not drown... each breath
takes in only love and my capacity increases with each sigh.
Born again is too simple for your creation. Fabricated
remade or crafted better describe your pact on me.
I feel life, outside of mere existence. I see flowers where
once I saw only weeds and your sun shines on me always.
I bask in you and your love...

If I feel then it’s real.
If I can’t feel then it’s an idea.
But can’t I feel an idea?
Isn’t love an idea whose
manifestation lies in feeling?
What I see isn’t real until I feel it.
Love isn’t real until I feel and am felt.
Until then it’s just an ache,
a nagging sense of the incomplete,
a desperate longing for something
beyond something that’s just out there
in a place, beyond which, there are dragons.
A dangerous journey, my arrival assured
only if I feel. I see, I hear but these senses can deceive.
Feeling is the last refuge of reality,
without it we are adrift in a sea of ideas.

I know what I know and know what I don’t know.
I want to understand the infinite,
the concept that time goes on forever, it’s endless.
The idea of the infinite haunts me,
I can’t understand it, label it or grasp it.
I can only accept it. We call that acceptance, faith,
that great catch all for that which we can’t or don’t understand.
Thwarted by the infinite we overdose on the finite.
Books, movies and pictures, all imploring the world to
remember that we existed. We even create yards of stone,
each stone calling out our name to anyone passing by.
I accept the fact that my mind will never conceive the infinite.
But, it’s still there, haunting me, driving me to fight it and  
fabricate new ways to thwart it.
However, perpetuity is a fools errant, even if it is carved in stone...

My ears hear the sound
but my eyes see
only the motion of her lips.
Her voice is like music
drawing me in like the doomed ships of lore.
We kiss, that great dam of emotion bursts,
A tsunami of passion floods my being,
I am swept out of reality
and into the moment.
But the moment is fleeting, the passion recedes
yet the music continues
to, once again, draw me to that shore of mystery.

The abyss of depression is like a giant squid with enormous tentacles drawing you in toward that clicking beak.
A dark place where you are drawn in many directions but without direction.
A spinning place, a maelstrom, where you are borne down into a black hole, a place of confinement bounded only by your own mind.
A place of no escape, no lifeline, no hope and no path back to the top,
Just eternal spinning...

When glaciers melt and oceans rise and people live only on mountain tops, even then will I love you.
When we’ve poisoned all the air and we’re a planet gasping and choking, with my last breath I will shout I love you.
When all we know has passed away and we’re traveling through nothing going nowhere, at the very edge of that black hole my soul will scream, I love you.
But my scream is joined, the silence broken, the dark closes in but the roar splits the darkness, a sliver of light, love escapes.
The person wakes up terrified. Was this just a dream or does the battle continue?

In the crowd I cry out my fears, I scream I shout but no one hears.
I then reach out and try to feel but it’s only air and nothings real.
I hope and pray to God of love but no sign comes down from high above.
So here I sit in the crowd alone, not myself but just a clone...

Escape is always from something.
What that is varies for everyone.
All escape is personal as it is planned and executed by the individual. It may be physical, may be emotional or even subconscious.
The easiest escape is physical.
The hardest is to escape from oneself.
You can’t hide from you...
There is a tether between the past and the future and that tether is the present.
That tether is you...

A title conferred or imposed? One person steps on to the stage, in the spotlight, opens his heart and pours out his innermost hopes and fears. He craves approval but is guarded with the courage that some in the audience may not be receptive to his message. His message is pure and will not change regardless of criticism.
Then, there’s the next person who steps onto the stag but the lights are down. The audience hears his message but wonders if it’s real as seeing is believing. Hiding behind anonymity is cowardly.  In the shadows criticism strikes at the heart of some alter ego and not at the soul of the performer. He leaves the stage never knowing if his message has impacted the minds of his audience as they know not where to direct criticism or praise. It’s been said that”life is a stage”. Can one perform in the dark? Is our faith in ourselves and the empathy of others that weak? OK, turn on the lights...

Acquainted with many, known by none. A trove of secrets carried like cement through the construction of life. So small, so compact yet so heavy. Space so limited though so dominate. I try to lay them down, I can’t. They’re attached and competing with the routine yet apart, a burden that isn’t shared, can’t be shared. Telling is sharing but those that listen will not hear. Will I even exist if I am not known? Can I really be known if I have secrets? So, am I real or just an acquaintance taking up space? I beg to be known, on blended knee, with arms outstretched, my cup held high but life just passes me by...