I wonder, before mass media,
How God named Light
In the king’s English.
Ecclesiastic hierarchy, sure,
But two men cannot see the same Sun.
And when the printing press came,
How far away was mass literacy?
How long until the masses can read the news?
Martin Luther put each man in front of his own Bible.
How could one book be read by two men?
Today’s stories come from the networks.
Corporate hierarchies, sure,
But we don’t have to read.
The internet knows things for us,
But we can’t read that.
modern poetry
Love Poem No. 9
There are too many love poems in the world.
It could be a conspiracy by Big Love
to sell saccharine devotional inventories.
Maybe literary prestige and ambition
inspire in the novice poet a dream
which can only be described in verse.
I think it was a basic way to test my cleverness–
the way an artist learns to master perspective,
then learns to break
the expectations of the viewer
and folds this knowledge into their craft.
It’s simply human.
One hopes we all experience love,
and maybe some of us try to distill that love
into something that insists the world know,
“I am here–
and I love in all the ways I know how.”
Severed Connection
Late nights for days–
unable to sleep or focus or do anything,
racing thoughts down the freeway.
I was thinking of the women I know and how lovely they are,
when something reminded me of you, and I reached out–
and you were excited about the people
who still matter to you
I slept last night.
No more racing.
I was thinking how I used to be part of your life,
and how quietly you slipped away.
You didn’t even leave a note.
I sat in a chair,
thinking at nothing,
until I felt bad
Bitter thoughts may be cruel–
but joy is no ally.
The good days are a Trojan Horse.
The bad days are reality.
And each day rewrites the last,
except when emptiness comes–
and both inside and outside the horse,
there is
nothing.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 