When your body is battered, breaking down, You need to pause and listen to reflect, Perhaps your life, your craving for renown Must now make way for prayer and genuflect. Your duty now to yourself in this strife: Enact true justice to your mortal life.
On Why You Sneer
You just needed someone
You could sneer at
And jeer at
For failing
At that one thing
You wish could have been
Your own path in life.
On Wondering Where All the Years Went
I saw you onstage yesterday
Giving a speech to the assembled gathering
And it struck me
That it has been fifteen years
Since it was me on that stage
Playing the groom
Smiling at the crowd
And I remembered thinking, in that moment
Where did the years go?
How come I’m here now
Sitting in the crowd
With a head fuller with white hair
Wondering,
Whatever happened to all those dreams?
On The Self-Doubt of an Unpracticed Poet
These vines of doubt entangle me
Ensnare me in this darkened cage
Each line confounds, embitters me
And shrouds me in benighted rage
In white dreams I imagine me
A shining knight of sky and earth
But light of day proves: oh, poor me!
I’m but a speck, a pebble’s worth!
And so these lines, in spite of me
Come sputtering in halting train
These verses dark accuseth me
I crumble ‘neath my dreams, all vain.
On This Resolution
This New Year
I have made
This resolve:
To pare down
This one life
To slough off
Vain desires
Like snakeskin
Discarded:
An offering
For Your blessing.
On Sungkai
Early morning
And I am on the road again
Not quite sure
For whom
And for what
Life is full of such
Moments of incomprehension
We often do what we must
Even if we are not quite sure
For whom
And for what
And when and how and why.
On Your Online Profile
I stumbled onto your online profile today
On your corporate website
With words like
Excellently and
Well-known and
Visionary
Encrusted like jewels
On a bed of warm, mediocre poop
Of course, your online profile
Would omit the things
One would be embarrassed to
Speak about in polite company
And in highfalutin conferences
And in royal courts
Like how you left those bruises
On your wife
In places no one could see
Like how you abandoned
Your children
In ways no one could ever recover from
Like how you chased down
Your current younger wife
In ways she herself
Would wish to never remember
But you can rest easy
Because your online profile
Would keep all those things
Well hidden
Like your own life, and who you really are
Hidden away so well
Between those lines of blind self-praise
That you now hardly know
Your own self.
On Lies Now Known
Our lies, they would rather not
Be seen by the prying eyes
These lies they burn red and hot
Yet hide in the night’s dark guise
They hide in the plots we make
They nest like the coiling snake
They fest in the illest will
They pounce with the venging thrill
Your lies I cannot abide
Now seen by all, wide and far
No more can they twist and hide
I know you for what you are.
On The Sin of Pride
I keep a watchful eye now
For age-old sin of Pride
(We hardly use that word now
That word - Sin! - we deride
It’s very nature, quaint now
Yet one more Truth denied
And Virtue, set aside now
Lo, Freedom’s deified!)
Yes, Pride is all around now
Its seeds spread far and wide
It grows in every heart now
It blooms, and needs not hide
Pride grows with zest and verve now
Mulched with our deadened eyes
Black mirrors in our hands now
Pride’s gardens multiplied
Alas, this is the way now
Our lives suffused with Pride
The original Sin now
Prized, what was once decried
One wonders for how long now
We’ll let desires decide
Will we break free of Pride now
Or endlessly abide?
On Beseeching
Every kiss of wave to beach
A silent prayer to beseech:
Glory be to God!
Glory be to God!
Glory be to God!