Poetry
<< Prev | Next >>
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Part 7
- Living in Man Made Shadows
- My Moonlit Sonata
- The Trouble With Poetry
- The Reason Why
- The Living / Dying World
- Bad Morning
- A Friend’s Birthday Gift
- Lonely Girl
- Tropics
- Faith In Ourselves
Living in Man-Made Shadows
Plastic this, fiberglass that
Wearing a computer designed hat
Only thing real is your fat
An artificial world, technology has become a rat
Infesting real experience, overwhelming the cat
That was natural beauty, found now at
The video screen and injecting false
Chemicals and stimulants to race your pulse
Much faster at the sight of a digital girl
Molding yourselves a small world at some URL
Unknowing your own vision is limited, you whirl
Dancing as you sit and your electric lives unfurl
Skin never touches a sunny sky
You never again point to the stars and ask, “Why?”
The unpredicted never again gets you high
Fellow human contact dwindles to die
Together to become extinct you blindly vie
Ironic that to your own death hasten you try
With a sad look I see you people and sigh
But am too busy living to watch your end draw nigh
My Moonlit Sonata
I sit alone in a room
Pondering life
Stare out the window
High above the ocean
Amidst mountains and firs
Scratch idly at my young beard
Watch a winking star
The rhythms of my mind
Drifting along
Swirling and playing
To Beethoven and Bach
Each moment of my life
A cherished note
Together a string of wonder
Melodies so beautiful
Enchant me, the notes like gems
Each a sparkle this cool night
I envision women I’ve chased
Build new dreams
Pause my life
Sway gently like a reed
In the music
The Trouble With Poetry
These pages are so plain
Just black on white
Words on paper
So very inadequate
How I wish I could write
With colors and feelings
Play my mind in yours
Sound out the tempo of my heart
To your waiting ears
So you could really understand
Instead of just reading
Left to interpret or be told
What I am trying to convey
I give you
Only the skeleton of an idea
The intricacies are for
Your imagination
The Reason Why
I was asked the other day
A simple question
With not so simple an answer
Well, perhaps it isn’t so complex
I’m in search of a feeling
I’m in search of a song to play
Words to sing with spirit
I’ve got to find a sense of wonderful
A zest and energy with which
I shall pour in my veins like
A refreshing intoxicating wine
A drink I shall share with a woman
Whose lips smile for me
Whose fingers seek out mine
Whose eyes hold my everything
I left the icy wheat fields of Alberta
Crossed the greatest mountains
Swift rivers and dancing deer
Until the water reached the ocean
To study in the misty rain soaked air
Learn of the world in
One of the world’s crossroads
Vancouver, city of possibilities
They asked me, Why leave home?
Because Vancouver was West
To me, it is the direction of potential
The direction the legends went
Explorers and adventure seekers
Where Caesar marched his armies
Where Columbus sailed his three ships
Compass pointing to the unknown
Where imagination grows like wildfire
Where the exotic captures the heart
Now they ask me again, “Why?”
I see the shores of Japan in the setting sun
Canada a cliff to throw myself off of
Jumping blind into a different world
I want to open my arms wide and plummet
Headlong into something new
And if that doesn’t work I’ll leap again
Perhaps this time a little more south
Towards Bora Bora and Tahiti or Thailand
Perhaps I’ll hurl myself north, to forbidden China
And if I still don’t find what I’m looking for
I’ll turn a sharp heel and head south-east
Seek out Spanish decendents
Hot and sultry, yet smooth and wild
As are their flames of passion
I may find this elusive feeling
I very well might not
But I’ll do my damnedest or die trying
And make sure I enjoy the ride
Exhilarate in the fall from known into not
Until I undertake the most mysterious
Final voyage of them all – Death
But still I’m not letting go of my hope
Because whose to say I won’t find it even then?
At the very least Caesar, Columbus and I
Can put our worn feet up by a hearty fire
Pipes in hand and let the stories regale
Laughter and memories flowing with sweet wine
Joined now and then by new adventurers and old
Until someone decides we have come to the end of time
The Living / Dying World
In mortal danger
Live so many beautiful creatures
The slippery fish and the fearless shark
The keen-eyed osprey and the fluffy rabbit
Noble caribou and hungry wolf
Hunting tigers and chattering monkeys
All animals have
A place in nature’s chain
Each natural death a careful piece
Of Gaia’s living puzzle
Humans have left the puzzle
In their arrogance and ignorance
Fled the garden of paradise
Selfishly strive, carelessly drive towards
Goals that slowly wilt, shrivel and dry up
The great universal habitat
Damage rate slow by human standards
Is a deadly flare in geological time
Will humans return to nature?
Or will they destroy themselves?
More importantly will they take
The rest of Earth with them
Leaving another dead rock
Drifting amongst the stars?
Bad Morning
I woke up this morning in a
Rush to get to work
The sky was cloudy, June air more like April
My father woke up angry with me again
I opened a letter from my best girl friend
It was the first one
So far this summer that
Didn’t begin and end with a happy face
Two lines long it stated my
Previous message was too strange to be funny
I have offended her somehow
I drove to work under dark skies
I even hit a bird that vainly tried to escape
But my car is a merciless machine
Just like my life
Now my heart feels like it’s being squeezed
I want to curl up into a ball and just cry
A Friend’s Birthday Gift
Heads leaning on each other
Gentle warm night
Stars glowing above
Below rest two friends
Lake’s cool liquid a refreshing swim
Now rest half dressed on the pier
Embrace and face the reflections near
Small town skyline on the mountainside
Sparkling over the depths where Ogopogo hides
Lonely Girl
Always alone
From my perch on the balcony above
I see her there down in the courtyard
Where lovers should be dancing
It’s a sensuous summer’s eve
Jasmine thick and sweet on the ocean breeze
Stars, brilliant jewels surrounded by emptiness
The sight of her below fixes a tear to my eye
How cruel and unfair, to treat one so innocent
They torture her pureness, put barbs in her heart
She is confused and hurt
Why do they shun from her?
I can see it on the faces of the other girls
How they are flawed and ugly in her presence
How they are deeply green with envy
When all the guys notice her first and foremost
And more often than they
Their jealousy is worn like a hideous mask
And I have only contempt for them
They leave her without true friends
Without someone to understand
Without the kinds of secrets and laughs
That a woman only shares with other women
The men, on the other hand, are all cowards and fools
She is the focus of all attention
But she’s so superior in heart, soul, and body
To any other woman
That no man amongst them feels adequate
So they gaze from afar, stutter and run when she approaches
Leaving her to feel ugly herself
No one has ever told her how beautiful she is
What a crime
Tropics
My dreams reside where flowers grow
Under coconuts and breadfruit
Banana trees and pineapples
Where molten magma meets
The cool tranquility of the Pacific
Crystal pure waters cascade through jungles
Parrots call from the shade
Of an ever-warm sun
Set in an ever-perfect sky
A beach that washes away all your bad memories
Leaving every day a new beginning
Time doesn’t stop here
It has never arrived
The very idea of beauty, it’s basic conception
Is personified here by this island cluster
Faith In Ourselves
When I was a little child
The world seemed so vast and unknown
My wonder was great
Wild oats yet unsown
I surrounded myself with books and song
Tales of good versus evil
Right from wrong
Heroes and champions arose on pages and in verse
Bearing strength and wisdom I quietly yearned for
Little did I know these were both blessing and curse
For to a child’s eyes, heroes seem models indeed
Of virtues the world is so desperately in need
And of how life with its challenges should be led
But I grew older, I found disappointment instead
If it is a hero’s qualities we seek
They can be grown
If it is wisdom we want
We can make it our own
We can reach for the stars
Fly higher than high
We can push our inner most limits
To anxieties and weakness say goodbye
All this I did
I thought life won
But as ignorance is lost
We become aware
Of greatness’s cost
The taller we stand after conquering fears
The compassion we gain by smiling through tears
The more often we rise after being knocked down
Refusing pain or even to frown
The more clearly we understand life
Understand our ability to overcome strife
Disdain mediocrities
And listen to Socrates
The more we become alone
Puzzled we are when we look at others
See that strength and wisdom
Are lacking in our brothers
And that compassion and love
Are absent in many mothers
Where is everyone’s high self esteem?
Why can’t they see the things that I’ve seen?
Where is their drive, their ambition to grow?
Why do their hearts always sink so low?
The world’s filled with all they need to grow wise and strong
Why do they choose to lead lives so wrong?
I share, I sacrifice, do I believe in them? Yes!
They too can know success
I smile, I teach how not to have lives so scrappy
So that they too may know that they deserve to be happy
But on deaf ears my words fall
No-one wishes to hear it
The more I try to give
The more often I hit a wall
For in themselves, they do not believe
In themselves they have no faith
Hope they have themselves abandoned
Branded themselves failures
On each other and themselves, they have
Given up
Give up I will not.
If you do not have hope, I will place my hope in you.
If you do not have faith I will have faith in you
If you do not have strength, I will show you how to be strong
If you lack wisdom, I will show you how to be wiser
This thing called life
Is what we make it
Our potential is high
Future where we take it
<< Prev | Next >>
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7