August 21, 2011 by thegnosticpoet.

He looked like Castro with a lesser beard
And younger by a bit, as I then thought.
Perhaps he’d spot the tyrant twenty years,
But the nose, cheeks, and eyes the photos brought
Across the Strait of Florida, he shared.
He must be far older than I, with wife
And full-grown sons across the table there.
Undoubtedly he led a different life.
I looked again and saw his gray matched mine,
And estimated once again his age.
Around his eyes I saw no trace of lines:
Late forties say? My thoughts were not assuaged.
Here was a man much older than my mind,
And if he looked at me, what did he find?

Posted in English Sonnet, Iambic Pentameter | Print | No Comments »

February 14, 2011 by thegnosticpoet.

“It’s always darkest e’re the dawn.
I swear your dawn will have its worth,”
She scrawled upon the wall and ran.
I looked upon the dripping words,
Blacker black on a blackened wall,
And wondered why my wyrd was here
Not where I’d thought for good and all.
But destiny is always queer,
Not caring where we’d go or why
Nor lighting paths to show the way
But bounding us like hedges high,
We blind beggars who shun the day.

Bitter herbs and bitter tonics:
How would we shun them if we could?
Yet sometimes they’re the doctor’s orders
So we take them as we should.
I, like a horse recalcitrant,
Have pulled the wagon where I would,
Again the master takes my reins
And turns me back into the wood
Whose dark and twisted shapes still leer
And reach above to block off sun.
Perhaps beyond this darkened passage
Waits the brightness to be won?

Posted in Blank Verse, Iambic Tetrameter | Print | No Comments »

April 11, 2010 by thegnosticpoet.

I write in hints of shadows where
The passion cowers, peeking out,
A child amongst the grown-up legs.
The suicide is not on stage,
The ardor of ten thousand days,
The flesh that presses softer flesh,
The dagger drawn to rip and tear,
The arguments with rending clothes,
Invisible for all to see.
And what is left between the words?
Just paper, white, untouched, unmarred.
The conjuror will cast his spell
To find the only one he’s fooled
Looks back at him within the glass.

Posted in Blank Verse, Iambic Tetrameter | Print | 1 Comment »

May 10, 2009 by thegnosticpoet.

I ran across your name the other day
My heart was filled with laughter all unplanned
And memories of other times held sway.

A laugh can hold old Father Time at bay:
Each shake of mirth reverses fallen sand.
I ran across your name the other day

And thoughts of you and Archie made their way
To crowd the now out of my mental land
And memories of other times held sway,

Old classes where I met you in the fray
With characters from splendid down to bland.
I ran across your name again today

When concrete poetry had led the way
To read a thesis by the artist’s hand.
But memories of other times held sway

Mehetabel’s young kittens all at play
And texts of English writing to be scanned.
I ran across your name again today,
And memories of other times held sway.

Posted in Villanelle, Iambic Pentameter | Print | 1 Comment »

February 9, 2009 by thegnosticpoet.

How many watch the greatest play
All in their seats they listen, still,
The while we actors do our will
To miss our cues and waste the day?
But will they close their eyes to us
When scenes are private by our wish?
Or like voyeurs, is this the dish
That stays their eyes upon our lust?
Or when they breathed was it enough
To live those lives both sweet and rough,
And we, the actors who remain,
But play to emptiness in vain?
I’d rather think the hall is bare.
I need none there to watch me here.

Posted in Sardine, Line Pattern, Iambic Tetrameter | Print | No Comments »

July 13, 2008 by thegnosticpoet.

I thought to read a bit before sleeping,
But then I read too much, and here I sit
Aroused from bed by an unquiet mind’s
Chirping like a chipmunk in the dark room.
I have long played the jester and the fool,
And each pointed barb I’ve forged has cut me.
No rest for the wicked, and none for me.
For I have lived the greatest sin of all:
I have taken myself seriously.
I was the joke who did not laugh along.

So, sleep has sloughed off into the silence
As remembered sins, real and imagined,
Occupy my mind, an army entrenched.
I stare into the stillness of my soul.
It’s not a placid lake or peaceful vale.
It’s a junkyard, piled high with refuse,
but with unrecycled treasures unfound
and ready for some careless foot to kick,
revealing gold among the bric-a-brac.

O, Restless Truth! How did I get this way?
I feel the silence still, immutable.
It speaks within, still, as when I was eight,
It claims, “I am the same. I am unchanged.
The years may make no claim on spirit’s stuff.
Events in time are weights attached to fire;
They cannot hold the flame nor bind the air.
Either they know my heat, or are consumed.”

And now the eyes that would not close have drooped.
The mind that would not rest is stilled of thought.
The head has bowed and jerked and bowed again.
I lay this fey-made shell upon the bed,
the I within has dumped the garbage scow.
So now I stride across the moonlit shore,
Once more the fire that lives ‘twixt sand and sea.

Posted in Blank Verse, Iambic Pentameter | Print | No Comments »

July 7, 2008 by thegnosticpoet.

If you saw my love, she is not the sun.
Her hair and eyes are dark as outer space,
although there is a twinkling bit of fun
that shows like stars within her eyes’ embrace.
And yet, she is not glory that hurts the eyes,
nor is she heat to dry the skin and parch
the tongue. She shall not coax a plant to rise
and grow into a wizened tree, a larch?
An oak? A yew, perhaps? But, no, not she
to be the center of a solar system,
giving life to all and boiling the sea
in time. She is a gentler light that limns
the edges of my clouds and shows the way
in life’s darkest nights and stormiest days.

Posted in English Sonnet, Iambic Pentameter | Print | No Comments »

September 17, 2007 by thegnosticpoet.

The nights are chill with clear and star-filled skies,
While days of fading summer burn with haze.
The ladies wear the latest fashion craze
To capture wandering eyes and hold their prize,
For soon enough this warmest season dies,
To leave the women robed in autumn’s maze
Of sweaters, wraps, and shawls as all the praise
Is captured by the leaves bedecked for eyes.
But even as sweet summer fades to fall
I think of you and smell the flowers bloom.
The rains of springtime freshen up my mind.
I see your shining smile and I recall
The times I’ve seen it shine within our room.
In you I’ve spring in fading summer’s rind.

Posted in Petrarchan Sonnet, Iambic Pentameter, Poetic Forms | Print | No Comments »

September 4, 2007 by thegnosticpoet.

Today I heard about your father, Jim.
I sat to write a note that might convey
My solidarity in recent pain.

I couldn’t bring myself to send those words
Like drops of blood escaped my heart and veins.
Instead, I wrote expected words of balm.

But now I sit reflecting on my day,
With nothing but the air to break the calm,
And see those formal words in twilight truth.

We fall upon the formal ways we’re taught,
Mortar between the bricks to set and smooth
And hold society together well.

For sharing pain can open unhealed wounds
And chasten out mortality to tell
Us that our time is fleet and passing soon.

Two men who lived to be near eighty years,
Two men who passed within a hand of moons,
Two men who shaped and molded who we are.
Two men are left to mourn, you and I, Jim.

Posted in Nonce, Iambic Pentameter, Poetic Forms | Print | 1 Comment »

July 11, 2007 by thegnosticpoet.

I thought, and then I moved the stars.
They clinked and tinkled as I stretched
To shuffle them about, and Mars,
With baleful glare, the hostile wretch,

He marshaled planets for a war.
But Sol commanded them, “No more!”
And back they went to placid sleep
To graze their orbits, bashful sheep.

Posted in Iambic Tetrameter, Rispetto, Poetic Forms | Print | No Comments »