That's right! I have the copies! Whenever you are ready, I am ready to start distributing. Let me know. mbt1966@yahoo.com
Here is the first poem of today. Enjoy!
The Sleeping Newt
I see him sleep in dampened grass.
It seems he does not dream.
I wonder how one’s time can pass
In such a boring scheme.
He stitches hours when he’s awake
To bind up what must be
But never has desire to make
A future prophecy.
In blackness of his vacant eyes,
My myths are overthrown,
For newts arise when fire dies
In fables not my own.
I watch him gobble up his tail
To set his spirit free.
Then, all his dreams that rise but fail
Begin and end in me.
That is a pretty nice little song! Ask me what it is about. I don't know. I saw a salamander and I wrote this poem. "Salamander" is too hard to fit into a rhythmic scheme, so it became "newt." Are newts and salamanders even the same thing?
Here is another.
Hope
Hope does not change
Nor help create.
It barely lasts a minute.
For when we hold
What we desire,
We place no more Hope in it.
Hope does not love
Nor help destroy.
In fact, it has no strength.
Hope is an act
Of hours and days
That weakens in its length.
She said of Hope,
It never stops
To change the tune it sings.*
I say of Hope
It flies away
On very slippery wings.
Much suffering
May give us Hope
That we will soon be free,
For when we die,
We have no Hope
And call it Victory.
*I refer to Ms. Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers. I might have changed her meaning a little.
As I wrote this poem, I was glancing through a book of 100 Favorite Poems, and I happened to flip to successive poems that were about hope. I am afraid that I agree with Alexander Pope that hoping often leads to inaction. Hope is not a bad thing, but when it replaces action, it is self-defeating.
Finally, here is a poem that expresses the way that I fell sometimes. Yeah, that's a joke!
Sometimes
Sometimes, wise voices gather in the wind
And fall to silence in a forest’s trees.
Sometimes, words hold me captive in their din
And free me only if and when they please.
Sometimes, the dim of night is agony
Because I lie awake and cannot dream.
Sometimes, a slimy sweat seeps over me
Because I stay asleep and cannot scream.
Sometimes, I wish to flesh I weren’t a slave
And I could be like meteors or mist.
Sometimes, the trek from cradle to the grave
Is only worth the while ‘cause I’ve been kissed.
Sometimes, a giddy hour turns to a yawn
And yesterday flies off on drowsy wings.
Sometimes, I stand and welcome the new dawn
And wonder what it is the robin sings.
Sometimes, I am a traveler
And, sometimes, I sit still.
I’d like to make the Essence stir.
I think, sometime, I will.
I hope that you have enjoyed these poems with me. I'll see you around sometime.