That Strain Again, It Had A Dying Fall

The past accumulates like autumn leaves

Blown into corners, never quite swept up.

The unforgotten loss a mother grieves;

The old friend who once gifted that red cup;

The fingered leaves of books, now bent and creased,

That show the hours reading and rereading;

The wear on steps (most sturdy where used least);

The little bush that grew when missed in weeding:

They do not haunt the present. They live here

As surely as the people on the street.

Their memory is ready to appear

Whenever circumstances may seem meet:

And when they do, the past, like leaves, will fly 

Out of the corner, blanketing the sky.

And So Die

Everything that's born will someday die

Whether from some external force or power

Or simply reaching its own final hour

When life exhausts, and spirit bids goodbye.

This death is sure; though we may reason why,

Rail endless against it, fight, or cower

In sullen fear within some hidden bower

We cannot change it. Yet we also lie

If we pretend that all things die the same.

The surety of death is no excuse

For making life less than it could have been.

Death promises us nothing but the name:

The quality of dying lies in use

And letting death come badly is the sin.

May Sicken

 Another cough, another cough, another;

It seems as if the whole world were a cough.

And hardly anyone bothers to smother

Their cough within an elbow; they go off

As if their illness couldn't pass by air.

Yet we know better, or we should by now;

We have a common duty, common care.

If there's a way--and yes, we all know how--

You shouldn't spread your sickness to the crowd.

And yet how soon we all forget the way;

How quickly what was once proclaimed out loud

Becomes a whisper, hidden from the day:

Concern for others, once a common cause

Is now considered overreach of laws.

The Appetite

Growth provides momentum all its own

For justifying growth; we grow to grow

And do not cease once we are fully grown,

Metastizing ever onwards so

That we can say we grew. No growth can know

A limit: if you simply stay, you cease

To matter. Nor can growing even slow.

There is no space for any kind of peace,

We only know the power of increase.

Economies of scale, we are assured

Are (to our good) the only axle-grease

And there is nothing that cannot be cured

By growing, growing, growing. It's the answer

For everything. Except, of course, for cancer.

That, Surfeiting

You'll win so much, he said, that you will beg

To lose again. You'll be so sick of winning

That you'd give up your arm--maybe your leg--

To try to bring things back to the beginning.

Well, I'm not sure that this is winning, truly:

Unless you move the goalposts off the field.

I find the government acting so cruelly

Is losing; with the power states can wield

Comes expectation of a common good,

A common benefit, a commonwealth

That works towards what it should, not what it could,

In search of joint prosperity and health.

To use that power for a selfish win

Is not a victory. It is a sin.

Excess Of It

What do I do with all my churning senses?

What is the point of feeling all these feels?

The problem with sensation so immense is

That from each feeling my perception reels.

I cannot disentangle my own being

From all that has impinged on me today;

The world that I'm forever hearing, seeing,

Touching, smelling, tasting has a way

Of overtaking, overwhelming me.

I never am myself alone; I'm more

But what I am's not what I want to be.

It's something bigger, and the stretch is sore.

What can I do? I cannot tell. I wear

And fear that as my senses melt, I'll tear.

Alack And Fie For Shame

A Valentine is just a piece of paper

But so are wills, and mortgages, and deeds.

We think of it as insubstantial vapor--

The kind of thing only a child needs--

But what we write, and who we write it to--

The purpose, execution, and design--

Are powerful, and Valentines are too

(At least if you're consenting to be mine).

Too true, there are conventions in the form

That shape the way we can communicate;

But every kind of writing has a norm

And what we choose within that norm has weight.

I choose to write to you; do you to me?

There's meaning in the reciprocity.

After Blazons

Sometimes my love is like a charged cell phone

That buzzes every time that I am needed; 

Sometimes my love is like a traffic cone: 

Giving direction but, alas, unheeded.

Sometimes my love is asphalt in the sun

Forever burning in the summer heat; 

Sometimes my love is like a Turkey Run:

Cold, up too early, and obsessed with meat. 

Sometimes my love is like a subway train

Running on rails deep in the city's heart;

Sometimes my love is like a coffee stain:

A dirty remnant of an early start.

But though my love may vary day by day

Across these changes, still my love will stay.

Chill

This is the perfect kind of day to sit

And watch the window as the rain drips down,

A cup of cocoa in one hand, a bit

Of yet-uneaten cookie, warm and brown,

Just-dunked above the surface in the other.

This is the kind of day for books and lamps,

The phone put down, the blankets piled to smother,

To warm away the winter's drafts and damps.

I wish I could. I really wish I could.

But no, I must go out into the storm 

And seek another's, rather than my, good:

My bones feel destined never to be warm.

The day's perfection only lives inside,

But I cannot, despite myself, abide.

Frozen

The time for denial is past

If ever such times could endure;

The terrors we suffer can't last

And we all must contribute a cure.

If you cannot see what's before you

Or recognize murder as such

The time has come now to ignore you

Until you've admitted as much.

The eyes of the world will observe us

And we see ourselves and our acts;

Indifference cannot now serve us

The time's here for facing hard facts.

The tyrants in books that we've read

Now work in our cities instead.