Tain

Reading of ancient heroes
Hearing their chants of praise
Skin torn in strips like gyros
Deaths in a bloody haze
I cannot pray enough
Thanks to my God on high
Life is no longer rough
Good men don't seek to die
Yet who can tell the deeds
We, in this warmer age,
Do, in the former's weeds?
That would disgrace the page.
High and most bloody verse
Matches a good age worse.

Angels

I hear the sound of angels' wings
Unless it's just the water rushing
Down the gutters where there clings
A tattered leaf or two. If so, the flushing
Of my drains will bring, at least,
A little cleanliness into
My life, and I have thus increased
What's next to angels. In this view
I am either way improved
Either by the angel flutters
In the aether as they moved
Or by cleaning out the gutters
As they drain. And so I see
Beauty either side of me.

Trip

The road's an empty place
Composed of nothing more
Than interstitial space
A comprehensive bore
In which there's no relief
From endless listless sitting
Except to be, in brief,
A little bit unwitting.
Unless, of course, you are
By fate or other luck
The driver of the car:
If so, you lucky fuck,
You get to stress and strain
While all of us complain.

Patter

The day is young
And yet I am
Already stung
By its flim-flam
For it is bright
And sharp and clear
So all is light
But - o - how queer
To feel the air
Upon my skin
Say - that's not fair
I should be in
For it is not
As it seemed, hot.

Common

Community's a very funny thing:
It self-defines, and cannot be defined;
It takes the best from all that all can bring
As if by angels it had been designed
And yet the worst from all is also brought
And taken in, and then outward expressed;
It takes the average too of human thought
And all and none at once of interest.
The common the low, the base, the weak
And yet the height of sense is called the same;
Without community all life is bleak
And yet it can exist without the name.
It can't be held, and yet it can embrace
Cannot be seen, and yet we are its face.

Go

Whatever I do, it will be OK
Seriously, it really really will
The sky may be (it is) completely gray
Injected with a fell unfriendly chill
The world make look as bleak as bleak can be
I may not want to put a toe outside
Or let the outside come inside to me
In fact I may prefer to run and hide
While stormclouds gather threatening above
But I am sure no matter what occurs
That I between my self, my luck, and love
Will be OK. And that's the thought that stirs
My heart to act, instead of merely waiting:
If it's OK, why bother hesitating?

Yo

I live a double life. In neither one
Am I completely present. How could I?
For from each one I have to say goodbye
So frequently that all the times it's done
Just flow together and comingled run
Out at my ears. I do not wonder why
Or softly sit and droop my head and sigh,
But still I feel the stress forever dun
My self-reserves. I would not change this life
If all that I could change was me alone
But I would alter the eternal strife
Between my lives that has by this time grown.
I cannot be both places at one time
And fail to substitute myself with rhyme.

Fallen

Autumn comes as suddenly
As wind blows down Chicago streets
It steals the green from every tree
And then the life, as it depletes
The chlorophyll (O evergreens!
Where are the pine trees of my youth?
I never saw such ugly scenes
When I was young, but now the truth
Comes crashing down: these trees will stand
Bare and dejected through the spring
And then return subdued yet grand
To overshadow everything).
I used to love autumn chill
But barren trees to me bode ill.

I Must Be Going

There's something special about 4 a.m.:
Not just that everything is tinged with red
Across the west Chicago sky, that bed
Is calling, that the songbirds (list to them!)
Are singing a consistent lullaby,
Or that the mind, half-tired and all fuzz,
Wishes to do as every other does:
Turn off, and let the waking world slide by.
No, if you force yourself to be awake
Perhaps from some idea trapped in your mind
And look around, and listen, you will find
Platonic stillness. Nothing else can make
The world as peaceful as mankind asleep
Leaving only nature, soft and deep.

Pasts

Nostalgia is a strange exotic beast
That calls us from our homes - or calls our homes
No homes at all, but something that has ceased
To do us justice, as the heart now roams
In distant half-forgotten lands. I see
A past that never was and yet I feel
As if it were what I would always be
And though it ought to be a bit surreal
Instead it seems as if it were correct,
As if the past I know I lived were wrong
And this alone, beyond my intellect,
Were how it really had been all along
Only the strong insistence of my will
Can make the visions fade, my heart grow still.