Equus

Maquette Study
By Old Stile Press

(Regarding the play by Peter Shaffer)

tangled irrational
worship of godhead
a madness of manes
leaps from Homeric
dreams of pathology

hoofbeats of midnight
sleek flanks handsome
naked and glistening
gallop the portentous
path of the moon

immature ill-informed
boy-king passions
libido and liturgy
twisted together reins
fouled by psychosis

played out beneath
twelve equine
innocent eyes
misperceived in
dark mirrors of guilt

baleful judgment
deserving the strike
of a spike as the blind
violent price for their
view of the soul

Man on Fire

Poesy plus Polemics

“Man on Fire”
Digital art by M053AB
From deviantart.com

see me as I am
eyes won’t suffer
from the sight
red and raw
skin afire
the arson of age
burns from
inside the nerves
melting myelin
drips from old
photographs
cracked in the
creases that smile
through flames
I need no one to
pity my pictures
all men wear
a future the past
could not see
whether better
or worse time
adds parts to a man
and his personal
pain cannot ever
outlive him

see me as I am
not the man
I had been nor
the one you imagine
reach into my fire
touch the scars
where they blaze
mapping wounds
cruel inflicted by
weapons of mind
ugly beauty exists
in the flesh
of this world
don’t turn from it
don’t let the smoke
veil your vision
with tears
all fire like life
is ephemeral
give me a place

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Unplugged

“Off the Grid”
Painting by Jim Benest
From fineartamerica.com

when the
power grid fails
and batteries die

reconnect
flesh to blood
heart to mind

reacquire
intimate bonding
with nature

reemerge
as a man
among men

reengage
eye to eye
hand to hand

rediscover
your lost
self-identity

Tuscany

Tuscany
Wallpaper Photo
From eweb4.com

hills of history
steeped in aesthetic fine arts
nurture the spirit

Craps

Poesy plus Polemics

“Boys Shooting Craps”
Photo by Lewis Hine
From fineartamerica.com

the desperate play
rolling bones in back alleys
begging for a fade
old bricks can trip up the odds
old dreams come up snake eyes

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Eschatology

“Night of the Blood Moon”
Painting by Eric Forster
From fineartamerica.com

blood on the moon
fourth and final in
sequence of tetrad
apocalypse born
from astronomy’s womb
recrudescent of prophecy
ancient and modern
redemption come forth
from a dark tribulation
as scripture reveals

but my imperfection
is less pessimistic
an underformed faith
reluctant to accept such
a stern exegesis of
imminent moral catastrophe
rather perceiving the
blood on the moon
as a cosmic reminder
of my own mortality

Sunday Statues

Poesy plus Polemics

“La Pieta”
Sculpture by Michelangelo
Photo from michelangelo.buonarroti.historiaweb.net

marble preachers
deliver their sermons
wordlessly speaking
through sculpture to
lately diminishing masses
depicting dimensions
exemplars of fealty and faith
reverential esthetics
a hushed iconography
coaxing ambivalent souls
to the purpose of prayer
to that peaceable interlude
quiet with dialogue
man with his God
private personal words
amid liturgies scripted
and publically joined

catholic artforms who tend
to offend plainer
protestant ministries
argue commandments
interpreted even to point
of iconoclast wars
schisms east and west
old and new ruptures
along the same route
Michelangelo traced with
the consummate grace of
his hammers and chisels
straight into the rebirth
of reverence for creations
by creatures the Creator
has made sculpture either
of flesh or of stone likewise
settles my ancestral soul

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Bronze Age

“Silent Autumn”
Painting by Graham Gercken
From pinterest.com

it’s all about light

the bronze gleam of the sun

giving autumn her colors

composed for appreciative eyes

earthen somber soft tones

underlain by chased gold

that lifts them from shadow

glinting reflective serenity

washing a sensuous

polychrome portrait

of beautiful dying

it’s all about light

Hopeful History

“Horizon of Hope”
Painting by Laura Harris
From shadowlight9.blogspot.com

was there ever a golden age
a time of remarkable deeds
when motives and methods
of men were impeccable
worthy of singing immaculate
praise by the poets of progeny

was there ever a golden age
a time of remarkable deeds
or is memory merely a vessel
of hope a reformative hindsight
that polishes history shining
its possible light on the future

Cordillera

Poesy plus Polemics

Canadian Rockies
Photo from
whitemountainphotography.blogspot.com

backbone of continents
bearing the consequent
burdens of staging all life
monumental with force
of emergent creation
thrust up through the
mineral soils and oxygen
skin of an agnostic planet
it renders support for the
roof of the world here
where spirits collect and
cavort above clouds in the
mists from which tumbling
headwater sources find
downpour in cataracts
rushing to feed mighty
rivers and watersheds
lofty divides between
cultures and characteristic
geographies heavy with
height of intrinsically
idiosyncratic composition
inorganic yet very much
alive having more than
once moved cataclysmically
marking the eons that men
would eventually learn
to call eras while naming
these mountains their first
solemn objects of worship
through countless millennia
minds trained so long on such
heights would inevitably
come to recognize God

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