Ode to Silicon

What silly substance seals your engine

While it lubricates your brakes,

Also keeps your hands from burning

And won’t stick to baking cakes?

What magic metal polymer

Helps to make your dry flies float

All while doing double duty

Shedding raindrops from your coat. 

When it’s in its other form

A partner at both work and play

This stuff makes computers work

And lets you use your phone all day.

You can’t escape this silly stuff; it’s always within easy reach

In every sky high satellite and under foot on every beach.

No Child’s Mythic Mystic Journey (version 2)

Through this driving, bitter, rain,

Off to Grandma’s once again.

Sadly muted Christmas songs-

No one wants to sing along.

Only mournful background sound,

Dragging all our spirits down,

Drowned without a hesitation

By adolescent recitation

Of somber death, poetry

From the nineteenth century.

Perfect mirror for my mood-

Spending hours with this brood!

I must ask you, my old friend,

Will this winter ever end?

America: beaten black and blue

I saw three young men clad all in black

Except for bright white tennis shoes.

I’m rather pleased that my first thought

Was “They could use a fashion muse!”

No sense of dread came rising up

From deep within some hidden core

Of long forgotten biased fears.

No deeply planted racial lore.

Just three young men clad all in black

All wearing bright white sneakers

Out for a stroll this Saturday

Not some heartless violence seekers.

Perhaps they want more festive dress.

I pray they avoid unpleasantness.

Who Let The Droogs Out?

Three times now, since Tuesday,

They’ve been there with their guns,

Four young men in camo tees

Lounging against the tailgate.

Their presence isn’t new; they’ve been there many days,

Lounging against the tailgate

Rapt in friendly conversation;

There without their guns.

I see them now in different light

Than I did those days before;

These four young men in camo tees,

Lounging against the tailgate,

With their pistols on their hips,

Rapt in guarded conversation.

Will We Rate A Kinder Fate

What might we regret
in lonely final hours
and we contemplate our fate?
~
Might we not regret
all our reckless use of might
without due contemplation?
~
Or might we regret
a timid intervention
allowing fright to triumph?
~
Or might there be no regrets
because we acted in good faith
after careful contemplation?

Shock and Awe

From ragged verdant verge

Eruptes a freckled fawn

Frightened into flight

Not long after dawn

By the sudden sight

On the lower lawn

Of, clad in crimson bright,

clumsy human spawn,

Who, in turn, was shocked

By the sudden charge

Of that tiny fawn

That seemed so very large.

Peace replaced by peril in a single instant,

A unity of terror in the minds of infants.

Senses and Senselessness

See those bloody shirts a wave,

lying us the reasons for?

Hear those shiny sabres rattle,

their deathly, hollow, call to war?

Feel the ache of frightened souls,

for whom living’s now a chore?

Taste the bitter widow’s tears

as she greets you at her door

to receive the tragic news

of husband dead on distant shore?

Smell the acrid tangy fumes

of burning corpse and scattered gore

drifting from the battle field;

is that enough or need you more?

 

That’s All Folks

Here I stand, waiting,

Calmly anticipating

The casual negating

Of these fifteen years.

A professional life spent

Helping those the masters sent

Through each horrid life event,

Just more grease for endless gears!

Guess I’m done trotting the globe,

Loaning out my frontal lobe.

Bet I’ll shed narrie a tear

For the end of this career.

And so I bid you fond adieu.

I’ll find better things to do.

The Novice and The Sage

Cried the novice out, in fear,

“The road is all down hill from here!

But thrice my age you are, at least

And yet, it seems you still find hope.

How have you slain this fearsome beast?”

Spake the sage, in voice most deep,

“When the hill you’re on is way too steep,

Must you never surrender hope.

You can always bend the curve

And, in so doing, change the slope.”

“But that would mean a longer path,

How ever will you get there fast?”

“Life’s not about a race to run;

It’s about a journey that can be fun!”