Happy Hiram Is poetry real or is it just dexterous exercise?

In the Poet's magic kingdom
Readers read their works
And a hush falls on the battle field
the stanzas are just like church,

In the Rhymer's fantasy lands
Every response is praise
They write about their navel lint
Watch muses as they graze.

The Poets room is a basement sublet
And his job is toilet cleaning
He thinks about white puffy clouds
And leaves the bathrooms gleaming.

The Rhymer's reality is
That he is quite unknown
And writes about great birds of prey
But he has never flown.

A blast from the Past

Sycamore Days

I've spent a whole lifetime

in the branches of trees

looking down on the world

with the memory of an elephant.

Trees take the long view

change is all about water

the seasons are a haircut

future – a long adolescence.

My mother was young, my dad old.

Planes flew over every 3 minutes.

The farms were shrinking

and the strip malls growing.

A boy looks like a speck

hidden by the camo-skin

of a fifty foot sycamore

in the green, green youth of spring.

A prayer to the thinking man's God

We, who know our insignificance, call out to You  
Though too small to see even the decimal point above us, we shout with longing into the night.  Though too faint to even hear an echo, we are sure that our message gets through.

We, who know our significance, call out to You 

Like a dog who sits loyal at the foot of the bed, we share in the great godly gift of observing. To see the world around us is, in some small way, to be one with God.  YOU see the world with an all-loving all-knowing eye, while we watch the world with a glance of the more educational variety.  Teach us how to see. Make us worthy of consciousness.

We, still searching for our place, call out to You

Our future, dark and puzzling to us, is laid out clearly by you. You are our rudder and our star. But we can only right ourselves with you here and now, by offering you our pains to see. You know them already, and in seeing them you challenge us, but we can only change when we remember that you are seeing – and when we see you in all things.

We, who know our place, call out to You

Let our prayer be a healing fire that burns away all barriers between us and Your Will. With our hearts, minds and spirits we pray to know your path for us and what use our small gifts can be in the vast world that is our connection to you. We serve others in the hope that it will bring us ever closer to understanding you. And we pray to remind ourselves of our significance, our insignificance, our search for and our place in
Your Will.

Amen
 

sussuring, gyres of chaos...

The Inner Land

Close your eyes and take a deep breath
feel power beneath your own skin
a bitter scent rises from the garden's wet
seeps in, like the rustle of a robin.

You are relaxed, and the world is sound
shivering trees and a sussurate stream
you feel power in your feet flowing from the ground
soft air leads your neck to a dream.

Your body, a fortress, all gabled stone
an entryway is your lungs and ribs
you stand in the interior campus alone
guided by your ear-like jibs.

For this is a fortress that silently moves
under the guidance of a aural tide
sail into fantasies which tongue-and-groove
where stately treasures abide.

Cacophony strides in the garden gate
bringing a sour note of despair
should you open your eyes, t'would be tempting fate
though nothing so evil would be there.

Still you cling to your auditory rock
and whistle blithely through the fear
the arctic wave of air is a shock
as the creature presses near.

Amass every mullion, and stanchion and stone
to feed the artillery's maw
pointed at the creature that chills the bone
and cringe as the cannons guffaw.

Every weight we would bear on the beast
only flows through Evil's sieve
If we only could prick it, or nick it at least
we could feel a moment's peace.

The sound emanates like a series of gears
grinding themselves into rust
as the Evil's oppressiveness rings in your ears
turning your hopes to dust.

You think of the treasure of the Bodhisattvas
awaiting beyond clouds of fear
but for gyring cacophony's unerring pistons
You quit! Open eyes, and it disappears.

Copyright 2013 hgl