Excitable Ditch Digging (02/17/10)

There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between
mediocrity and accomplishment.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Oh that dirt could be a burden
It could break my back in two
The shovel could destroy me
It could cleave my skull right through

But the sweat that flows out
Doesn't care the why the where the how
It only joys at its release
A captor sprung from cages it had
Not known that contained it

So I swing the lead, forget
My chains, give over to that vision
Floating somewhere in my mind
Of what I might be building

A Coil Of Gray Snake (0213/10)

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

William Blake

Folding back upon itself so tightly and compressed
That were those twists to unconstrict the globe
They would encircle

A passageway once infinite compacted like
Bones pressed between a tar pit and a glacial spill
Until what had been a structure built for movement
Now sits motionless in stone

Where else could all that power be unleashed?
You stood in what seemed a luscious field
And were incinerated in a flash
As the tunnels once conduits to transport
Now funneled into furnace blasts of ash

Licorice Paper

I used to roll my own you know
A practice I felt happy in
I bought the flavored shorter kind
A brand I favored thick and thin
I mixed the Drum and weed most sweet
A cigarette with benefits
I smoked at leisure, wrote my tunes
A high without the pits

But Icarus and licorice both fly rather high
Daedelus had warned us from approaching sun too nigh
For years I ignored this counsel
For years I had my fun
But as Ben Franklin once opined
"If your head is wax, don't walk in the sun."

So now I take no smoke inside
No matter how I crave
I shun the sugar too you see
For it makes me rant and rave
But I miss that burning soar
I miss that turning flight
I give a bellowed roar
I kiss that flaming night

Not The Suit (02/11/09)

An imaginary man quoted his long lost father
As having counseled him in the following manner:

"Let them see you and not the suit."

Perhaps what leeched through in the end was something more, rather
A faux grandeur which gained strength from such a false banner

And left the point more or less moot.

The arch of a brow in response to the swirl of a gown
Holds us in sway as we tumble through grace that you grant

Carried away 'gainst our will to be loved and gently laid down
In the west where we may gaze at the flower you plant

While you perform back flips to boot.