Poem of the Day

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast,
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

-- Alexander Pope

Writing Lamp

There is a lamp on my writing desk
Forgotten and left behind
Rescued from an old store
Beautiful but not affected
Original and eternal
The shade is the same color as her name

Biography

I also dabble in the macabre!



A friend from high school wrote me
To bridge the years he did not have much to say
Recalled in a modest tone as if I would be unimpressed
A house, a wife, two sons

But I was not unimpressed
And I traded my own story
The very unconventional biography
Those disparate events and dates juxtaposed next to each other

Summoned out of the past
Lined up in rows
They looked around at their strange bedfellows
Ready to return to their historic sleep

To read it perhaps you would allow me a little self indulgence?
Or, perhaps, some respite?
Fastened to the prow of a ship of unfathomable nouns
Leaves little room for self adulation

Write your own biography
And it may explain some things
For me, I no longer question when I feel tired
Or why I sleep as I have not in years

Outside the sky is an unmerciful gray
And the trees give up their children to the earth
Where they, to the last, will rest until an appointed time
While I gather up my own and put them back in place

She is endless, and back to the earth I go again
Into a formidable and fortuitous sleep
And from its depths I wrestle with my dreams
A house, a wife, two sons