Making Love To a Mood I Killed

I made incomplete love to a mood

To an expression of my intensity

Hanging like an empty hive

Until the queen returned

To dance the rites

She represented

The sound of the all but

Empty chamber echoing

Making no impression

On the man who raked the leaves.

It looked not at all like

A permanent romance or a

Revelation scaled of

A man amidst ideas

Or for that matter a frozen

Hive hung to buzz imperceptibly

Oscillating in the wood

I’m sure it did not

For he gestured and said

What is that thing doing there?

It took three deft

Hooks from the rake.

I know it happened

Efficiently and practically

Without a thought

I witnessed it.

I did it.

Inspiration

We all need reminding

why we do what we do 

Say, after TV all day

It was the best use of time

It was the worst use of time

Smart as a whip

Sharp as a tack

You’re wrong on me

I doubt your dreams

Where’s the respect?

Me serving you

You serving me

We both flourish

Unselfish

Salvation for all

A third way

A middle path

Objectivists say

It’s about me

Finding a way

Call it altruism

Grow wealthy

Give it away

But give now while we’re living

Forever waits in the other realm

Greatness does not ooze from me

I’m moral only by habit

You want the most for me

Why not me for you?

Rising from the state we’re in

Let’s note the changes

No - let’s make them

My Friend Is Wrong

A friend disagrees with me

On something important to us both

My friend is wrong

I am right

My friend is thickheaded

I am brilliant

I hope my friend is not writing

A poem on this subject too

Yellow Squash

Chopping squash

Thinking rules

Yellow skinned

A seedy home

A Bible in there

A Koran

An Upanishad

Deliver me

From another

Oppressive

Marrow

Beans, maize

100 Centuries

Of seeds

Reincarnated

We will

Eat them

Later today

Irresponsibly

Altering

The pattern

A little while

Work hard, Play hard

When they say you’re only young once

They mean you’re only below 21 once

Nothing keeps us from thinking young 

“Old” is largely a social construction

Work contributes to the construct

When the young person

Hears her first boss announce: do as I say

It’s early onset old age

Since this happens to almost all of us

We know of no other way 

Only a grown-up child actor

Seems to have escaped

Most youth defy the message from work 

As if to prove they are an exception 

Work hard and play hard

A statement I sometimes hear

Meant to represent a type of balance 

Work hard - do what they require of you

Play hard - same thing

Only the referent group changes

Do what the employer says

Do what peers say

The first – “walking the line”

The second – “self-expression”

Work masters

Play masters

We all have both

The first is stern, the other subtle

          

Frowns make us ponder

Where we're going
They're predicting good weather
If I come back scowling 
Something else will be the matter
Like bad weather here
Or some petty human game
I don't know what 
I'm sure It'll find a name

Smiles are no great wonder
But frowns, make us ponder

Every Hundred Years

After what happened last Tuesday
I can’t look at a person right now
Especially a young one
Without wondering
If he is hurting inside
If her spirit is listing
Like the Titanic
100 years ago
Please tell me these
Things are not going
To occur every hundred years