The Life of Love

Though not a Christmas poem, merry Christmas all the same. May God keep you safe and fill your holiday with the love and happiness that cannot be found in stores and presents and parties, but only in quiet rest in Him.


The Life of Love

A man is not a husband,
a woman not a wife,
a house is not a home,
subsistence not a life.

A child is not youthful,
the pleasant is not good,
a simple word not truthful,
and bread alone not food.

This is the mortal token –
the empty and the full –
but what our sin has broken,
now love can render whole.

And so our lives are lifted
above a common mold,
when with His grace we’re gifted:
to love with fervor bold.

The Writer

Though not a Christmas poem, merry Christmas all the same. May God keep you safe


The Writer

The painter’s is a simple task:
to reproduce the skin,
and worry not upon the soul
that lies contained therein.

But for the man who paints with words,
he must, by surgeon’s skill,
bare organs immaterial
that, hidden, drive the will.

He separates the true heart
from the fleshy one inside,
and pulls a god-like giant from
the painter’s pale guide.

And then, preliminaries past,
his labors true begin:
to comprehend the man thus found
in paper and a pen.

Winter Night

Christmas is almost upon us, and today the Commonwealth celebrates with the first annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. And though Winter itself may not yet have sprung upon the city with full force, it is most definitely in the air. Fires are warmer, nights are darker, and the clouds are swelled with the hint of snow.


Winter Night

It is quiet tonight,
all in cotton cold gown,
for the trees, they are silent;
they let their tongues down,

and the prodigal birds
winged their way for the sun.
It is quiet, and I?
I’m the quietest one.

Ode to the Unsure Philosopher: A Sophism in Several Parts

Here's a light take on the principles of philosophy, a staple of those far more intelligent than ourselves. Just because you don't write it, though, doesn't mean you can't dive on in. The true triumph here? Working that beast of a word, 'phenomenological,' into a poem.


Ode to the Unsure Philosopher: A Sophism in Several Parts

The philosopher’s life is a difficult one;
there are so many choices to make,
and it is an arduous task to discern
the truly wise man from the flake.

Do you choose Plato, in all of his forms,
to lead you out into the sun?
Or does intuition prove Aristotle
to be the most rational one.

You could always empirically end with Hume
when searching your senses to find
if Descartes’ cogito was right all along:
to know, you must start in the mind.

Perhaps, still unsure, you may feel, with Kant,
the phenomenological call,
or, in despair, give a tug at your hair
and declare you know nothing at all.

But whatever the state of the truth you can know,
just keep this one thought in your head:
the philosopher’s life is a difficult one;
that’s why all the greatest are dead.

Fever Night

It just snowed for the first time today, and in true holiday spirit, the flu has taken to the streets. So it is that I post this in sympathy with those currently laid out on sickbeds, but most especially Margaret, who is apparently in the slow and painful process of dying of the plague, and Sophie, who would be quite content with just the plague.


Fever Night

Glimpsed in crack, the door ajar,
a fair light filters through,
while from a haze of pressing ill
and artificial blue,
the dance of sparks on firewood
is seen by fevered eye,
and on the deadened ear descends
soft laughter and a sigh.
Oh, why must mortal parts be brought
so low upon a whim,
that happiness of mind is bound
by happiness of limb?

The Girl and the Fan

I wrote this poem for a very dear friend who spent a futile afternoon attempting to turn on a fan. Her apartment had flooded one muggy summer day and the cleaning company left the fan to help dry out the floor. In her defense, it was a massive, industrial beast of a fan, but a fan nonetheless. As a fitting post script, her husband had it going within five minutes of arriving home.


The Girl and the Fan

Upon a satin stool she sits
and sheds a single tear,
for though the heat bears down about,
no remedy is near,

while in the corner, ever close,
looks on the cyclops eye,
with shoulders hunched on blocky bulk
and toothy grin so sly.

Forever will she sit in heat,
as if enwrapped in furs,
for though she seeks to turn his brow,
it is but he turns hers.

Little

Repetition is the theme of the day. The placement of 'little' as the second word of each line was meant to lend the poem a certain flowing cadence and unity. Whether it works or not is up to the reader to decide.


Little

A little blade of grass upon
a little hill was crushed,
by little foot in little boot
on little path that rushed,
and little thought was given it,
while little death it died,
its little stature lowered still
by little motions tried.
Then little corpse was laid upon
a little rocky grave,
its little self to recompense
the little ground that gave.
But little life will spring again
from little grains of earth;
a little blade of grass begot
in little, wondrous birth.