So This Is Christmas 

My daughter plays the flute in her fifth grade band and, this morning, they put on a holiday concert. Arriving early, I snagged a couple of seats near the front for snapping pictures and waited for my wife to join me.  “How are you, Steve?” one of the mom’s...

Out of Control 

Malignancies, car crashes  Power’s decisions rash  Politics, war, ideological clash Terror marring summer skies Buildings imploding, cutting short lives Death, loss, insanity, sundering ties Young men angered over trifles Seeking fame with rifles ...

Autumn Morning Jog 

On morning kissed streets Mercuries fleet streak past As mothers perambulating, solidarity meet Whilst old men for whom the die’s cast Each other knowingly greet. The shopkeeper with wares Opening for the day  As youth, hale and fair Blazing bright, much to say...

Satanic Mills 

Huddled masses, yearning to be free Enslaved to needs of you and me Grow our crops, tend our fields Beneath hard men who refuse to yield. Packing impulsive desires  Things they can’t afford to acquire  Into mails, swift to ship  As technocrats...

Department Store Baby 

Baby ahead of me in line Eyes staring, beautiful they shine   Fresh opened, trusting, kind Shimmering wisdoms new and divine.  Not stained with adult guile  Which sorrow’s sediment piles   Ensouled only a short while  She makes me...

Affliction, Wrath, & Need

The Golden Mouthed, he was the one Singing about the Father, Spirit, & Son  Chorusing Triune creeds Beseeching deliverance from affliction, wrath and need.  Old words, on Sunday’s reverent intoned Under gold onioned domes Before workaday concerns,...

Wildfires Of No Consequence 

Billowing menace, acrid scents  Old growth, saplings charring together  While out of sight, fawns distressed race And the owl’s perch succumbs.  Golden hordes breaching firebreaks  Rapine alight windswept, rapacious, desiccation stoked  ...

Fighting Decay 

Things you have to do  To your body stay true. Diet, exercise, apothecary Doctors, tests, insurance mandatory.  Youth ground away  A little more each day But forget counsel’s irredentist I still have to go to the dentist.  Ever since battles...

Jerusalem Can Wait 

Every tear wiped away, But not in Isreal Not in Gaza. Where’s your Messiah now?  Ukraine’s sunflowers weep, Unable to follow the sun Attrited by Third Rome’s janissaries, Iconostases rubbled By eyes in the sky weeping ruin.  Iron beasts, slain Litter desert,...

The One That Got Away 

Young, trim and cute Setting all reason on mute Forever twenty-one I thought she was the one. Yet lost in trauma Oh Mama! Slipped away Through my fingers one day.  Day she was lost My friend crucified on cancer’s cross Wheeled out on gurney entire Consigned to...