These vines of doubt entangle me
Ensnare me in this darkened cage
Each line confounds, embitters me
And shrouds me in benighted rage
In white dreams I imagine me
A shining knight of sky and earth
But light of day proves: oh, poor me!
I’m but a speck, a pebble’s worth!
And so these lines, in spite of me
Come sputtering in halting train
These verses dark accuseth me
I crumble ‘neath my dreams, all vain.
On the Art of Poetry
Now I know how hard
‘Tis to string words into verse:
An art fit for kings!
On The Inexpressible
Between these lines I Try vainly to express the Inexpressible.
On Three Hundred Days
Ev’ry day these three
Hundred days, I write down words
To ward off the Dark.
On Reading Milton
Dense and lustrous verse Each word rolls off the tongue like Dark incantations.
On Placeholders
On days when I can’t
Muster proper words, I send
A haiku in lieu.
On Incantations
Each poem is incantation true: a plaintive cry in darkest night a squeal of boundless sheer delight a prayer for fragile tender hopes a spell to cast love's binding ropes And so I now, in faith, incant: These poems I write with dread aflame Such dreams I dare not even name A pledge to prove amidst all strife These verses mark undaunted Life.
On Knowing
The day you finally grow up is the day when you finally realise that after all you have learnt and all that you know You actually know very little about the universe about the stars that hang in the night sky about the planets that swirl in the darkness of space about the human heart and its flits and sighs We blind ourselves with laws and theories and books and pages until most of us forget that what passes for our knowledge is just a mere drop in His ocean a humble letter in the book of Existence So talk a little slower walk a little lower as you sail along through life's angry ocean because you and I we are finally grown up enough to know that we know too little.
On Growing Old
One of the best things about growing old is that I am no longer worried about what my friends would say about my hair or my clothes or what car I drive or where I live I can damn well do whatever I want: cut my hair short wear batik to work drive my beat-up Japanese car live in my small cozy home with my wife and my cat sleep in all weekend read Marx watch the sun go down from our balcony watch stand-up comedy all night on Netflix They say growing old is frightening and painful I say hogwash Be yourself Be original Be old.
On Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
