Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days


open space

  • propaganda or verse

    Poets say 
                   April showers bring May flowers
    So too say the liars, the preachers and prostitutes 
    who come to express what they’ve heard, but not
    what they know. 
        Unlike poets, 
    the doubtful and the disenchanted 
    often cry foul as we together mourn the loss of 
    common sense and decency.
    A tarnished soul with a litany of pleas, a poet learns 
    words are worth little more than sand if not spoken 
    with wisdom derived from a broken heart, physical
    traits of emotional details, and second-hand lessons 
    from third-rate teachers. 
            It hurts to bleed. 
            It hurts to need validation. 
    Honesty is not worth what it once was, but comes 
    at a significant cost. 
            April soon, May will surely follow, 
    and politicians will say only what they want to hear 
    (like the prostitutes and preachers). Fraudsters all. 
    Only the poet sees the crime, unless 
    you know wherein the message lies.
            Society becomes as calm as it is 
    corrupt, when we take the words of a televangelist or
    talk-show host as truth. Moving swiftly through topic 
    of the day – fentanyl crisis or racial pain – they don’t 
    know any better when speaking of so much worse. 
    Nor can they tell the difference between 
    propaganda and verse. 
            The poet writes not of spring flowers, 
            but of the dread instead.
    Whom else but a poet (or discarded lover)
    would sit in the rain and wait for tulips to bloom? 
    Other souls think it too impractical, too illogical, or 
    simply too wet to care. 
               Them who cannot taste the difference
               between raindrops and a salty tear 
               may never know bona fide honesty 
                                           until they read about it.

  • a little easier

    In tomorrow’s light,
    things will look a lot
    less frightening.

    In tomorrow’s light,
    maybe we can find
    our way.

    With tomorrow’s light
    it might seem 
    a little easier.

    In tomorrow’s light,
    may we find comfort
    throughout the day.

  • all my flaws

    Who can you blame?
    Are the feelings unjust when a decision is a matter of knowing you must find fault or favour with the ill winds of change?
    It is never enough to simply rearrange plans or predicaments. It is like making a prediction of all my flaws with my faith as fractured or fragile as it is, or has been.
    Far easier to see what I haven’t been doing.

  • forever wonder

    If we wait too long

    for the stars to align, for

    some kind of hope, or

    some kind of sign,

    if we let our lives hang on

    still-bated breath, we will

    forever wonder

    what is still to come

    or what we have left. If we

    don’t own the moments,

    or make them our own,

    will we ever feel like

    we’ve made our way home?

    If we can’t be honest

    with others, and especially

    our selves,

    can we ever explain why

    or how

    we once felt?

    If we wait too long, it

    may never arrive.

    Stop waiting,

    start doing,

    start feeling alive.