The Ideal Unachievable State

for Blaise Pascal, who died August 19th, 1662

Canary, breathe!
What was not is again,
no thing is an illusion.
What was empty has been
filled with good things.

Heaven takes despair
and puts it somewhere else,
in the mouths of miscreants,
or perhaps, the unaffiliated
creedless, cretins and bores.

Believe in nothing at your peril,
nature abhors a vacuous mind,
better to swerve and hit God
than miss the devil, don-cha-know
if the after life is so great, go now.

Falling off a perch happens,
empty takes up space, not a bit
left for a mote in God’s eye.
I would have written a shorter poem,
but I did not have the time.

What the dream gave me

I fight the pass of seasons,
longing to create
differences where there are
no differences.

The desire to
impose a timely structure:
monument by prior arrangement,
practice goodbye.

No matter how perfectly
bags are packed
when the going comes
what was is abandoned.

Wishing wells are aptly named,
hope spoken into the abyss;
forgiven, brought up again
watered down, something
to be spilled on more reasonable ground.

In the end we embrace-
not long enough, or hard enough,
already beginning
to wake up.

and yes, "heart full of hornets" comes from a great song by Calexico-

Still working out the method of this, I think- for calendar info, please go to my webpage http://groups.msn.com/FlashPaperPoetry- sometimes the link doesn't work- I have no clue why or why not, I have NOTHING to do with that.

here's a poem:

Concomitant variation

Excess caution bottles time
like cheap booze makes you puke
next day regrets and what dids.

Doesn't beg trouble exactly,
only offers the opportunity.
You supply the three-piece suit.

I thought you were a magic man.
Spelled senseless, half-blind
heart full of hornets, I jumped.

When you said stop, I did
vertical moves, too square
to get anywhere interesting.

Sticking to the sidewalk
is a function of the weather,
I blow hot and cold, in season.

Shann says: