Cool reviews
are seldom gratifying;
ask Caesar. If he were here
to answer he would say
they will bury you.

Imitation
is not always the greatest
flattery.  Sometimes it’s plagiarism.
Is there any word that’s not been used
before?

Even infants’
ads are strained.  Seams are fraying.
It’s more than recycled paper
though I’m all for saving trees.
We need an eco system

 for the infrastructure
of literature; less politics
and more philanthropy
(not to be confused
with philandering.)

The pen
is a mighty sword.  Sometimes
the mind is a mighty wasteland.
Flarf if you must, but please
be discreet.

This is not really a Flarf, but a modified Flarf. It seems every form can be corrupted, even Flarf.  I simply gathered phrases that struck my fancy and spilled them onto the page in what I dub a Flubbed Flarf.

A light flittered by the window,
perhaps a broken star,
the storm might be really mild
where we are and raging
worse in heaven.
I do not know.

Five warm days in a row
in January; that is gift
enough. I’ve seen colder days
in April, but now tonight
there might be snow.
I do not know.

Spring,  I welcome it,
but only as a spectator,
I watch it and smile fondly
for I have been there.

Winter is a concept
I’m not yet ready
to embrace.

September through November
is my intimacy, Early on
the flowers still in bloom,
and at the end, snowflakes are falling.

Bless these things
 that call my pen to action,
but what about this hunger
to make peace more
than mere abstraction?

Is it poverty of language
or fault of culture that leaves me
 searching for the perfect elocution
of my dreams?

 Look past these words and imagine
beyond the fields of blood,
past all occluded vision
past the generals’ perverted missions

and see the peace
that can exist, that must exist,
first in the minds of poets
then flowing from their pens.

Imagine the constancy of water
changing rock  and celebrate quietly
these small and deathless victories
that lead to peace.

Here, there, then gone so quietly
it is hard to believe it’s not a dream,
That playful wind must be part imp,
Warm as the noonday sun, it touches
the skin in a laughing caress,
then skitters along the garden hedge,
edging the boxwood with rippled stems,

and I, feeling wild as a new spring colt,
try to chase it down, but alas, I can
only see where it’s been
and by the time I get there it is gone.
As if making sure I won’t lose track,
it circles back and whispers,
“Catch me if you can.”

Snow swept the fields
with a natural rhythm
             not yet named,

just a gentle perfection
humming in God’s head
                 like Creation
    before He made man.

Then she opened the door, but no sunlight
was there, just one great big circle
back to where she had been, She learned
that the flowers could not grow without sun,
That brief taste of freedom was only a game.

She sat in the corner, the key cast aside,
Slow silver tears fell from her eyes,
and her heart would have shattered
from sorrow and pain, but for the door
that she locked tight again.

A picture better shared unskewed
wears lines that discipline concludes,
Even geese understand the vee
moves them aerodynamically,
but do not dismiss the pigeons
that swirl at will, filling the sky randomly,
line them up at risk of losing their identity,
There are a million shades of green.

   L   o   n   g
or short
                 measured metrically or not
show me the dish that I might taste it
differently. If the flavor doesn’t suit
I can always spit it out.