Neo a cappella

FAMILY

 

once two now ten

taking all the money

taking all the time

nothing new

it has been that way

forever

TAKING A WALK

 

a baby's foot is

sometimes printed

hopefully ten toes

joy is taken at his first steps

 

by a door stands a cane

with  four points

 to be taken

as an old person

 

years of walking unaided

unlearned

WHAT IS NEXT?

 

I wish I knew what was coming!

we wish we knew what was coming

 

Craps is a game of dice

the odds of making a point can be computed

 

some believe that the lines in your hand

hold the future

 

other believe that the bumps on your head

hold the future

 

others believe believe your future lie

in the dregs of tea leaves

 

others resort to a Ouija board

to tell what's next

 

even more look to the Zodiac

for guidance

 

another group look to crystal balls

and dreams and nightmares

 

some even favor tarot cards

believing in the reader's ablity 

 

some want a message from some oracle

yet cannot  understand the message

 

the spokesperson

having utter the reply in tongues

 

our only hope

is to learn how to embrace the evil

DEATH SPIRAL

 

pain in the morning

aching large muscles

where are my sea legs

noisy joints

death in a mirror

another day like yesterday

no sign of relief

the loose change on the dresser

plus a hat by the coffin

maybe just enough to

cover funeral costs

(da copa) 

to cover funeral costs

OH SAY CAN YOU SEE

 

fog kissing the earth

defying both high and low beams

a lighthouse's rotating beam

where is the crying loon

TABLE SETTING

a small bone china cup

glazed like the first winter snow

translucent and fragile

no trespassing

broken none own it

IN THE SHADOWS

 

I go to join

those who have already gone

when I look over my shoulders

my shadow is no longer there

 

in the darkness it is chatting with

all the other shadows

in the deepening darkness

about a new role

HISTORY

 

how did it come to this

icicles in the eaves

shadows lost in the dark

the air reeking with despair

clouds of war hiding the sun

steles in a park

echoes of cassions

the lost man formation

twenty-one recoils

taps

life simply a dash between two dates

a furled flag

the prologue to a future

RURAL MYTH

 

in a cornfield

a man in a tattered strawhat

counting crows

TUTORIAL

 

twelve hours were too damn much

Literature and Film, Astronomy, Mythology, and 

Political Science I choose to study

No one warned me

that they maybe too damn much.

 

It was weird, I had to take a test

to see if I understood

what it meant to plagiarize

It was weird because at the end

I would wonder if today's view could mean

that Machiavelli plagiarized Aristole

 

from my studies it seem to me:

 

that even at the speed of light

we see but the past

 

that near the speed of light time slows down

and we shrink

 

that myths tell us about old explanations

of the wonders of nature

 

that dimensional analyses often

require fudge factors

 

that mass is gravity

that there is something called "a spacetime fabric"

that more than three dimensions

are required to explain the cosmos

 

that our universe is mostly "dark matter"

(does dark mean evil)

 

that Newtonian laws do not hold

near the Sun

 

that literal film adaptations

of Hemingway's works are hard to do

 

that exploitation is often called

civilizing the natives

 

that there no value free words

so we rarely understand each other

 

that we all have a "dark side"

that black holes rob us of our character

 

and when it comes to writing essays

that there should be at least a paragraph

for each factor in the thesis

( a sentence can be a paragraph)

 

that my head would never be big enough

it was not how much I knew

it was how little I knew