Morning Gratitude

Good morning, friend—the light is near

A brand new day is drawing clear

Give thanks for breath, for voice, for art

For music, color, soul and heart

For poems’ spark, for hope that stays

For gentle hands and honest praise

For blessings gifted from above

For all that fills our lives with love

Step into this day with grace in view

Let all you do reflect "Thank you!"

Amphibious Inception

In quiet pools, where waters rest

Amid the woodlands, lush and free

Sunbeams dally in playful jest

Tadpoles swim with endless glee

Through verdant banks and shady grove

In graceful dart, a blithe display

With veiled intent, aqueous rove

In the depths, metamorphic ballet

With every dawn, a nimble rise

To the future's grounded fate

From liquid realms to earthly guise

From pond's milieu to land's estate

Transformation, a watery rite

Passage from this lively bog

With patience, growing, day and night

Once the tadpole, now the frog

Photos From "The Book Group"

 

~@~

Basho 5: Year's End

Memorial Day 2025: Parade, Garden, Beach

 

Happy Memorial Day!

~@~

Past, Present, and Future: 10 Minute Play Festival

 

Catch me in this on Friday, May 30th!

~@~

Basho 4: In the Cicada's Cry

Basho 3: Autumn Moonlight

Basho 2: In the Twilight Rain

Basho 1: The Old Pond

Danse Haiku: Act XIII

Scene 1

Botanical intruders

Gardens choked by ample weeds

Earth's unwelcome guests

Scene 2

Faces kept out of view

Venetians masks conceal lies

Only eyes show truth

Scene 3

Dirty cups and plates

Kitchen sink, a spongy fate

Time to clean the slate

Stand

No surrender

Imagination
Brought you this far
Let discipline
Guide you
Into the stratosphere
 
Spit out vertigo
Excellence never comes
Without a sacrifice
This pedestal
Is yours
Alone
To destroy

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Cookie Jar Ajar

Ceramic vessel

Plump with intention

Holds the calm of sugary diplomacy

Peaceful crumbs settle

In its belly

Dulcet chime, lid clinks

Lifted to reveal sweet accords—

Molasses treaties, cinnamon pacts

Butter-wrought armistice

That melts on tongues

Quiet rests

Between stacked confections

Each baked dictum dissolving dissent

Vanilla lullabies

Coaxing discord

To rest

No fists clench

When grasping shortbread

No voices rise when chocolate chips linger

Only the candied implosion of resolve

When the cookie jar

Opens

Cherry Renaissance

They arrive

Cherry blossoms

Powdered algorithms

Cracking open the shell

Of winter’s code

Riot in pink

Currents

Speak them in riddles—

Syllabary of scatter and petals

Branches hold this brief madness

Like monks caught laughing

In the middle of a fast

No nostalgia

No apologies

In these pastel eruptions

Only the fierce syntax

Of becoming

They fall, yes

But fall like strategy

In calculated drifts

Negotiating gravity

Not romance

This is architecture

This is renaissance in floral design

This beauty is not gentle

But iterative

Tomorrow, the streets

Will wear their blush

Ankle-deep with the proof

That something exquisite

Can arrive without warning

And change

Everything

Photos From The Poetry Festival

 

Poetry Festival, Long Beach, NY

Saturday, April 5, 2025

~@~

Poetry Festival

 

~@~

Wiltless

Tulip sways

In a gnarled garden

Petals flushed with fire, edges bruised

Perfume drowning in stench

Withered nettles, soured earth

Breeze carries traces

Damp decay, rust-bitten thorns

Hungry for what they cannot become

Dirt clings, acrid, insistent

Mocking sweetness with charred musk

Roots below ask a strangling question:

Why bloom when ruin is law?

Still, the stem

Stretches upward

Honeyed scent spilling

Into poisoned air

Refusing to wither

Refusing to yield

Rot is not the only ending

Beauty, once breathed

Lingers

Scorpion Jelly & Jellyfish Wine

In a parlor by the shore where the waves tickle toes

Lived a crab with a smile and a shell that just glows

“Step right up,” he motioned, with cups set in a line

“For tonight we shall sip on our jellyfish wine!”

With bubbles and giggles, it sparkled in the glass

A drink full of whimsy poured 'mid the tall grass

“Now come closer, dear friends, grab a cracker or two

For the feast I’ve got planned is all splendid and new!”

The carton of crackers ripped right open with glee

With a sprinkle of salt from the depths of the sea

But wait! What is this? The jar opens with a pop!

It is scorpion jelly, sure to make you hop!

“Oh my goodness, dear me!” said a fish with a flair

“Will we dare to sample such a curious fare?”

“A dab on your cracker,” the crab urged with a grin

“Here’s a bite full of zing, let the tasting begin!”

They nibbled and chuckled, with each munch bringing cheer

As the latest flavor flowed, there was no more fear

So remember this story whenever you dine

Serve your scorpion jelly with jellyfish wine!

The Pastel Waltz of Springtide (Nonet)

Springtide awakens with pastel charms

Zephyrs waltz in flourishing fields

Earth shakes off its wintry rest

Bright petals claim the land

Golden sunlight spills

Birds wax in song

Flowers grow

Life now

Free

Sun. Sand. Salt.

 

Sunken Meadow State Park

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

~@~

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Danse Haiku: Act XII

Scene 1

Behind the cool glass

Aquamarine panoply

A guppy pageant

Scene 2

In the grand foyer

Shining armor on display

Sentry at the door

Scene 3

On eager pages

Words wait in the thesaurus

My pen makes them dance

The Library Rhinoceros

The library's calm, where pages turn slow

A rhinoceros tiptoes from row to row

No one looks up as it quietly paces

Past aisles of wisdom and silent faces

With skin like old leather, thick and serene

It blends with the books, oddly unseen

Horn bent like a question, unspoken, profound

Yet peace is the only deafening sound

Not a chair stirs, nor a glance it does meet

For the rhino moves gently on curious feet

A creature of strength, of power so grand

Yet here in the stillness, it chooses to stand

Among all the knowledge, cautiously dwells

A spot where whispers and wonderments swell

The world rushes by, but here in this place

The rhinoceros lingers, a symbol of grace

Anatomizing Mona Lisa

She sits

Ensconced in chiaroscuro

Liminal being enshrined

In clandestine tableau

Dwelling in ambrosial space

Where silence outspeaks oracles

Her visage, a simulacrum of stillness

Her eyes—merciless auguries—trace steps

Across a landscape where sands of time

Have ebbed and effluxed

Her rictus—

Dare one deem it a smile?

Sibylline curve of lips

Meaning coiled in questions

Neither yielding delight nor despair

A covenant, a susurrus

On the cusp of respiration

Drapery of her vestments

Descends like a pall over the cosmos

Each pleat a wrinkle in a fabric of enigmas

Her hands repose in quiescence

Akin to a river that has mastered

The alchemy of forbearance

Resting as the alabaster of ancients

Invoking the wisdom of aeons

To cradle the weight

Of unspoken truth

Beyond her—

Ah, the wilderness

Panorama of serpentine pathways

Craggy escarpments and placid waters

Yet it is she, not the realm

Who remains the zenith of every gaze

Locus of all mysteries

Paragon of paradox, an eternal sigil

Awakened

By the skilled

Strokes

Of Leonardo Da Vinci's brush

Zephyr's Sigh

Your laughter lingers, gossamer-thin

Like silver threads in twilight spun

Each word you speak a cadence soft

In dusk’s milieu, where we are one

Your touch is woven from the wind

A zephyr’s sigh in the open wild

You are the sea’s immortal hymn

So fierce and tender, undefiled

Within your eyes, the stars converge

A galaxy of quiet charms

Your breath, the pulse of ancient trees

Wrapped in nature’s hopeful arms

Take now my heart, for all it's worth

And bind it fast in love’s decree

For in your promise, I'll remain

And soar with you, forever free

Happy Valentine's Day!

~@~

The Reluctant Super Bowl Party Goer (Pantoum)

I’ve got my snacks, a mountain high

Is this like soccer? Maybe, no?

I don't know what's up, but I try

At least the wine and chips will flow

Is this like soccer? Maybe, no?

The crowd erupts, so I just shout

At least the wine and chips will flow

I’m really here for pigging out

The crowd erupts, so I just shout

The game is on, the screen is bright

I’m really here for pigging out

I cheer when the ball takes its flight

The game is on, the screen is bright

I’ve got my snacks, a mountain high

I cheer when the ball takes its flight

I don't know what's up, but I try

Groundhog Haiku

Punxsutawney Phil

Give us your groundhog forecast

Are spring days delayed?

~@~

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Walking to Uranus

It begins

By forsaking Earth

Its tether fraying as I rise

Each step a severed thread

My weight dissolving

Into the abyss

Of space

I drift

Through silence

The stars, distant sentinels

Gaze with cold indifference

As I traverse

Their vacant corridors

I am a cosmic wanderer

In the endless black

There are no roads

Between worlds

Only the void, an expanse

Of nothingness where time unravels

Hours blur into a boundless drift

Light is thin, and days are swallowed

By the everlasting night

Uranus looms

Azure giant cloaked in frost

Its axis askew, as if defying

The laws that govern all

Its ice-bound winds

Locked in a tempest

Older than memory itself

I float

Weightless

Each step less solid

As if I am vanishing

Into the very emptiness

I traverse

My being thins

As I near

The Uranian atmosphere

A phantom among gases

The chill of ghostly clouds

Spiraling around me

There is no touch down

Only the swirl of timeless rage

The sky above, an ocean of ice

Where storms grind endlessly

In the yawning dark

Here, I leave no trace

No footprint in the eternal frost

Only the faintest ripple

In the planet's endless blue

This world, this forgotten titan

Turns quietly, unnoticed

Yet in this void, I rise

A spark igniting against the cold

I am the celestial hiker

Who crossed the chasm

A testament to the audacity

Of existence

Flicker of life

Amidst the vast

Unyielding

Night