What is Beauty More?

 WHAT IS BEAUTY MORE?

What is beauty more
Than a reflection of desire,
A pool of light under the lamp
On a dark and lonely street?
What is a lovelier thing
Than that which completes --
The thought finished by a friend
Before your lips can form?
And what is truer joy
Than that which makes you cry,
A song torn from the throat
Of a bird who throws his heart to the sky?

Because I Must

It's nearly the end of March, and I haven't been on the Poetry Bus all month. The business and busyness of living have limited my writing and riding along with my poet friends. An email from the Bus Captain, the TFE, made me realize how I long to be among the great friends I've made here, and so I dashed off this little ditty (who uses that word?) because I must.

The bus is driven this week by Uiscebot, who gives us several orders for this week's poem. You can see them here or maybe just deduce them by reading the poem here...

BECAUSE I MUST

He said,
You can't go
to the moon,
and I said,
Fly me.

He said,
You can't go
home,
And I said,
Try me.

He said,
You mustn't
rhyme,
and I said,
Is it a crime?
Then give me
the time
to go home
and find
a poem or two
that shuns
the bright moon
or takes you away
to some other day
and to someplace new.

And he said,
That'll do.
Stop this right now
or I won't even link;
it's not worth the ink
or pixels or dots
it takes for Uiscebots
to put this drivel
on his blogspot.

So I sit idly by
and won't even try
to join this fun time
because I must rhyme.
Every time.

So there.


Now, go and read some real poems here. Enjoy the ride!

Chronic

CHRONIC

Children in the water
laugh and splash.
They circle and circle
round and round
like sharks.
I am vigilant, on the edge.
Danger! Danger!
I hear in my head.
I scan the scene for trouble,
scout sorrows yet to come,
watch for the dreaded undertow;
I guard, ready to run.

Parody

PARODY

My mother holds her cheeks for my inspection;
"Beautiful," I say, "just right,"
Glad that her old eyes cannot see
The lines that cross her face
Like a brand.
She is of an age with Marilyn and Liz
But without the surgeon's knife or early death
To freeze her in a frame.
I've heard that in her later years,
Elizabeth the queen froze herself with paste,
Turning a once fine face into a clown-like mask
Against whom none dare laugh.
I contemplate this now
As I paint my own beginning-to-fall face
And line my drooping lids with kohl.
I think it is no laughing matter;
Without the asp, would Cleopatra, too,
Have been this tragicomic parody of youth?

Red Fox

RED FOX

A swishing in the grass.
A small sharp face,
frozen in -- a snarl or a laugh?
Limpid golden eyes
that recognize.
A bushy beard
brushing behind,

and a bubble of joy within me
to share my place in life
with such a thing.