Reads Poems

Epigrams

Occidental Haiku

How long it takes sun
to draw redwoods from earth

Pales in comparison to

How long it took us
to draw poems from tongues.

Dave Read

American Transparency

We consign our laws to Reason’s domain;
Neither White nor Red, they bleed no hues.

We take care our laws betray no Emotion,
Whose domain is where we house the Blues.

Dave Read

Look Up

Raptors, above the trees,
screw themselves over the valley.

Sometimes, a zephyr will impede
or hurl them towards a far darkness.

Eagles needn’t scream to be heard,
nor struggle to make such good time.

Dave Read

Resolution

First, let us consider how
near uniformed America is
to uninformed America.

Now, let us resolve to make
up our own minds – what to
wear, and where to aim.

Dave Read

Without Poetry

Language knows nobody
is attentive, everybody
has their own blog
and dictionary.

Once the tool of science –
to measure worlds, to heal
wounds, and list foods to avoid
before sleep,

Now, cells in our palms are
mirrors of worlds for our eyes only;
reflexion makes reflection
the relic

Of solitude, of silent rooms
once noisy with authored
worlds, and our sole
imaginations.

Dave Read

Whimsy whispers

Whimsy whispers to poets and musicians, the way
Anatomy lectures painters and sculptors, and
Gravity tells dancers and architects what can be done.

Dave Read

Add title

It isn’t money, nor want of it,
that breeds evil in the soul,
but ignorance, which bores

holes where whole ideas
ought to flow from mind

to mind until we’re bound
as leaves on trees that
abound in sound ground.

Dave Read

Yoknapatawpha

Hear the petit jury –
Poems say what
Paintings show:
Sound and fury.

Dave Read

Vice verse

Poems and sex, alike,
we commit for love, or pay –
although neither is something
anyone wants to do all day.

But, if you ration them, say,
thrice weekly for a year,
you can lay the foundation
of an amenable career.

Dave Read

The British Dream

All the round world over, people
dream the American dream,
because they know that America –
carved from the dead, beaten heart

of British parliamentary monarchy,

Allows everybody their best shot. We’re
not stuck in slots of patronage and ancient
inheritance of booty looted from common
people, all the round world over.

Dave Read

Ho Hum, More Gone

The mass of us mumble,
but a few wail, in the aftermath
of children gunned down,

During the lesson on obedience,
which leads us into schools
of people, with minds that fish

Through the trash of society,
while I stare into the mirror
of my gilt, tin-lined soul.

Dave Read

Have you seen Johanna?

Poets detect patterns
to call out – when seen broken

In the current of eternity
that carries us to rest.

Dave Read

Let Them Linger

These dandelion lawns, that line
the lanes and streets that lead us

Into tempting towns & cities, where
stone holds sway all year long.

Dave Read

Siren or Sage?

Nearer the sage than the siren,
on the roll of human archetypes,
stand the poets, whose job is to make

Sense of sensation; although they may
sing of themselves, too, we’re glad for that –
it adds a dash of simpatico.

Dave Read

The Plane Truth

If we allow our globular brains,
and our orbital souls, to be pressed
flat for the accommodation

of screened devices, then, we shall

become like plucked blossoms,
or dead butterflies inside
the sheets of a silent book.

Dave Read

Pivot of Spring

Molder of forsythia underfoot
signals the imminent breath
of lilac on a nearby bush.

It’s the pivot of Spring

in the Berkshires – a place
of pictures ever fading
into pictures ever fresh.

Dave Read

“… what but picture-galleries are the marble halls of these same limestone hills? – galleries hung, month after month anew, with pictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh.” Herman Melville, Piazza Tales.