A poem sticks deep in my throat.
I cough and cough, yet
it will not rise.
I ask the poem, Why do you rebuff
the poet's embrace?
Comes the reply, Why do you not
disrobe and go naked as you are?
I say, Out of the question- I am a man of Earth
and depend on this body.
The poem, And insist on hugging a corpse
when a Universe is there to court?
Such is the enigma baffling
a poet humanoid- a question of beingness.
Vacant in a motion like wind,
set and established like time.
Intangible as love,…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on November 18, 2009 at 11:30am —
3 Comments
Life maker,
life taker,
towering phoenix on high,
magically over the oceans you cross
with powers no one can deny.
Alone at the bow
I stood there in awe-
bound by your imposing form,
rapt in uncertainty
as to what I saw
and feelings equally torn.
Dreaded serpent from Hades
whom ancient mariners did flee?
Or, Protector of the Seas
and beacon to guide me free?
Or, a child's dream, albatross-
imagination's pilot afar.
You deathfully sank
into the flaming sun
and divinely rose
as the evening star…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on November 5, 2009 at 12:00pm —
1 Comment
In Autumn when leaves
are gold and rust
no longer green
stifled
by null,
corrosive air
aflame
in burning hue
of vitriol sky
I ponder
the scheme of life
the cycle of birth-decay
and quietly recall
old dreams
once made.
Like fallen blades
upon the earth
were swept away
wind-blown
till out of reach
and faded with acid time.
But dreams
unlike leaves need
no season to bear
no rain
or sunbeams
or ethereal air
the soil
from which they spring
neither clay nor humus black
but,
from a spiritual…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on October 29, 2009 at 2:29pm —
1 Comment
Perhaps
it was forgotten
you once were free.
Calloused
by false hopes
and dreams.
And now set
by that glue
to planet Earth routine.
No longer to give notice
to the signs that read:
"No Loitering"
( City Ordinance Title 03.6732 Sec. C ).
Recession Blues.
Languishing 401K.
Home values upside down.
Credit lines slashed and
tight money flows-
Laid off
from company downsizing
to find you are too educated
for the job market,
or considered by others
too "old"
And foreclosure looms.
Space is for…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on October 1, 2009 at 11:30am —
1 Comment
( Author's Note: This writing is inspired
by the philosophical works of L. Ron Hubbard.
Thank you, Ron, for your love and dedication
to helping mankind. "Namaste".)
~~
I am touched
by your aura
as with magical music
and mystical wind.
Thousand of miles
are but a grain
of sand.
So it's you
who make the seasons,
the earth which flows
from the mouth
of the sea
to a perfect rose
and majestic peaks.
( Even these words I write
are words written
with beauty
which is your hand.)
Spirit of Wine
with…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on September 21, 2009 at 4:15pm —
No Compliments
Fog thickened
like soup
over the island.
Was it still evening,
or had morning risen?
Silence can be
an artful teacher,
but just now
it leaves me lost.
Somewhere in the catalogue
of my dreams I've neatly filed
in moments of time and place
the hope to arrive-
somewhere-
like the crest of the Matterhorn
or strands once strolled
along wind-swept seas
who speak in tongues
of vanished lands.
Where now the dream's renewed
and I, anxious to repair,
when this time, this chance
will prove to be
the lo…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on September 16, 2009 at 2:30pm —
4 Comments
Phoenicia-
Just uttering your name
and hearing the sound-
("Phoenicia").
Dreams brazen in my blood
dark red like your skin,
your swarthy hair,
your twilight eyes.
Memories trenchant as glass
unfading and unrending
that keep your love burning
an undying candle.
Like the desert phoenix
who lives alone
for whom beauty
there is no equal.
Phoenicia-
Forgive me if I am selfish.
Fortunate as I have been
to breathe amongst your tall cedars,
traipse your blue Mediterranean shores
and sail your fast s…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on September 12, 2009 at 12:00pm —
5 Comments
Globalization
is an idea.
An idea can be good or bad,
constructive or destructive.
There's a wide gap
between the two poles.
As the gap
between beauty and ugliness,
love and hate,
truth and falsehood.
As the gap
between round
and flat worlds.
Where in one
mountain peaks reach
the heavens,
while in the other
a leveling process
ends in oblivion.
Globalization,
in and of itself,
is not the curse.
The curse resides
in what makes the gap
where one end expands
the dynamics into increasingly
gre…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on August 5, 2009 at 12:37pm —
No Compliments
"Now this bell tolling
softly for another
says to me,
'Thou must die'.
Perchance
he for whom this bell tolls
may be so ill
as that he knows not
it tolls for him.
And perchance
I may think myself
so much better
than I am,
as that they
who are about me,
and see my state,
may have caused
it to toll for me,
and I know not that...
No man is an island
entire of itself.
Every man is a piece
of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed
away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as
if…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on July 24, 2009 at 8:36pm —
No Compliments
A flat world
forwards agreement
towards naked existence.
Its institutions-
secular and sacred- effect
the leveling process of contagion
on the wings of false data.
Existence reduced
to "me".
~~
It was well past midnight.
Chad had lost track
of time.
The evening lay still and quiet
uncharacteristically absent
the comings and goings
from the coffehouse
below Chad's flat.
The smell of hollyhocks, planted
along the sidewalk, loitered
in the heavy, summernight's air,
also having lost track of ti…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on July 23, 2009 at 3:00pm —
No Compliments
A flat world
is a hidden influence.
Its only power
lies in others
not knowing.
In a flat world
data is presumed true.
~~
Without a map,
without direction,
his "learning" a sham,
Chad reconciled himself
he'd been living
a lie.
Assuming the things
he'd been taught
as truth, only to see
their dead ends.
"Where is Truth?"
he mulled to himself.
"It's up to me to sift
through the chaos,
the debris, to find
my direction."
"My fault for not broadening
my horizons with courses
in Liberal Arts?"
"M…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on July 17, 2009 at 7:30pm —
3 Comments
"A culture is not a collection of relics or ornaments,
but a practical necessity, and its corruption invokes calamity.
A healthy culture is a communal order of memory...
It reveals the human necessities and the human limits.
It clarifies our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other."
Wendell Berry
~~
A flat world
is a chaos of clones.
In a flat world
all is homogeneous
and servile
to its agreements.
The maxim of survival
is adapt, lest
ye shall succumb.
Thus follows
unreasoned acts…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on July 5, 2009 at 1:19pm —
No Compliments
Chad awoke from restless sleep.
"Was I dreaming?" he asked himself.
The tall weeds
of the vacant steel plant
flashing before his eyes
as if the homeless ghosts
had followed him home.
The ruins of Bethlehem Steel
were ever as much
his ruin.
Neither the lump
in his throat,
nor the nausea
in his stomach
would go away.
A feeling akin
to being run over
and knocked unconscious
with slight glimpses
of reality that seemed
to float in and out
like a wild dream.
Being lost
in a scorching desert
dumbfo…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on July 2, 2009 at 12:00pm —
No Compliments
The sprawling ruins
of Bethlehem Steel
hugged the Erie shoreline,
deserted with the haunting air
of a conquered fortress.
Smokestacks silent and clogged
with rust, glass windows broken
by the lake's unrelenting winds
and tall weeds the only visitors
to be found behind
the barbed fences.
Chad stood just outside
the rusted gates.
Growing up in Buffalo
he recalled half his family
working at this very plant.
There was even a time
he thought he would follow.
But the plant closed
leaving thousands…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on June 24, 2009 at 2:45pm —
2 Comments
A flat world
has no borders.
It defines
the seasons.
Today
that conquest
is incomplete.
~~
The long awaited summer
had finally come.
The stage was set
with many of the props
just as Chad
had dreamed.
A perfect day in Chicago
as the weather goes-
bright and sunny, the air
crisp and bracing.
At once an adieu to Spring
and fair welcome to Summer.
Chad stood motionless,
fixed to the mirror.
His image the end
of a long journey.
One which had taken
most of his life
he could remember.
Long, black…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on June 19, 2009 at 11:00am —
3 Comments
A flat world
has no barriers.
But equally no idenity.
It has no windbreaks
or sheltered valleys
or deciduous dells
of refuge.
A flat world
made with people
inextricably joined
yet distant and alone.
There's no need
to see each another-
eyes or smile or face-
in tears or in joy
no need of embrace.
A flat world
with instant messaging
but uncontrollable winds
and floods and drought
and pestilence and storms.
A flat world
makes us toe a thin line
with scant chance to falter-
dwindling glaciers,…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on June 12, 2009 at 12:00pm —
4 Comments
Touch the air-
now close your eyes
and it's gone.
Feel the light upon your lips,
but don't close them shut
that dark should come.
See the Moon in your eyes?
Or is that you looking
from the Moon?
I once imagined I was a Knight
and fought for love and beauty.
I recall it so well 'cause I had
such a tingling
down my spine.
Somewhere,
somehow,
I misplaced the dream.
Could it be that I closed
my eyes too soon,
or was it swallowed
in the darkness
of my silence.
Copyright @2009 Francis Don Daniel…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on June 6, 2009 at 8:33am —
2 Comments
X'ing stop signs.
Spangling power boxes.
Snatching attention
to mail drops like nasty letters.
Flashing dumpsters
into billboards.
Can you read grafitti?
~
A nice neighborhood.
Maybe like yours.
Old, gargantuan houses,
two-story and some more-
Federal, Colonial, Victorian
and Italianate.
Built in the hey-day
when times were good.
No tall, gated fences shutting out
the other world.
Wide, even sidewalks
that loaf under maples
and chestnuts
and flowering cherries.
Where passersby look up
wit…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on May 30, 2009 at 2:29pm —
1 Comment
No e-mail in-box.
No I-Pod downloads.
No Starbucks.
From a secluded corner
of a neighboring park
with nothing between me and sky,
I took refuge beneath a canopy
of flowering chestnuts.
And painted clouds.
Bunches.
In towering columns
and billowing masses.
And renegades, such as myself,
defecting from the horde.
Some to go alone vanishing
into the heavens.
Others hooking up together
as new tufts of tumbleweed.
As the world kept rushing
to sign Facebook
and My Space.
As I painted, I took on…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on May 26, 2009 at 11:30am —
3 Comments
Another morning, another evening
another day passes on
each without you
but thoughts about you
for love to ramble on.
Another Winter, Spring or Summer
must I go without your touch,
your calming face and tender heart
the love I love so much.
Or see you in Autumn
with leaves on fire
and sleepy skies in bed of clouds,
when golden fields the plains enshroud
and the north wind blows
as sharp as loud.
And wake me on a frosty morning
like the sunrise warms the stream,
when night grows cold
a warm em…
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Added by Francis Don Daniels on May 21, 2009 at 8:03am —
No Compliments
