Classic Poem

Past Poet

I wrote of roses on a woman's breast,
Glowing as though her blood
Had welled out, stopping in spellbound intensity;
And the glad, light mixture of her hair.
I wrote of God and angels.
They stole the hunted blush of my desire
To make them infinitely credible, warm.
Knights and kings flooded my song,
Catching with their glittering clash
The unheard boldness in my life.
Fauns and nymphs slipped through my voice,
And with the lofty scurrying of their feet
Spurned the smirched angers of my days.
Fields of daffodils in cleansing spring
Spread my lines, became a fragrant, transforming couch
For indecision, jealousy, hatred, and pain.

Present Poet

You raised an unhurried, often church-like escape.
You lingered in shimmering, pensive idleness;
Or lengthened a prayer into a lance;
Or strengthened a thought till it heaved off all of life
And dropped its sightless paradise into your smile.
Life to me is a colorless, sensitive tangle.
Like madly gorgeous weavers
My eyes untangle, reiterate themselves on life.

Past Poet

My towering simplicity,
Loosening a great evening of belief
To blur the things it dared not view,
Gladly shunned reality
Just as your mad weaver does.

Present Poet

I do not shun reality.
Reality is a formless lure,
And only when we know this
Do we dare to be both real and unreal.