Lost and Found
I very rarely write poems for public consumption any more. I write a lot of poems, but they are intended either for a specific (and private) audience, or, like a mandala, they are written and then very quickly destroyed.
But sometimes I find a forgotten poem, and I’m rather pleased with it. This is one of those.
PANTOUM FOR A CYNIC (REPRISE)
So there you have it: it’s all true. Love is for fools,
and fortune places her bets with bankers,
not with poets and their tendencies for calamity.
We’re all fated to dwell in a state of wanting, miserable
as bankers with fortune enough to place bets
on every spin of the rigged roulette wheel, praying,
wanting out of the miserable fated state they dwell in,
imprisoned by greed, the bars of numbers, the vault dial that clicks
like the spin of a rigged roulette wheel, or the prayers
counted off on rosary beads. No one is happy with their lot,
whether imprisoned behind bars, or locked in a vault of greed,
gluttons of love or flesh or more permanent, precious things.
No one is happy counting off his lot on a rosary—
holy relics remind us we’re doomed eternally,
but what things are more precious than our love, our flesh? Gluttony
may be a sin that edges me quickly toward my grave,
that hole where I’ll become a relic and reminder of eternal doom,
but let my epitaph be your name, a psalm chiseled in stone,
not some grave sin. Maybe it was wrong, quickly moving toward the edge
of passion’s blue flame—one must learn to hold a heart so hot.
So let my epitaph be your name, a psalm chiseled in stone.
You know poets and their tendency for calamity,
so hold your blue heart away from their hot, passionate claims—
it’s the truth you have now: love is for fools.
