FATHER AND TIME

It is a wise father that knows his child.
__William Shakespeare

All the clocks that surround us mark off moments as they dissolve;
Steady drum of the second hand tick tocks like a time bomb,
Vanished down beneath the rising rush
Cast outside of reach of all that’s here
Or that frantic hands can seize or bear.

Like time, we will travel forward as moments become lean and swift,
Instances slipped within pale snapshots; smiles of odd, uneasy faces.
Tick tock goes the gesture, the nod.
Plunging seconds speed by exhausted
Below the pitch-black lather of time.

As summers own swimming and winter’s trudging speed through
Second hands rush on, prying the next season to scuttle forth.
Does it matter more what time it was
Or more that a moment’s remembered;
Vanished, frantic, outside of my reach?

All of the clocks shrug at this; my yearning to paint my father true,
To prevent time’s rolling course upon scatty legs made of seconds.
Cease your lean and speedy march.
If I’m to know him, you've got to stop,
Time, before you run out of clock.

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

ODE TO STRATFORD UPON AVON

Let us begin; All's Well That Ends Well,
For it is our hopeful self-fulfilling title;
Bush and his entourage have much to sell
Along the banks of the Potomac lying idle.

Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors,
ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge,
when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath
shot out in our latter times.

One senses perhaps `tis a Comedy of Errors
Or maybe e'en Titus Andronicus arrives
They shall be ready at your highness' will
To answer their suspicion with their lives.

Is't possible the world should so much differ,
And we alive that lived? Fly, damned baseness,
To him that worships thee!
This play of GW Bush will end
Within such strident treachery!

Not As You Like It, but it will end forthwith,
The shards of broken tyranny tapped in the dead
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:

The shadows of the suns making are aloft absurd
Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing
passion without some instruction. It is not words
that shake me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips.
And this same darkness shall overwhelm the ships!

Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
The weight now crumbles from within the house!

Let us do so: for we are at the stake,
And bay'd about with many enemies;
And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs.
The columns do tremble with the passing year
They, baseless, do make a mockery of freedom!

This is not make believe, but of great import!
We seek our liberty not governances death
Nor armies soaked of the king’s baseless end...
Wherein thou seest me mask'd; for thy revenge
Wrench up thy power to the highest.

...Draw, and come.
I will die bravely, like a bridegroom. What!
I will be jovial: come, come; I am a king,
My masters, know you that.

And thus ends our day of soft light
O'retaken by the errant beams of night
Where liberty and truth hath been unfurled
Honest men will hath need to climb back
Into the vibrant graces of this world!
The rest is silence.


Happy Birthday William Shakespeare
(A la Gauche)