New poem: "Every Song He Sings"

Every Song He Sings

His voice was familiar, but I couldn’t

place it because he was singing in French;

it was the vibrational tone of his soul

that spoke to my inner ear.

“I know who that is,” I said to myself,

very proud of my gift for recognizing people

by the sound of their voice, especially TV

commercials with voice-overs.

So, I cocked my ears to listen intently,

and there was no denying that his voice

came from the seventh level of hell;

and I listened for the telling clue.

I wish I could say it was all French to me,

because it was; but the more I listened,

the more I heard his soul speaking to me

as it cried out for liberation.

It was all there, the anguish, melancholy,

and haunting fear; but it was the frequency

of his regret when he could raise his voice

no higher that his name came to me.

Every soul has its own vibration, defined

by its frequency; and I didn’t have to wait

for Nana aba Duncan, the host of Fresh Air,

to reveal the gay singer’s identity.

Stuck in his own abyss, he cannot, wish

as he may, raise his frequency any higher than

his tortured desires, and every song he sings

in French or English, reveals him.

Poem for the week: "The Lost Gospel Q"

The Lost Gospel Q

“Whoever finds himself,

of him the world is not worthy,”

said Jeshua in the lost Gospel Q,

revealing the central mystery

of his sacred teaching that has

puzzled the world since his death

upon the cross (if he did die),

impressing upon the world the logic

of self-sacrifice that drove the

imperative of the lost Gospel Q

that will always remain a mystery

to those who do not have the eyes

to see; and not until life has made

one ready (if not in this lifetime,

the next) to see the wisdom of the

lost Gospel Q, will one be chosen

to be harvested by the pickers

of God’s Kingdom.

New poem: "Life Intervened with Covid-19"

Life Intervened with this Covid-19

Life

intervened

with this Covid-19,

resetting the trajectory

of the human condition,

like a hammer blow to the head

of the human race to align us with life’s

divine purpose and realize our true nature;

and all the anguish and pain of self-reconciliation

brings us much closer to each other and establishes new

patterns of behavior to nourish our soul and make us whole.

Poem for the week: "One Moment of Spontaneous Joy"

One Moment of Spontaneous Joy

There was more love in her tears of joy

than in a thousand love letters written

across oceans, a joy so sweet it made

me proud to have been brought to my

knees when she had her ruptured brain

aneurysm surgery at St. Michael’s in

Toronto, and I held her tenderly in my

arms when she rose from her wheelchair

in the lobby of Georgian Bay Hospital

in Midland, surprised by her emotions;

but I KNEW her tears of joy confirmed

her love for me, and all of our years

together (not to mention our lifetime as

man and wife in Genoa, Italy when I

betrayed her love) came to a head when

she burst into tears when she saw me

waiting to take her home from her bowel

obstruction surgery, revealing to me

with poetic imagery that the love of my

life had finally digested my love for her

and gave it all back to me in one

moment of spontaneous joy.

New poem: "In Memory of George Steiner"

In Memory of George Steiner

The brilliant polyglot stretched his mind

to its limits and was benumbed by the

dilemma of man’s duel nature, praising

Proust for his Remembrance of Things

Past while reproving him for his private

proclivities, and with a melancholy too

mournful for tears he resigned himself to

never knowing the why of man’s being

and no-being, and with humility and pride

I smiled to myself as Eleanor Wachtel

thanked her guest, the remarkable George

Steiner, for sharing his knowledge and

wisdom on Writers & Company, because

I had resolved for myself the irresolvable

dilemma of man’s dual nature by finding

my way out of the bottomless abyss

of my own nothingness.

Poem for the week: "The Sting of COVID-19"

The Sting of COVID-19

Is it a dream, this COVID-19,

a psychic projection of the collective

unconscious to compensate man’s

incomplete nature, shining the light

on all the fault lines of our culture

and science, pointing once more to

a higher power that has come to

reconcile our forgotten soul with

its Creator; or do we have to suffer

the sting of COVID-19 until we

cry “Uncle”?

Poem for the week: "The Divine Logic of COVID-19"

The Divine Logic of COVID-19

I heard Toronto’s poet laureate on

CBC’s q last night, reciting his poem

“Thoughts in Time of Plague” that

he wrote to ease the tension of this

pernicious pandemic, and it came to

me as he recited his poem how the

world always turns to poets for solace

and comfort in times of need, like

this global crisis that’s thrown our life

into disarray; and Al Moritz ended

his poem with a call to charity with

the simple line, “The end was care,”

which, to my own poetic sensibilities,

was the divine logic of COVID-19,

the deadly virus that came to heal the

soul of the world by setting us apart

to unite us with each other, a thought

much too deep for joy or tears.

Poem for the week: "No Sadder Love"

No Sadder Love

Like a seed sown in fertile ground that

cannot grow without water and sun,

that’s the story of Far from Heaven, the

Hollywood movie of a 1950’s suburban

couple, “Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech,” apple

pie all the way, with a boy and girl and

split-level home in the best part of town,

and autumn leaves strewn on the ground

as the perfect couple’s black gardener

tends to their yard; but the golden couple’s

husband is gay and can no longer bear

to make love to his faithful wife, and she

has fallen for her widowed gardener, but

gay and interracial love is not permitted

by their culture, and with tears in my eyes

as the movie ended with the perfect wife

waving goodbye to her beautiful gardener,

I turned to the love of my life, my heaven

whose love I won by breaking convention,

and said to her, “There is no sadder love 
than the love that could have been.”