A new poem: "`The Only Secret Thing"

 

 

The Only Secret Thing

 

“The Three Great Secret Things,” said John

Hoyer Updike, the great American man

of letters, double winner of the Pulitzer Prize

and avery accolade save the Nobel, “are sex,

religion, and art,” and he devoted his life

to exploring the mystery of the human condition

through his poetry and alter egos, protagonists

of all his stories and novels, young David Kern

of “Pigeon Feathers,” Harry Rabbit Angstrom

of his Rabbit tetralogy, and his Jewish writer

Henry Beck whom he had win the Nobel Prize

for Literature, and many less well-known

fictional characters; but “there is only the self

and God,” said the mystic teacher of the way

of what is to come, whose nativity history

assigned to Christmas Day, the only secret thing

that is you and me, the Self that we are all born

to be when we resolve the perennial mystery

of the Three Great Secret Things.

New poem: "My Rant for Today, December 17, 2022"

 

My Rant for Today, December 17, 2022

 

I feel totally useless when I’m not writing,

like I’m wasting my life away; but I’m not, really.

I found what I came into this world to find, and I’m

on bonus time now; but good God, it’s boring!

I bought the pearl of great price and fulfilled

my karmic promise, and I while my day away

when I’ve exhausted myself of my creative energy.

I hate myself when I’m not writing, stuck in the never

world of a finished book and new one to come; but

I have other books waiting to be edited that I keep

putting off, not that I want to, I can’t because

I procrastinate. God, I hate being a procrastinator!

And yet, I have two dozen books under my belt,

a beautiful mortgage-free home in Georgian Bay,

a woman whose love I betrayed in our past lifetime

together that I had to win back, which, thank God,

I did; so, why the whining? It’s always six of one

and half a dozen of the other, and whatever karma

we are born to redress, life continues to be an

individual journey of self-discovery; so, chin up

as they say, and get on with my day! And that’s

my rant for today, December 17, 2022.

 

 

New poem: "The Mystery of his Inner Light"

 

The Mystery of His Inner Light

 I witnessed a soul waking up tonight

to the mystery of his inner light, the way

of soul that will take him back home;

and what a joy it was for him to see

through the ultimate human mystery.

He talked like he was entranced, but

the trance he was in was the light within,

and he frowned in wonder that the way

out of the human predicament found

him in the redemptive power of his own

suffering; and by the look on his face,

it was obvious to me that he had been

cooked enough by life to be called to the

final surrender, which will take him the

rest of the way home when he relinquishes

his most precious possession to the divine

imperative of the light within.

An old poem: "The Guru of Angst"

 

 

The Guru of Angst

 

Dressed in black with short-cropped hair,

he milks the udder of despair. A poet,

singer, lover, and thief, he turns the sour

milk of life into pure gold and lives like

a lavish prince. With a haunting voice he sings

of the pain that people want to hear, confirming

their misery and robbing their anguished

soul of every hope of being free. He drinks

red wine for breakfast and beds groupies

because he can, and to ease his ennui he flees

to a secluded monastery to study the ancient

teaching of the selfless life. But when he’s

had his fill of the selfless life, he returns

to the scene with new poems to sing, and he

reaffirms once again his icon status as

the insightful guru of angst.