Tag Archives: poetry

Can All This Water Cleanse My Thought

Can all this water
Cleanse my thought?
Is and ought.
The daughter
Of Eve
Will leave
Behind
A mind
(Mine)
Dwelling
On women and wine.
There is no telling
Where this will end.

As a boy
I took joy
In a pretend
Friend.
As an adult
The result
Is lies
And sighs.
Would that I could
Gaze with quietude
Into those eyes,
But no, I should not intrude

Bits Of Data Fly

Bits of data
Fly.
Sooner or later
I shall die.

I
Wonder why
I
Should care
Where
My words will go
For I know
That the winter snow
Will cover all.

Perhaps a few may recall
A word I said
When I am dead.
But in my graveyard plot
I shall know it not.

Why this conceit
On my part
that others should repeat
Let alone understand what lay in my heart?

I would
Do good
But know
I have not always done so.

Sitting here in this winter weather
I see a feather
Float on high
Through indifferent sky.
The wind will sigh
When I am gone
But not for me,
Though I shall be free
As wind and sea.

The Poet And The Prostitute

You
Didn’t know what to do
But did it with such panache
For cash.

O my sweet
Girls must eat
While poets spend their time
In rhyme.

The above was prompted by my reading of Ernest Christopher Dowson’s “Cynara”, http://www.bartleby.com/336/687.html. Dowson belonged to the school of decadent poets and in “Cynara” he contrasts his unrequited love for a young woman with his (present) relationship with a prostitute. “Cynara” is a fine poem and Dowson deserves to be better known than he is.