Job's Cataract (1999)
What chaos and unreason
What element random
Intends mankind as victuals
God and nature work tandem
What chaos and unreason
What element random
Intends mankind as victuals
God and nature work tandem
Confessions of a Recovering Pessimist (1999)
I got so used to seeing shadows
Forgot they’re children of the light
I’d fabricate the finest gallows
And then hang everything in sight
Having darkened all tomorrows
Perhaps it’s time I hanged the night
The night which broods by my instruction
For what, deep heaven only knows
It’s truly a perverse construction
This tapestry of dark shadows
I got so used to seeing shadows
Forgot they’re children of the light
I’d fabricate the finest gallows
And then hang everything in sight
Having darkened all tomorrows
Perhaps it’s time I hanged the night
The night which broods by my instruction
For what, deep heaven only knows
It’s truly a perverse construction
This tapestry of dark shadows
A Lonely Night (1999)
All the night was alive with stars and waves and sounds
Possessed of autumn’s wind that breathes in heavy sighs
Stealing secrets from my soul and flying them all around
Until the stars assumed my dreams and gazed with lover’s eyes
Until the deep and busy sky clothed me like a gown
Until the lake of St. Croix Beach raised her voice to sing
And echoed all I’d ever known and made me love this life
All the night was alive with stars and waves and sounds
Possessed of autumn’s wind that breathes in heavy sighs
Stealing secrets from my soul and flying them all around
Until the stars assumed my dreams and gazed with lover’s eyes
Until the deep and busy sky clothed me like a gown
Until the lake of St. Croix Beach raised her voice to sing
And echoed all I’d ever known and made me love this life
Gods at Play (2000)
I close my eyes and count to ten
There's time enough for open eyes
Meanwhile I hear you rustling
In needles of fallen fir
I’m sure that’s laughter you disguise
Funny I should catch you there again
When on ecstatic winds I fly
Amazed to find nobody there
Then, within sight you break away
Fast across the lawn, past dense and
autumn-gilded trees, turning just to smile
It’s cat-and-mouse for making chase
In seeking where you’ve gone
And in the rapture of being found
We find mere gods at play
I close my eyes and count to ten
There's time enough for open eyes
Meanwhile I hear you rustling
In needles of fallen fir
I’m sure that’s laughter you disguise
Funny I should catch you there again
When on ecstatic winds I fly
Amazed to find nobody there
Then, within sight you break away
Fast across the lawn, past dense and
autumn-gilded trees, turning just to smile
It’s cat-and-mouse for making chase
In seeking where you’ve gone
And in the rapture of being found
We find mere gods at play
Fear of Heights (2009)
Fear breaks like a fever upon the brow
As I tease the edge, and looking down
Feel the mind’s own precipice
Not for the unwitting fall
But the urge to leap! Pure caprice
Has all that feral animus
Fear breaks like a fever upon the brow
As I tease the edge, and looking down
Feel the mind’s own precipice
Not for the unwitting fall
But the urge to leap! Pure caprice
Has all that feral animus
The View From Here (2010)
You’re gonna save me from myself
The legislation is sure to pass
And make of me such better stuff
Than what I was—at last
I heard the news from nowhere
Before I read the script
An ethos of hope and progress!
And you were full of it
And the mark of your sales campaign
Rife with arrogated truth
Is a thinly veiled disdain
For all dissenting views
So, gone’s a true dialectic
By which honor proceeds
And in its place a politic
That panders, enthralls and feeds
You’re gonna save me from myself
The legislation is sure to pass
And make of me such better stuff
Than what I was—at last
I heard the news from nowhere
Before I read the script
An ethos of hope and progress!
And you were full of it
And the mark of your sales campaign
Rife with arrogated truth
Is a thinly veiled disdain
For all dissenting views
So, gone’s a true dialectic
By which honor proceeds
And in its place a politic
That panders, enthralls and feeds
Nontrary Consense (2010)
You’ll find me drinking beer
By the bonfire in the rear
Toasting all teetotalitarians
And once I’ve drunk the dregs
You’ll find the question begs
What gives for this unabashed contrarian?
You’ll find me mincing words
Of the benign sort you’ve heard
With such that others deem nefarious
And should I transgress propriety
To the point of notoriety
Have mercy on the man who’s contrarious
You’ll find me being ridiculous
'Cause I like to be as fickle as
I please, when I’m feeling incomparable
You see, I’ve always had the propensity
For a robust and stubborn density
A singular trait of the contrarable
And you’ll find this smacks of nonsense
So I’ll fault poetic license
Whether monosyllabic or sesquipedalian
But if the means are ungrammatical
From a mind long on sabbatical
At least the end is contraripedalian
You’ll find me drinking beer
By the bonfire in the rear
Toasting all teetotalitarians
And once I’ve drunk the dregs
You’ll find the question begs
What gives for this unabashed contrarian?
You’ll find me mincing words
Of the benign sort you’ve heard
With such that others deem nefarious
And should I transgress propriety
To the point of notoriety
Have mercy on the man who’s contrarious
You’ll find me being ridiculous
'Cause I like to be as fickle as
I please, when I’m feeling incomparable
You see, I’ve always had the propensity
For a robust and stubborn density
A singular trait of the contrarable
And you’ll find this smacks of nonsense
So I’ll fault poetic license
Whether monosyllabic or sesquipedalian
But if the means are ungrammatical
From a mind long on sabbatical
At least the end is contraripedalian
A Third Way (2010)
Either/Or is such a bore
Fall in line: Right and Left!
Examine both and find them equally bereft
Of reason; though it needn't be said
The blind cognoscenti see no tertium quid
Either/Or is such a bore
Fall in line: Right and Left!
Examine both and find them equally bereft
Of reason; though it needn't be said
The blind cognoscenti see no tertium quid
Global Stupefaction (2010)
Ecoheretics, burn them all
Round them up and line the wall
Fill the furnace with every fool
Or skeptic who befits the pall
Dark and dense as they’ll emit
We’ll redress with carbon credits
(Indulgentia a culpa et a poena)
And a soul springs with every writ
While their urchins, long inured
To fabrication, having scoured
Their little minds, we’ll survey
As we have their oxen Gored
Ecoheretics, burn them all
Round them up and line the wall
Fill the furnace with every fool
Or skeptic who befits the pall
Dark and dense as they’ll emit
We’ll redress with carbon credits
(Indulgentia a culpa et a poena)
And a soul springs with every writ
While their urchins, long inured
To fabrication, having scoured
Their little minds, we’ll survey
As we have their oxen Gored
Where the Transcendent Pervades (2011)
We gaze upon the midnight sky
And contemplate the space
And find the expanse traversed
By the wind at our face
I met you, unexpected, once
Like light pierces a shade
And found you unmistakable
Where the transcendent pervades
We gaze upon the midnight sky
And contemplate the space
And find the expanse traversed
By the wind at our face
I met you, unexpected, once
Like light pierces a shade
And found you unmistakable
Where the transcendent pervades
Soul Over Synapse (2011)
What obtains in the frontal lobes
Of apatheists and theophobes
Shall they find the sorest grief evince
A cognitive dissonance?
Would that the brain sufficed the role
But the dissonance is in the soul
What obtains in the frontal lobes
Of apatheists and theophobes
Shall they find the sorest grief evince
A cognitive dissonance?
Would that the brain sufficed the role
But the dissonance is in the soul
For Heather (2012)
Day springs from its cloistered sleep
With arms spread open wide, and smiles
As if the first to see this lazy countryside
Where dalliance in the commonplace
Pedestrian joys abide, in the gossamer
Of sunlight gleams and you here by my side
Day springs from its cloistered sleep
With arms spread open wide, and smiles
As if the first to see this lazy countryside
Where dalliance in the commonplace
Pedestrian joys abide, in the gossamer
Of sunlight gleams and you here by my side
Casting Shadows (2012)
Why shouldn’t the world revolve around me?
Is the thought so very eccentric
For everything that I see
To be non-heliocentric?
I’d be attended by the sun!
I, the object of its light
In such a sublime cosmology
Where each shadow falls just right:
Away from me
Why shouldn’t the world revolve around me?
Is the thought so very eccentric
For everything that I see
To be non-heliocentric?
I’d be attended by the sun!
I, the object of its light
In such a sublime cosmology
Where each shadow falls just right:
Away from me
Mass Education (2012)
I woke to a fantastic scene in the midst of a pouring rain
With the surest sense that Adam Smith had pickled all our brains
While past me streamed the urchin ranks of future citizens
To the gaping mouth of a monolith, and bold upon its edifice
The words: Mass Education
A great hum of manufacture bore the wheel upon its axis
Supplying taxonomic division for all the lads and all the lasses
And endemic to that industry is the ceding of one's trajectory
For our purpose is to educate the masses
An impression from that landscape took hold within my mind
Whereas form follows function in the dictates of design,
When utility abides futility we must square the paradigm
But we’re content to lay the altar and divide the pieces
I woke to a fantastic scene in the midst of a pouring rain
With the surest sense that Adam Smith had pickled all our brains
While past me streamed the urchin ranks of future citizens
To the gaping mouth of a monolith, and bold upon its edifice
The words: Mass Education
A great hum of manufacture bore the wheel upon its axis
Supplying taxonomic division for all the lads and all the lasses
And endemic to that industry is the ceding of one's trajectory
For our purpose is to educate the masses
An impression from that landscape took hold within my mind
Whereas form follows function in the dictates of design,
When utility abides futility we must square the paradigm
But we’re content to lay the altar and divide the pieces
Perpetually Walking Downhill (2014)
In the West we have our lotus feet
Duly embraced by female aesthetes
Sophisticated in their modest travail
Amply stilted for gait and stature
Traversing every paved pasture
And perpetually walking downhill
In the West we have our lotus feet
Duly embraced by female aesthetes
Sophisticated in their modest travail
Amply stilted for gait and stature
Traversing every paved pasture
And perpetually walking downhill
The Alchemy of Man (2016)
From breath, a singularity
And life from nonentity
A living soul of
Blood, bone, and skin
God's felicity
Is the alchemy of man
From breath, a singularity
And life from nonentity
A living soul of
Blood, bone, and skin
God's felicity
Is the alchemy of man
Mark Williams (May 2, 1969 - November 29, 2016)
Neighborhood scamps beat the mid-summer pavement
Down the backstreets to Nellie’s for their usual supplies
Riding buck on old bikes (save the odd kid on tennies)
Somehow moving faster than their feet can fly
Impetuous urchins never minding tomorrow
From Ray’s on the hill to the culverts by the beach
Their youthful immoderation worn like raiment
And the scenery a blur, like the years going by
But my memory's clear about the boys from Lakeland
That guileless gang who rolled five on the die
I could never forget the kind soil of my childhood
Or the friends who made it so very worthwhile
Neighborhood scamps beat the mid-summer pavement
Down the backstreets to Nellie’s for their usual supplies
Riding buck on old bikes (save the odd kid on tennies)
Somehow moving faster than their feet can fly
Impetuous urchins never minding tomorrow
From Ray’s on the hill to the culverts by the beach
Their youthful immoderation worn like raiment
And the scenery a blur, like the years going by
But my memory's clear about the boys from Lakeland
That guileless gang who rolled five on the die
I could never forget the kind soil of my childhood
Or the friends who made it so very worthwhile
Tyranny of the 4th Estate (2017)
Jackboots in the newsroom
Wolf Blitzer on our screens
The Ministry of Public Enlightenment
Says news will make you free
Facebook, CNN, Soros
Google, NPR, ABC
CBS, NBC, Reuters
PBS, BBC and AP
File us into your cattle cars
They won’t take long to fill
Save us from all that fake news
Through the triumph of your will
Jackboots in the newsroom
Wolf Blitzer on our screens
The Ministry of Public Enlightenment
Says news will make you free
Facebook, CNN, Soros
Google, NPR, ABC
CBS, NBC, Reuters
PBS, BBC and AP
File us into your cattle cars
They won’t take long to fill
Save us from all that fake news
Through the triumph of your will
Transfixed (2017)
Why did the cisgender cross the road?
To get to the other side
And gather lost pronouns
But transfixed in the midway
Under faltering streetlights
Melding red, yellow and green
Ze was hit by a truck
Why did the cisgender cross the road?
To get to the other side
And gather lost pronouns
But transfixed in the midway
Under faltering streetlights
Melding red, yellow and green
Ze was hit by a truck