Weekly Poems: A Set of Proverbs and More

THE UNCERTAINTY OF CERTAINTY

1. If you're sure you're right, you're probably wrong.

2. What one needs to believe is precisely what one needs not to believe.

3. Certainty is a wall one erects around doubt. The stronger the doubt, the stronger the wall.

4. The most consistent source of error is not ignorance but knowledge.

5. What we know is like a flashlight on a moonless night -- essential for getting around. But often it is better to turn the flashlight off and let our eyes get used to the dark.

LYNNETTE

Lynnette likes tigers, roses, navy blue,
Yet all these preferences cannot be she.
Nice long brown hair, brown eyes, loves poetry,
Needs pets and people, cuddles, gentle, too.
Even these are not the girl Lynnette,
The mystery that is her childlike being,
The sacred soul beyond what we are seeing,
Embraced by love more deep than we've known yet.

YOU WROTE YOUR NAME UPON HER THIGH

You wrote your name upon her thigh
And looked at me. I wondered why
You hurt me so. What demon drew
You on to be so not like you?

Sometimes it seems you want to cause
Me grief, as if to test the loss
Of me, to see how much sweet pain
You need to feel alive again.

I love you, yet I fear a love
In which my function is to prove
Repeatedly you cannot lose
The thing you want but cannot choose.

I stay in hopes that you will see
Someday you cannot hope to be
Both fully loved and fully free,
For love comes only mutually.

HOBGOBLINS KNOW THE PROPER WAY TO DANCE

Hobgoblins know the proper way to dance:
Arms akimbo, loopy legs askew,
Leaping into darkness with delight,
Lusting for the ecstasy of fright,
Open to the charm of horrors new.
Well may you start your screaming in advance,
Even as you give a ghoul a chance,
Each creepy creature craving to say, "Boo!",
Near heaven in its netherworld of night.

DIABETES TELLS US WE'RE MACHINES

Diabetes tells us we're machines,
Intended to exist but for a time.
All that brought us pleasure in our prime
Breaks down to prove the metal of our means.
Eventually, all of us must die,
Though, perhaps, not quite so bit-by-bit.
Each soul must see of life the whole of it,
So as to know of death the reason why.

WE DRIVE A TRACTOR/TRAILER UNIT

We drive a tractor/trailer unit
Spinning down the pike.
That way we can find the time
To make love when we like.

You sleep, I drive, I sleep, you drive,
But then we stop awhile.
And when we get back on the road,
We share the same soft smile.

Some say that such togetherness
Is living behind bars,
Never free to let yourself
Expand out to the stars.

But being on the road with you
Is what I want from life.
There is a universe inside
A husband and a wife.

There is a universe so rich
That should all heaven move
Across the way on eighteen wheels,
I'd much prefer our love.

GRATITUDE, LIKE LOVE, IS PART OF BEING

Gratitude, like love, is part of being,
Remaining when all else is left behind,
Absurd and yet quite natural, a yearning
To give to light the worship of the wind.
In gratitude we find a gift worth giving
To something that no gift can serve at all,
Unburdening ourselves of unspent feeling
Dammed behind a thick and willful wall,
Else cut off by reason from our awe.