listening intently

if there are messages they've passed unheard
the stars remain quiet in the immense sky
but what their music is their own pained cry
we cannot know we have not the magic word
our senses flee us frightened as a bird
from the enormity of dame nature's lie
our own five senses the great truths deny
the dream is crushed not simply deferred
instead pale light and the thin ghost of spring
give us some home the cycle will renew
but each turn of the wheel means destination
is that much closer and the end will bring
for us a peace but no return to view
we have inside ourselves the true salvation

homo in excelsis

at some point the boundary between human and machine
will start to fade the way that county lines dissolve
before the urgent need to banish crime the minds revolve
from image to image in panic sifting scene from scene
in turn electron supplants organ then meme for gene
exchanges place then the reverse the process will involve
no instant transformations rather new parts will solve
each problem as it happens nothing will have been
permanently changed though mind will now speak to mind
without the mediation of charged words instead we'll see
a gradual acceptance that the difference doesn't matter
and never should have we'll just see that human kind
includes machine parts that relieve old age that we will be
just what we were as long as self-delusion does not shatter

the lesson of life

This is the way it is, the universe does not care
whether we live or die. All we can do is advance
step by step, day by day, taking whatever chance
comes our way, seeking all over the sphere
where life has placed us something that will adhere
when we have ended our turn at the dance.
Still, as we move towards the last great stance
after which comes nothing, towards that last year
when all that's done will be done, and no more
prizes sought or lost, we'll give ourselves the praise
for all the garlands won, for the heroic verse
we've read throughtout our passage. There is store
of such, and plenty of false hope for final days.
This is the nature of life and the great universe.

A new semester

The regular schedule will soon be resumed.
It's back to teaching, back to the same looks
of bland frustration, the same avoiding books
that causes grades to fall. It can be assumed
with safety, that the average student's doomed
in writing to babble like an endless set of brooks.
There will be plagiarists, those stupid crooks
who'll find their standing will have been consumed,
as flunking the course becomes their new reward.
And some will make the effort, really want to learn
and see the world with better informed eyes.
Others will think that because they have scored
a place in class they won't have need to turn
a page, just at semester's end plague me with lies.