returning from new orleans

 not for us the unlimited rage of wind and rain
thunder yes and ordinary rainfall but no more
we came and saw and paid the normal score
but this place seemed like any other it was plain
that what was here was just the human strain
but things were not as they had been before
this seemed to be the case but there was no sore
expression no anger though it would all occur again
the primary giveaway were roofs all of them new
on houses new and old and most definitely ratty
and the plain account of how it was to flee
the wind that came and the sorrow it was to view
the ruins after and how it drove people batty
but hope cannot be drowned yet in the sea

the blindness of theory

it's enough to make a volcano blow its top
to listen to fool after fool tell himself lies
while each thinks that he has won the prize
bringing all other thought and theory to a stop
but if we can find within each concept a drop
of simple sense we'd praise it to the skies
instead we shake our heads and rub our eyes
and wonder how trained minds produce this slop
nothing that we do can ever be fine enough
to meet the standards that we set in our heads
but still we try to show that our thoughts matter
in this line of work the thinker must be tough
must overcome his natural fears and dreads
and ignore the eternal sounds of thoughtless clatter

ghost story

no shapes defined but still we see a shape
there is no form but still we make it be
there's nothing there but we can see
the way it moves the way it fills a cape
we see it dance we see it bow and scrape
and still we wonder how we find the key
to all these visions why they do not flee
they are we think but mere forms of escape
and yet when we have written what we know
the shapes remain and keep their glowing form
we've not a choice but to accept their being
something else must remain for we must show
that we know how they deviate from the norm
and how they fill the spaces of our seeing