76-100
by Thomas Nance
#76
I never met the princess
Crushed against her lover
At the moment their love ended.
Her life flicked but two hours
Past his. Who will my prayers be for
In the last instant of consciousness?
#77
I call upon the Dreammaker
That she might sing to me
Of all those things
That can't be done
But must be tried
By fools such as I.
#78
I held all twenty years
Of your hand in mine.
Stroked your fingers
As your thumb glided
Ever so gently over my skin.
For those few moments on stage
I was twenty years younger.
Oh, that I could have loved you
Then, Carmen.
#79
All these zealots
Keep telling me to find God
In a book as if God never
Existed until the printed page.
#80
Old Walt once said,
"And nothing exterior shall
Ever take command of me."
As if birth, death,
Demons, angels,
Or a flash flood
Couldn't order us all
To some place
We didn't want to visit.
#81
Bent double with arthritis
Old widow Carroll
Shuffles with her cane
Down the oak lined street
To Concordia
Where she sits
In the third row alone
And prays for her three grandchildren
Climbing the mulberry
In their unwed mother's back yard.
#82
Heaven is so far away
We can't touch it
Because we won't
Open our eyes.
#83
Why must we cry when
Our heroes fall
Yet never shed a tear
For a broken faced whore?
#84
Life would be so much easier if
That little madness would disappear.
You know, the one that arrives at the whim
Of an organ growing hard and thick so that
Nothing else can get done until it looses itself
In a pink fleshed joy. But without that wondrous lunacy
There would be little reason to glory in a world
Controlled just by the mind.
#85
It's the stones in your shoes,
Not the feathers in your pillow,
That make you realize
What's important.
#86
He made the house all by himself.
The foundation, the frame,
Stucco, sheet rock, bricks and shakes,
All the painting, the wall papering.
Yet when she died
Before the carpeting was laid,
It made no difference who had done what.
#87
When I was young
And grew strong enough
To wear my father's clothes,
I never knew how small
My father's clothes would be
When my mother gave them away
After he died.
#88
How easily the words form
When the music is right
And there is only my breath
To distract me.
#89
We mustn't smoke cigarettes,
Drink alcohol, ingest drugs,
Spit on the sidewalk,
Piss on park trees,
Abort rapists' fetuses,
Or not pray loud enough.
Such is the struggle for freedom.
#90
I never had hands
Before I touched you.
No lips, no eyes
Before you became
My life.
That I could only
Have given you
The same gifts.
With you in my life
Tomorrow promises
Everything.
#91
He told Him
What I said
About Him,
And Him now
Has condemned
I for what He
Told Him.
At least that's
What He told I.
Now, how can
I be angry at Him
For what He said?
#92
When more prisons must be built
To keep the state safe,
The state will be safer,
For the people will be less free.
Better to love and teach the children
Or else people will find
Tyranny a hard master to break.
#93
How during the greatest
Slaughter of human beings
Even remembered by mankind,
Could your grandparents have
Opened their home and fed
My father shrunken with malaria
Enough to give him hope
Of war's end and later my life?
To thank you who never met
My father is such a foolish thought .
But who can I thank
Now that your grandparents are dead?
#94
In the dark, a better promise
Than the rising sun
Is your breathing
Next to me.
#95
When
Law is liberation,
When
Law is justice.
When
Law is deliverance,
It must be followed.
If the law is not liberation,
Justice or deliverance,
Then it is not law.
And must not be followed.
Blessed are the lawmakers,
For their wisdom is just
Short of God's.
#96
All flags have two sides.
One for those who sacrificed
Their lives that others might know peace.
The other for those who couldn't tolerate
Differences and sought to annihilate the unclean.
Sometimes in the breeze it's hard
To figure out what side of the flag
We're seeing.
#97
If your god always has a plan,
Then do no fear the evil
Nor try to stop it,
For then your god's plan will be spoiled.
Better to sit and wait to die
Or just find another god.
#98
Does the long suffering
Before the inevitable death
Show the nobility
Of the human spirit
Or the cruelty
Of the human heart?
#99
It's not that the old are so wise,
It's just they've had more practice
With failure and more amazement
With success.
#100
Lover,
Stay close to me tonight.
If this is my last,
What better way to continue eternity
Than holding your hand in mine.