It has to be a little every day.
I’m lazy, though. For inspiration wait.
When sun does shine, it’s time for making hay.
My hunger for expression, never sate.
Just write of anything inside my head.
Whatever is the first thought in my mind.
To poetry, my circumstances lead.
I go exploring, see what I can find.
I wander with my thoughts as on a leash.
I let them guide wherever they may go.
Like Gautier, might first consume hashish.
The pleasures from a plant, all that I know.
“Deducted from your share in Paradise
that portion that today with us consume.”
Would you equate this sticky tar with vice?
The wisdom of the world you must subsume.
That heaven would, a budget, closely keep?!
That God from ether has material.
The valley of dry bones, they upwards leap.
Encased with flesh and blood, as natural.
That portion that he gives as daily bread.
In truth, much more than what I need today.
For that, be thankful, what it is he said.
My faith in providence, all fears allayed.
Blessed man avoids the path the wicked make.
No standing in the way that sinners take.
The Lord, his law, where he finds his delight.
Upon it, meditates both day and night.
No sitting in the mockers’ company.
The righteous man is likened to a tree.
By streams of water where he spreads his roots.
The righteous, in his season, growing fruit.
Not so the wicked, they, like chaff, are dry.
Away, into the wind, the wicked fly.
They, in the judgment, knowing only fear.
They will not stand, condemned, they disappear.
The Lord, the righteous, watches all their ways.
Destruction: there the wicked, all their days.
This verse I’m writing right at waking up.
The morning time, before my breakfast sup.
That I remember in my waking phase
a dream I had — unusual these days.
I kept a green iguana in a cage.
His size revealed advancement in his age.
No smaller than a dog that’s medium.
The cage, for him, a life of tedium.
But in my dream I opened up his door,
and like a bolt, four-legged on the floor,
around the corner, where it was he ran.
His urgency I didn’t understand.
I found him and two other greens as well.
To slake his thirst, went running to the smell.
They drank from water pooling on the ground.
The spigot leaked, supplied the water found.
The triune lizards drinking at the pool.
Not anything that I might learn at school.
The meaning of my dream to ascertain?
A reservoir by clogging of a drain.
And why this creature, neither dog nor cat?
The Cosmic Owl might give an answer pat.
No visits to the shaman recently.
A snake-dream makes me think much diff’rently.
So why do lizards populate my dreams?
A message to deliver, so it seems.
I saw iguanas when in Mexico.
The other day, a Reddit video,
but there, the ones recorded, small and black.
Not green and large, the memory I lack
of one like this; in waking life not seen.
What this persistent portent really means?
Endured great hardship, travelled many years
and miles, while seeking for the truth. At last,
a wizened Buddha would assuage my fears.
Beneath a tree where often he would would fast.
Locked eyes with mine, I wandered to his glade.
He waived his arm to gesture his intent.
His invitation instantly obeyed.
His whispered voice, the meagre air he spent:
The Parable of the Merciful Gardener (Luke 13.6-9)
The gardener who in the vineyard works,
one day the owner asked him to explain:
“The past three years, I come here seeking fruit.
This fig tree from production still abstains.
“Why should it waste the precious dirt this way?
I’m now suggesting that you cut it down.”
Instead, proposing this alternative,
the dresser of the vines described its ground:
“Sir, one more year, the soil around its roots.
Aeration, and manure I will apply.
If once again, no fruit appears next year,
I’ll cut it down, throw it into the fire.”
An Argument For Self-Regulation of Attorneys (a poem inspired by Comment [11] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)
The state possesses great authority
at law, and power is abused sometimes.
Abuse is challenged most effectively
by that profession when it’s not the state
on which the right to practice law depends.
The Legal Profession Should Serve the Public Interest (a poem inspired by Comment [12] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)
Profession, relative autonomy.
Self-governance, responsibility.
In regulation, public interest served.
No furtherance of those parochial,
self-interested concerns held by the bar.
“Lawyers play a vital role in the preservation of society” (a poem inspired by Comment [13] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)
Lawyers must preserve society.
Their role is what this vital interest serves.
Fulfillment of this role requires this:
a thorough understanding of the Rules
that govern that relationship between
the lawyers and the system that they serve.
I cried a little with these memories.
I met you first when I was seventeen.
You, forty then, an age discrepancy.
They mattered not, those sev’ral years between.
The hours I drove for you behind your wheel.
Discussions that would never make me snore.
You told me how to use a vegetable.
Zucchini, in a way not heard before.
Your women, those relationships described.
Despite your art, were strongly hetero.
You open, honest, how I would define.
A young adult, I, stuck in utero.
To south of Lockhart, back and forth we go.
Your family’s farm, the cows that you would feed.
The city as the only place I know.
Exposure to some basic husbandry.
Your humor and irreverence displayed.
Would tell me of that beast most mythical:
Hilocometoot, not Sasquatch (so clichéd).
You father’s bedtime tales, original.
On our first trip, menudo was your rave.
The rest’rant, Mexican, where we had stopped.
An opportunity to me you gave.
The stomach-turning tripas, onions chopped.
Your humor made me, from my shell, emerge.
My laughter at your charming, clowning ways.
Now for a while, our paths seem to diverge.
Eternity, together all our days.
I used to cry each time I thought of you.
On this side never would I see again.
The dearest friend of mine I ever knew.
You stood alone, unique, this world of men.
The method of your leaving, no disdain.
Six years ago from this world did depart.
Your own life took, the overwhelming pain.
I found today you living in my heart.
Forgot how much, Scarlatti, you enjoyed.
He wrote sonatas similar to Bach’s.
For solo piano, instrument employed
to make your music. Joy, that you unlocked.
This ancient author of melodic verse.
Appreciation, now, I understand.
The many hours, for concerts, you rehearsed.
Each Christmas time, inviting all your friends.
Biography of Horowitz upon your shelf.
His album that I’m playing while I write.
Scarlatti played no better than yourself.
To my trained ear, the differences are trite.
Your seizures, at the keyboard, were allayed.
Your padded Steinway bench I have still haunts.
In Greg’ry Gym you saw Van Cliburn play.
You told your dad, a seat like that, your want.
Ascending scale, reminds us of our goal.
The resurrection where you are for sure.
The life you lead to me was charmed and full.
From minor turns to major, Christ our cure.
The Thief On The Cross (Rhyming Luke: Chapter 23.38-43)
With Jesus, too, were two thieves crucified.
The crowd, their insults, loud, hurled up at them.
One thief, as well, at Jesus, this he cried:
“If you, the Christ, then rescue us condemned!”
The other, in rebuke, to him these words:
“Do you fear God? Our sentences are just.
This man, his sentence, not what he deserves.
An innocent, the Romans should not touch.”
Continuing, these words, he desp’rate plead:
“My Lord, your kingdom, when you realize,
remember me.” Responding, Jesus said
to him: “This day with me in paradise.”
A giant beetle lying on his back.
In Texas larger never have I seen.
His writhing legs. I’m fearful of attack.
His jaws might pinch my finger in between.
Back to abode, container to retrieve.
With flip-flop scooped into the Tupperware.
New bioethics that I must conceive.
A seal excluding any further air.
No cotton ball, my toilet paper wad,
absorbs this toxic liquid I possess.
The killing jar with beetle not quite dead.
My insect murder, guilty, I confess.
Not only my aesthetics to fulfill.
My kids, the ones I demonstrate the norms.
The values in them that I would instill.
To value life in all its many forms.
To take a life for art? Impossible!
Consider ethics of activities.
To satisfy what is insatiable:
our scientific curiosity.
The other day returning from the pool.
Upon the sidewalk where it was we walked.
The end of summer, going back to school.
About some random subjects that we talked.
Upon the ground a beetle had deceased.
I pointed out the largeness of his size.
Not quite as big as him I’d found before.
My Ella, teasing, gave me this reply:
“Why don’t you pick him up and save him, then
some further poetry that you can write?”
A hearty laugh was shared by all of us,
but no one’s laughter, harder, than was mine.
I knew that Ella did not disrespect.
I understood the teasing she intends.
The laughter shared, this way that we connect.
I knew their hearts, my love, they understand.
T.H. Chalm 