The Daily Poem

UNDERNEATH

I’m underneath a rock

I hide here all day long

I’m careful not to talk

I never take a walk

And though at times I know I’m wrong

For sure this time I know I’m right

I’m keeping out of sight.

He’s crouching on a limb

He’s been there every day

He’s neither fat nor slim

But I’m afraid of him

Because I know that if I stray

He’ll swoop and catch me with his jaws

And that’s my best because.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

FOR HIM AND ONLY HIM

Our sovereign God whose brilliant will

   Commands our curving space to turn,

Affirms our time with life to fill,

   Provides the fuel our breathing burns—

   For Him and only Him we sing.

From Him our thoughts arising flow, 

   Through Him our words with trueness ring,

To Him our deeds of loving go.

   There's nothing more that we can bring—

   What love He gives our hearts return.

Romans 11:36

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+11%3A36&version=NIV

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

YOUR HAIR

I think

A drink

Of wine

So fine,

A big

Old swig

Of beer

A sheer

Delight,

Tonight

With you

In blue

And me

In green,

With this

My kiss

And that

Your hat,

Your hair

A flair

Of blonde

Beyond

My hope

To rope

You in

And spin

A web

Of ebb

And flow

To show

You what

A mutt

Like me

Can be.

For my wife, Mimi

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Rhyming Couplets)

BROKEN HORSES

Broken horses missing pieces,

   Shoes or saddles, heads or tails,

Lucky to be living even

   After tarnished memory fails.

Gone the boy to aged dreaming,

   Treasures left in dented pails,

Left for someone to discover—

   Boy to boy, the play prevails.

For Carla Leopold

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Ballad Meter)

BRAIN ARRAY

Come in and watch the image change,

   It's pleasing if you try,

But not too hard, you'll rearrange

   And kiss your cones goodbye.

It's serious as all get out,

   But some they never do.

Sometimes I hear their echos shout

   When turning on the view.

It must be sad for those who stay

   Because they cannot leave.

My job's to clean their brain array,

   And help them to believe

That someday when the optic's cut

   They will be free to go,

But until then the sheik of smut

   Will need them for the show.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Ballad Meter)

RICHTER & BUNSEN

All of a sudden I'm totally done,

   Looking for something to novelly do,

Something tectonically plateful of fun,

   Anything other than stew and construe,

   Something like Charles F. Richter would brew,

Down in the cellar eleven point one.

Shake it and bake it and see what I get,

   Earplugs and goggles with shatterproof glass,

Eighty-foot aperture's jaw-numbing jet,

   Flames like the ones in my chemistry class,

   When Robert "O" Bunsen fell flat on his ass,

And thumbs-upped a chuckle I'll never forget.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

GREEN WATER

flipping my coin

into the silent fountain

green water ripples

along its dry lip

a wishful spider stirs

For Carolyn Thomas 

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Tanka)

INSTANT INSIGNIFICANCE

My span of life mosquitos past

   While eons elephant as if

Their hulking selves were frozen stiff

   While I go by so fast

My epic blur of beating wings

   In pure harmonic sync

Is done and gone in one long blink

   Of their vast wanderings.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Ballad Meter)

STANDARD ISSUE

The flag flies free

   Within it’s sphere

   Of windswept wave domains.

The flagpole stands

   As straight and true

   As tensile strength constrains.

The patriot

   Looks up to find

   What flows within his veins.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

4D FUBAR

Accelerating motion

Or a gravitating notion,

Either way you best be going

Since your curvature is growing.

I presume your time is shorter

As your molecules reorder,

Existentially confessing

Things are slightly more depressing.

Since you got to where you’re leaving

Then for sure you’ve been achieving

Ultimate velocity,

Absolute viscosity,

Buffering dyspepsia,

Suffering dyslexia,

Upsidedowning, insideouting,

Only whispers when you’re shouting,

Splashed beyond all recognition,

Logic flipped to intuition,

Can you verify your image

Back behind the line of scrimmage?

Something happened at the snapping

To your chromosomal mapping,

Particles all squished and wavy,

Chiseled features gone to gravy.

If you’re you, you don’t convey it.

How exactly should I say it?

You’ve been gone a bit too long;

The fourth dimension did you wrong.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Rhyming Couplets)

LAUGHING IN LAUGHLIN

I’ll tell you what I’ve just been through;

To say the least it’s been real tough.

A robber jumped me from a bough,

“Unless you give me all your dough,

Your arm I’ll break, your horse I’ll hough,

And in your face Tb I’ll cough.”

“Oh please I beg you please don’t do

Such things! I’ll give you all my stuff.

Just take it all and leave me now.”

He said his name was Jailbird Joe,

“I drugged the guard and picked the lock,

And soon I'll be laughing in Laughlin—I’m off!

For Rachel Elizabeth Cox at

http://www.squidoo.com/Rachel-Elizabeth-Cox

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

THE PROBABILITY OF LOVE

So what's the chance that you

   And I will meet tomorrow night,

   Between a calamari bite

And one long draft of ail—

A tale of midnight blue?

What odds would bring to me

   The best of what you are,

   A spinning bottle star

Selected just for this—

A kiss of stellar breeze?

And with what random net

   Would I devise to touch

   Your beauty more than such

Intoxicating streams—

A dream of much to get?

Would luck consent to turn

   Because I wanted more,

   Including each of your

Contagious honied ways—

A maze explored to learn?

What probability

   Of double blinding choice

   Would give to me its voice,

To speak of what I know—

A flow rejoicing free?

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme: Dice 3-5-5)

SURPRISE WITHIN CONSTRAINTS

I make the rules and roll the dice

Within constraints all neat and nice

Determining a piece of fate

Without the need to cogitate.

The nodes of chance collect the tells

Within the atom's valent shells

And all the dust of every spin

Without a push must yet begin.

The even odds of come and go

Within the equal handed throw

Can still surprise with some delight

Without the risk of wrong or right.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme: Dice 4-6-2)

A Story In Verse, Part 7: GRANDFATHER

“Garuda, my son, there’s a cloud on your face,

A mist in your eye, and a pause in your pace;

We’ve miles to travel before the day’s through.”

“It must be my sole, and if not it’s my lace.”

I said as I sat to examine my shoe.

“Indeed it’s your soul, but it’s not of your shoe,

It’s something you stand on that’s deeper than you.”

Then stooping he lifted me up on his back,

Maneuvered the path to the far final view,

And pointing he said, “Here’s our plan of attack.”

“Its west to the river and down to the ford,

Then back toward the canyon last week we explored,

And up the long gulley, and down the short side

Then quick cross the dunes to our rest and reward—

A honeydew melon for us to divide!”

He carried me down to the river and on,

I slumped on his back with a sigh and a yawn,

And drifted away in a deep easy sleep.

He brought me my half of the melon at dawn,

And cuddled me up in a little boy heap.

“I know you remember them, faint as a dream,

And sometimes you wake in the night with a scream,

The sadness sweeps in like a wind off the sand;

A mystery, a phantom, a dark evil scheme

To take what you love from the palm of your hand.

I love you, Garuda, my grandson, my boy;

You bring me my daily allowance of joy.

I too lost the ones that for me were most dear,

To those whose desire was but to destroy,

To reap us in bondage from seeds of our fear.”

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Quintain Stanza) 

A Story In Verse, Part 6: THE FLUTE

And there on the sand by the ocean a throne.

No king to be found, just a humerus flute—

Eight holes down the length of a sun-whitened bone.

“What happened?” I asked, but the vulture stood mute,

And bowed to the ground with a solemn salute.

“The flute is for you, I believe.” And he turned.

Then took several paces as if he would go.

“Don’t go.” I protested, and so he returned.

“Please fly me across this enormous plateau,

This wasteland of water all gold and aglow.”

"This far and no further is all I can come,

But pick up the flute for I know you can play

The woodwind, the trumpet, the string and the drum."

"You do?" I exclaimed, with a note of dismay.

"We vultures have known since the king's dying day."

"Who murdered the king and left me this bone?

And who was this king, and when did he rule?

And why do you leave me to face this alone?

You carried me over all kindly, but cruel.

I won't be your puppet, your cat's paw, your tool."

"Your grandfather's father was king of this land. 

Your grandfather's mother escaped to the dunes

The story is old but is now near at hand.

You'll learn what you need if you play the old tunes

And open the eyes of the long sleeping runes."

I lifted the flute from the great royal chair

And blew a soft tune through its marrow-less space,

My fingers ascending the pure tonal stair,

Arriving in memory, a time and a place,

When love was the look on my grandfather’s face.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Quintain Stanza)

A Story In Verse, Part 5: THE OCEAN

I clung to his neck with my eyes tightly closed.

The beat of his wings like a music composed

A tranquil serenity there in the air,

An island of refuge, our flight unopposed,

As into the morning we slipped like a prayer.

The sun on my back and the wind in my face,

The visions of viciousness nearly erased,

Inhaling the triumph of wide open skies

And giddy with freedom’s intangible grace,

I asked the great bird, “May I open my eyes?”

“You may, but be sure that you look straight ahead,

The Chasm of Chaos behind us is spread.”

I blinked in the brightness of upcoming noon,

Along the horizon a thin bluish thread,

“The ocean,” he answered, “We’ll settle there soon.”

“Who are you?” I questioned, “And why did you come?”

He turned his right eye and said, “Hungry for chum,”

With a wink and a twinkle, “But then you requested

A ride over Chasm, and so I’ve become

The pride of my venue—the first to be vested!”

“And if I had run? What then?” I inquired.

“You wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be hired

To carry you down to the coastal domain.

And this is the best that we both have desired,

To serve as we are for the king in his reign.”

“What king?” I began, but “Hold on, Little One!

The eagles are swarming!” And downward we spun.

We fell like an arrow; we flew like a stone,

And down like a falcon come down from the sun,

We dropped like a sovereign impaled on his throne.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Quintain Stanza)

WHEREVER YOU

It's not the way it maybe is

   But only what He says

   There's nothing but a clue

I want to go wherever You.

It could be something but it's not

   It's everything He's got

   I don't expect to do

I want to go wherever You.

No matter what the bringing brings

   His ceremony sings

   The wind contains the view

I want to go wherever You.

The light is closer now today

   We've not much time to play

   O spin me in and through

I want to go wherever You.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Kyrielle)

RUM & COKE

I found the preacher at the pub

   Drinking rum & coke.

He said he'd come to let me go,

   I thought it was a joke.

He knows I never go to church

  Because I've lost the knack

For all that holy stuff they do,

   He knows I won't come back.

We shared a drink that Sunday night,

   He told me what he said

And how the congregation snored

   And put themselves to bed.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Ballad Meter)

THE SERIAL PRINCIPLE

Today I cross the Lehman Line

And leave your royal straight behind—

One hundred forty daily deeds,

One forty shards like silver seeds,

A New York mirror state of mind—

Today I cross the Lehman Line.

"In January 1996 I started writing a poem a day as an experiment. ... Toward the end of February inspiration hit big time.  I began a consecutive day streak that reached 140."  Excerpted from The Daily Mirror by David Lehman.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)

MY WORLD PEACE

The earth is surprisingly smooth

   and surprisingly calm

Especially because of the bomb—

A bomb just for you and for me

   a much bigger one built

To fire at just the right tilt—

An angle precisely derived

   from the intel I get

That makes me the scarier threat—

A danger like nothing you’ve known

   where the odds are all mine

Because I’ve a special design—

A scheme of unutterable death

   that for me is the end

Of not only you but your friends.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Novel Rhyme Scheme)