The Daily Poem

IN THE SHADOWS

When the moon in fullness rises, children dressed in ghoulish guises,

Giggle down the merry lane from lighted door to lighted door.

Somewhere in the shadows waiting, bloodshot shining eyes are hating,

Whispering threats through slobbered lips such vile thoughts of untold gore.

Drooling down the stubbled face of one whose evil mind of gore,

Thirsts for blood and nothing more.

Butterflies with Little Kittens, Tinkerbells in fluffy mittens,

Huddle close in clustered clutches, bags of chewy sweets galore.

Just beyond the moonlit porches, darkness burns its snarling torches,

Hunting innocence with relish, hungry for its dreams of gore,

Feeding flames of frenzied terror, flesh on flesh and gore on gore,

Wanting blood and nothing more.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 250

Higher Grounds Coffee in Idyllwild, California

The Raven Stanza

A DIALOGUE IN LAMINAR FLOW

Whatever you do, remember me,

For this is me not long ago

Conceiving you as soon to be.

Whatever platform, this we know,

Its you and me connected now,

   A dialogue in laminar flow,

   Your time above, my time below,

A linkage not quite understood,

As checkered layers may allow,

As sunlight filters through the wood,

This canopy of growing leaves

Our abstract sense of common good.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 249

Starbucks at Palm & Florida in Hemet, California

http://www.mystore411.com/store/view/24876/Starbucks-Hemet

Terza Rima

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5794

TO NOT SAY

The silence beckons,

Offering blankets of blank;

The grinding seconds

Count in the Riverbank Bank;

First for the money,

Then for the honey,

Third for the tumble of hay;

Four for the totem,

Five for the modem,

Last but not least to not say.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 248

Idyllwild, California

Novel Verse Form

THE CARROLLIAN MARTINI

The ancient symbols take their toll

On one last future totem pole 

Aluminum instead of pine

A scripture ladder memory shrine:

   O frabjous day! Callooh callay!

Amusing travelers as they go

Especially those who will not know

How time links back to bygone days

To cataclysmic pagan ways:

   O frabjous day! Callooh callay!

The complicated simple truth

Inscribed upon the cyber tooth

Will grin like gin and catch like ice

A shaken emblem offered thrice:

   O frabjous day! Callooh callay!

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 247

Starbucks at Palm & Florida in Hemet, California

http://www.mystore411.com/store/view/24876/Starbucks-Hemet

Novel Verse Form

INSIDE OUT

I view the light and hear the sound

I breathe the sky and walk the ground

But then I turn again and see

There's no one in my world but me.

Reflected back from surface time

The escallating downward climb

Of everthing that cannot flee

There's no one in my world but me.

I want to live what I've conceived

As if to give what I've received

But face to face will never be

There's no one in my world but me

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 246

Los Angeles Public Library: http://www.lapl.org/ 

Kyrielle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrielle 

CASH ADVANCE

The money is the mystery we seek;

   The freedom of

   The purpose of

The meaning of the one igniting heat.

And if the money hides in frozen vaults,

Encrytped to withstand our best assaults,

We do a back-end search and noose our name

To some cool trick of shoot-the-mooning fame

In hopes that its delicious rolling die

Will rocket us to one conclusive sky

Beyond the dividends of pawn-tossed flaws,

To move like slow checkmating kings because

The money was the mystery we sought;

   The freedom of

   The purpose of

The meaning of the one thing left unbought.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 245

Higher Grounds in Idyllwild, California

http://www.yelp.com/biz/higher-grounds-coffee-idyllwild

Novel Verse Form

SURGICAL SUITE NO. 2

Harmonic blades are cold and quick,

They slice the tissue neat and clean,

My belly fat is soft and thick,

They've got to take my fractured spleen.

Harmonicas are fine and well,

They slide along my tongue and lips,

I'd like to play Maurice Ravel,

Just once before the surgeon snips.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 244

Rancho Mirage, California

http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?where1=Rancho+Mirage,+California&FORM=LMIEMN

Ballad Meter

NIGHT CLUB LESSONS

Down here in the night

The flourescent light

Illuminates right from wrong.

We all do our best

To pass every test

And cover the rest with song.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 243

Rancho Mirage, California

Novel Verse Form

CAN'T SAY

It's the day before something,

   It's the day after that,

Not ever quite never,

   And not where it's at.

It's the moment just after,

   It's the place over there,

The moment just ended,

   But can't say just where.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 242

Rancho Mirage, California 

Ballad Meter

A Story In Verse, Part 8: AWAKENING DOUBT

I put down the flute with a shudder of fear

The runes in my pocket had started to hum

The vulture was standing unnaturally near

My heart in my throat beating strong like a drum

"Unless you keep playing the kingdom won't come."

"Who are you?"  I asked.  "And what kingdom arrives?

My father is dead, and his father—and his.

There's none left but me, and I'm barely alive."

"All true," said the vulture.  "All true, and all is

Just as you describe it, and none can resist."

The look in his eye once warm with good will,

Now narrowed and tightened with hintings of hate.

I reached in my pocket, the runes were now still,

No luminous humming, just circles of slate,

Just seven smooth stones to determine my fate.

"These runes were my grandfather's daily refrain,

Like music they played in his ear all the while

He gathered the food or ground out the grain,

His thoughts & his words & his deeds all worthwhile;

He lived in the noblest, simplest style."

The vulture stepped closer and whispered a rasp,

"There's much you don't know of your grandfather's mind."

He told you the truth but you couldn't quite grasp

The lessons he offered, the stories designed

To show you the substance that can't be defined."

"I learned every lesson, I passed every test

His last dying words were, 'You know what to do.'"

"Yes yes!" said the vulture,  "You learned from the best."

The flute holds the musical substance that's true;

The power, the glory, the kingdom—for you!"

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 241

Rancho Mirage, California:  http://www.ranchomirageca.gov/index.php

Quintain Stanza:  http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar/rhymes/quintain-rhyme-scheme.html

VOICE COMMAND

Begin with turning earth and swirling sky,

Devise the zone for breathers born of air,

The feet and hands not needing when or why

Revolving up the double helix stair.

Collect the water down in gemlike pools,

Lay pearly ribbons dark below the waves

To hold the treasured secrets with the rules

For eyes to find in dimly lighted caves.

Then come with silent step at cool of day,

Embrace the world of all-in-one believe

Before the night of after-time can say,

It's time to stop the ticking clock and leave 

The soft continuum of come and go,

Dissolve the now in one last flash tableau.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 240

Idyllwild, California:  http://www.idyllwildchamber.com/

Shakespearean Sonnet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet

MY DEAREST SAMANTHANTALLY

I haven't seen a sunset strip

   In thirty seven years,

So don't expect some drivel chat

   Through reddish golden tears.

I've neither touched a keyboard bot

  Nor sent a vocal nudge,

So please refrain from splatting rage

   And cancel out the grudge.

I'll see you in your sensor suit

   As soon as you return,

And do remember up your files

   How much for you I burn.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 239

Idyllwild, California

Ballad Meter

GLYPH DIVING

I'm diving in and landing on a glyph,

A nanoscopic quilled intaglio

Appearing like a twisted treble clef.

How very small I've grown, how could I know?

Except I can't predict the quantum flow.

I move in swirling motions with my limbs;

The purple light more like a creature swims.

And now I ask my contra-self what aim

Have I to delve below this speeding stub

Where incompleteness stakes its fractured claim?

"Kartoum!" it answers me as if to rub

My streaming eyes with last year's gritts 'n' grub.

I'm sorry for my meta-doubting seethe;

I'm having trouble managing to breathe.

I'm settling back into my duo-tombs,

To travel for a while as if to see,

To weave some space on ambidextrous looms,

Repeating motions twice for clarity,

Absorbing slow the nano-scarcity.

And now I'm diving up and out the glyph,

To mount my horsedrawn homeward skiff. 

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 238

Idyllwild, California

Rhyme Royal

BOUNCING EASY STREET

Banana peels & egg shells trampoline,

I can't believe I'm bouncing up so high,

All hovercraft & flying submarine,

   Above this easy street.

Impervious to pain my tambourine

Beats out its steady trick of gold supply

In finger-counted island lady green.

Come home my dearest lovely, you and I

Will manage up our newly tuned routine,

And rise like dough on marble-countered sky

   Above this easy street.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 237

Rancho Mirage, California

http://www.ranchomirageca.gov/index.php

a Roundel for Mimi

ONE LOVE

Unbounded gratitude is all I feel tonight,

The afterglow of love, the overflow of grace,

Alive and well within this happy holy place

Of God's perpetually renewing anti-fright,

His bunker full of choicest joy and pastry days,

A place to rest upon the couches of carress

Without the noise of battlescars, without duress,

Where nothing but my favorite faithful music plays,

A shelter in the air composed of domes and spires,

No puzzle locks to solve, no crossword codes to break,

But this and only this: one love to give and take,

One love with tight embrace, one love my love desires.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 236

Idyllwild, California

Hexameter

THE HABITS OF THE HEART

The coals of love ignite

Within the wind of taken breath,

No matter what imagined plight

Or what envisioned death,

The habits of the heart

Awaken to reviving bliss,

Renew the soft and sacred art

Of all the things we miss.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 235

Hanford, California:  http://www.hanfordchamber.com/

Ballad Meter

HYDROPHILICITY QUOTIENTS

What hydrophilicity quotient is used

When judging the Maritime Porpoise Array,

And how is the echo returning diffused

When hypersalinity shifts the display?

The choir of orcas who sing in the bay

Without their devices will wander confused,

And trigger the netting of Iron & Clay,

In silence to circle perplexed and bemused.

Rancho Mirage, California

D. Edgar Lamp

Octave

AS IF THE WORLD WOULD END

The rockets brighten up the starless night

Through punchline clouds so thick they never part.

No joke has ever set us up so right,

No arrow ever shot so pure of heart,

So clean of slate, beyond the surly bounds

Of earth to some place we can feel our moves,

Like foxes running just before the hounds,

Their lives a sudden gasp of racing grooves.

But no, the weather never changes here,

Not much at least, as if the world would end

Before we take our share of sun and shade,

Our harmless moments wrapped around the bend

Where things undone pretend to be unclear,

Dispense their wisdom like a dream unmade.

Idyllwild, California

D. Edgar Lamp

Shakespearean Sonnet

THE NAME OF WHO WE ARE

Confuse my night with curtains full of wind

And strip the earthly varnish off my brow,

Remove the taint of breath I can't rescind

And hold me in your lap of here and now;

Where every ruin shimmers wet with dew,

Where temples stone on stone begin to fail,

Where nothing but your eyes can see me through

To where I've longed to bury tooth and nail.

Just you and me in peaceful lullaby,

Repeating note for note the lilting flame

Of what we've known, with none to question why,

And none to say we cannot speak the name

Of who we are together, so much more

Than what we were, my love, so long before.

Idyllwild, California

D. Edgar Lamp

a Shakespearean Sonnet for Mimi

THE BANQUET

This is the banquet of kisses and follies,

Blisses bestowed on both nobles and pirates,

Grand in their glory they stand by their tethers,

Manned to the teeth with their humans and hopefuls,

Places all set for the faces of champions,

Races all won for the wreaths of good fortune.

written in Idyllwild, California

in a Novel Verse Form

for The Daily Poem

on October 12, 2010

by D. Edgar Lamp