The Daily Poem

OUR SHORTENING DAYS

Growing like ivy we cling to the folds of our minds

    Longing for play

    In our shortening days

Knowing there's something we really must find.

Hidden in time on the tethered neuronal display

    Hunting to find

    With inquisitive minds

Bidden to roam in our shortening days.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem737

Novel Verse Form

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

THE FAMOUS DEAD

The famous dead are dead and famous still,

While we the Jude of living cool obscurity

Must live unknown until what will what will.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem736

Epigram

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

APPROACHING CHANGE

It's empty, slow and ominous.

It creeps inside like night on black,

Like black on deep, like deep on dark

Always forward never back

Sliding through the slightest crack

Monotonous, anonymous,

Stealthy, stolen, steady, stark.

It's full of speed but patiently

It belly crawls the space that's left

No room to move it tunnels in

And splits the stone's colossal heft

Divides in two, creates the cleft

To let the shadow feelings free

And from their steps to start again.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem735

Novel Verse Form

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

ELIJAH SILAS CHAPMAN

Elijah Silas Chapman

I talk, I wait, I listen

I know he hears me when I speak

But never says a word to me.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem734

Clerihew

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

FIVE STARS

Concretely stern and nailed with railroad spikes

The five star general took his best dislikes

And marched himself a smart battalion grand

And played himself a brassy marching band

Until refreshed on Mussolini's head

He Hitler'd down deciding who was dead

And with a Stalin heavy hand moustache

He spread the coals and blew the ash.

And there beside his glowing weenie roast

He kissed his five star mistress with a toast

It's best, he said, to take it all in stride

And walk away with sweetness at your side.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem733

Rhyming Couplets

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

I SING THE NIGHT

Breezing through I sing the night

. Love receives the stars

Leaving all my tears behind

. And all my battle scars.

Forward motion leans my face

. Fear absorbs the pain

Never hail to Mary's grace

. While God in Heaven reigns.

Taking what I find as good

. Hope upsends my doubt

Dash the gods of stone and wood

. Turn the devil out.

There's a place I know exists

. Power peace and light

Though my frequent fear persists

. Still I sing the night.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem732

Ballad Meter

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

PIE IN THE SKY

Just send them all up in a giant balloon

A few inches shy of the shimmering moon

And serve them all slices of hot apple pie

And call your cafe, The Pie In The Sky.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem731

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

THE MIDNIGHT STEPPING STONES

As if I'd ever wander off

beyond the bounds of sound and sense,

Be gone so long in silence that

I'd lose my verbal decadence.

Consider if you will the aim

of every man who walks the earth:

Design a place, perfect a name

to glorify his common birth.

Engage me with an hour of

your telling voice, the barest bones,

Felicitous and free because

you know the midnight stepping stones

Give everyone who ventures forth

an extra sole and a bit of lift,

Hello, three cheers, hurray, hurray,

an extra sole and a bit of lift.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem730

Acrostic

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

OUR UNLIKELY ROMANCE

I couldn't say just how I came to know

that she was more than who she said she was,

But if I had to guess I'd say because

she had that secret something like the glow

That bounces off a glass of chardonnay

when twilight filters through a window pane

In swaths of pink and blue to end the day,

and so it was I asked her to explain.

At first she looked away as if I'd caught

her naked in a mirror's coy routine,

But turning back she saw that I was not

at all unsure of what I knew I'd seen.

Regaining her compusure with a lip

that nearly Mona Lisa'd past my gaze,

She wondered if she'd really let it slip

or was I only bluffing to appraise

A quick unfounded hunch of consequence

that no clear line of reasoning could accuse.

And in that moment blushed with reticence,

she nodded timidly,then dropped her rouse.

And everything I'd ever hoped she'd be

came flooding true on waves on sudden tears,

And all she wanted in a man was me,

and so it was we surfed for a hundred years.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem729

Quatrain Stanza

Laguna Hills, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

GOOD MORNING BARRY

Thanks for your kind attention

For all the great information

(Disregarding my procrastination

Which deserves a bout of detention)

I've finally reached a decision

To go in a different direction.

I owe you a beer

Have a good school year.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem728

Novel Verse Form

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

ANOTHER NAME FOR GOD

There's many names for God,

Like highest King of kings,

And greatest Lord of lords,

But what of—Singularity—

From which flows all posterity?

From Him that Prime Resource,

Where something out of nothing spun,

And from its turning magnitude

He squeezed a spark of amplitude.

From Him that Burst of Light,

The first release of energy

That powers everything we know

In this our universal show.

There's many names for God

Like Everlasting Father,

Like Alpha and Omega,

But what of—Singularity—

From which flows all posterity?

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem727

Novel Verse Form

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

THE FIRST PREREQUISITE

There's nothing to do before it.

You'll lose if you try to ignore it.

You can't save it up or store it.

Don't follow the ones who deplore it,

But learn every day to adore it.

No matter what's happened, sleep.

Whatever you're trapped in, sleep.

Before you review it,

Or try to undo it, sleep.

There's nothing more precious,

More grand and auspicious,

More pure and propitious,

To make you ambitious

Than racking up hours,

Improving your powers, of sleep.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem726

Skeltonic Verse

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

THERE'S A BRA IN MY TRASH CAN

There's a bra in my trash can

But who's can it be?

The left strap is broken

The right strap agrees,

The cups have no memory,

And wires protrude,

The hooks and the eyes

Have all come unglued.

There's a bra in my trash can

And so it should be--

The girl in my bedroom is

Waiting for me.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem725

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

THE LONG SLUMBER

Tangential now to what we first agreed,

She closed the door and waltzed away with Dread,

Abandoned me with wounds and left for dead,

Like some unholy thing the grave had freed.

I lay in semi-conscious slumber down,

Required myself no food or cheering drink,

But just a moment, maybe more, to think

Before my tumbling vision's mask-like frown.

My eyes gone deep and gray with loveless tears,

My limbs gone limp and pallid from the ache.

O God, O God, there must be some mistake.

And there I lay for a hundred thousand years.

Until one morning, whispering like a wing,

As tiny as a gnat's approaching near,

At first beside and then inside my ear,

I heard a voice with just one verse to sing,

"Awake, awake, awake from slumber you

Who in a dream has crossed the eon's gap,

Without a guiding compass or a map,

And take your place among the happy few."

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem724

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

FIRST NIGHT ALONE

Lying in bed without you

How many days has it been,

Lying in bed beside you?

Over the oceans and back again.

I close my eyes to feel you here,

Knowing now how very dear

You are to me.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem723

Novel Verse Form

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

A LOW DOWN NASTY FUNK

The black men strummed their vocal chaords

and sand their throat guitars,

A low down nasty funk they said

went good with fat cigars.

We danced their blackness through the night

and smoked a light or two,

A low down nasty funk they said

went good with skinny booze.

We tipped our chairs and stacked our drinks

and tumbled out the door,

A low down nasty funk they said

went good with so much more.

The black men sturmmed their vocal chords

and sang their throat guitars,

We slipped that low down nasty funk

and made the morning ours.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem722

Ballad Meter

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage

~ The Daily Poet

BREAD

It's been the two of only us

A double bladed spinning seed

A double headed whirligig

By plane and boat, by train and bus

But now we're home and can't renege

On everyone(t) and every knead

It's been the two of only us

By plane and boat, by train and bus

It's time to find some friends to feed.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem721

Novel Verse Form

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

EMBRACE THE DAY

No sense in turning back the sheets

of time and fetal crawling in;

Throw off the covers, let your feet

embrace the day that's falling in.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem720

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

SONNET ONE SIXTEEN

Be good and learn your William Shakespeare, boy.

Then you can spout off sonnet one sixteen

For all my crooning cronies to enjoy.

It's not the lines, but what lies in between

That you'll be glad you offered them as bait.

You'll surely catch them with your subtle snare

And all the gardened world will swing its gate

In wide eyed wonder at your gleaming flare.

And to your just deserts they'll add a few

Gratuities of grace to nudge you past

The several gauntlets you must ably do

To prove you're really made of what will last.

But for tonight, it's hook your luring tines

On those fourteen iambic pentameter lines.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem719

Shakespearean Sonnet

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

MORTAR

Brick by brick the wall of honor

rises toward the sky.

Balanced on the ledge ascending,

mason, don't you cry.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem718

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet