The Daily Poem

THE CORE OF ME

A thousand million dollars strong,

    More money than I'd ever need,

    And yet somehow I figure greed

Will send a whispering tag-a-long

To coach me in the ways of lust,

    To open up my eyes to more,

    Chauffeur me easy toward the core--

In me and only me to trust.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem790

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

MIRROR IMAGE

And then one day you wake up clean,

    You're double fresh as the morning dew,

Scrubbed and polished to a silver sheen,

    Reflecting all the good that's you.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem785

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

SNAKE CICADA

Molting my old skin,

    I am the raging snake cicada,

Peeling away my thin

    Irrelevant balderdash sonata.

Silence concentrates

    The scream of changing redemption;

Life obliterates

    The living without exception.

Birthing through this grave,

    Extruding what in time I borrow;

Nothing left I hope to save

    Except a fragment of tomorrow.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem782

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

NOTHING

I open up the well

    To draw my images and dreams.

There's nothing much to tell

    It's nothing like they say it seems.

I drop the heavy lid

    To close the awful nothing out.

But still I can't get rid

    Of what the nothing's all about.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem781

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

GOLD GONE MISSING

A miser, a thier, and a gambler

    Went down to the river to pan;

Anticipate the drama,

    Imagine the plot if you can.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem780

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

AS YOU WERE

Gavel me with porcupines and organ pipes.

    Punish me with every single quill.

Rush to judgment all the staunch collective gripes.

    Send me off to where they break the will.

Knowledge does me like a score of wayward whores.

    Every time I settle down they stir.

Oceans of confusion drown my foreign shores.

    Attention all my soldiers, "As you were."

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem777

Quatrain Stanza

Encinitas, California

~ The Daily Poet

THE VACANT VAST SURROUNDINGS

If I should look too close at Consequence,

I'd see that nothing really matters much;

My giant strokes of sweeping Confidence

Add up to little more than a spider's touch.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem776

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

CRACKER JACK LESSONS

Impromptu lessons in humility are cast

Like falling stars from summersaulting skies.

I cracker jack them all to try and make them last,

Remembering how pitiful the prize.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem773

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

APRIL FOURTH'S DAY

Today is April Fourth's Day

    And nothing third will do;

Nothing second, nothing first,

    I'ts an anti-race milieu.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem772

Quatrain

Encinitas, California

~ The Daily Poet

SHRINKING VIOLET

I shrunk myself and all my stuff

    to half my violet size,

And now my house is twice as big

    and so are the filthy flies.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem771

Quatrain

Idyllwild, California

~ The Daily Poet

TWO SMALL WISHES

If I get rolled by a rolling stone,

Hope I don't lie there and die alone.

If I get felled by a falling tree,

Hope someone comes to bury me.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem762

Quatrain

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage

~ The Daily Poet

SOMETHING SLOW TO DANCE TO

I took a sidelong glance into someplace else

And what, good singing sir, do you think I found?

A double-barrel shotgun false on false,

A double-cross of dealings underground.

The chain reacting fuse of coming speed

Kept lighting off itself as it went along,

Devouring my time-lapse growing need

For something slow to dance to like a song.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem759

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

HIDING FROM GOD

Collage my prayers and let them burn in time

Up toward the Center Place where God abides;

Each favor asked, each grace-deleted crime,

Reminding me just who I am that hides.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem756

Quatrain

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

I BROKE HER CHOCOLATE HEART

I broke her chocolate heart,

    Godiva Ghirardelli Dove,

    Her dark and semi-sweetened love,

Yes cracked in half and fell apart.

And now I'm all alone,

    Ghirardelli Dove Godiva,

    And miss her bittersweet saliva,

Her sloppy kisses all my own.

Perhaps she'll take me back,

    Dove Godiva Ghirardelli,

    Spread her love as sweet as jelly

And slide into the sack.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem751

Quatrain Stanza

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL

As far as I can tell we're almost there,

    The answers are accumulating well,

    Technosophy is synchronized and swell,

We're standing up on our electric hair.

Excitedly invited to begin

    Before the obsolescence lobs a doom

    We can't correct with this much wiggle room,

And all the humpty-dumpties tumble in.

So let's get up, and let's get down

    To doing things that can't be done,

    To shining where there is no sun,

To saying things without a sound.

We're bound to see some better days,

    I'll take you there if you take me.

    It's all cracked up to really be

The Tao of Taos, the Way of Ways.

And when we make it, promise me

    We won't come back to earth to quick;

    We'll learn that slight-of-hand-ish trick

And take our sweet eternity.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem750

Quatrain Stanza

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ The Daily Poet

FINAL ANSWER

The answer comes as no surprise,

    It's just as we suspected;

    Everything's connected

And all curled up outside our eyes.

We couldn't find it in our sights,

    Myopic and contracted,

    Our mental fields distracted

For a million sleepless nights.

But then one day we saw the signs

    In metaphor-elastic,

    So simple and fantastic,

All in-the-box-inside-the-lines.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem748

Quatrain Stanza

Idyllwild, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

THE BOOK

Written expressly for NPR's Three-Minute Fiction.  The poem has been submitted and will not be published here until the contest is complete.  Until then, please go to NPR.  You can use the link below.

http://www.npr.org/series/105660765/three-minute-fiction

The poem is composed of 19 four-line stanzas for a total fo 583 words.  The maximum word count for the short story is 600 words.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem747

Quatrain Stanza

Banning, California

JOURNAL: Home

~ The Daily Poet

PINKISH LUMPS OF PUTTY

According to a stellar Harvard study,

    Corroborated recently by Yaler,

Our brains are now just pinkish lumps of putty,

    And likely just as dense in most, but paler.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem742

Quatrain

Encinitas, California

JOURNAL: Mark & Kit's Cottage in Leucadia

~ 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