The Daily Poem

SING THIS BRIGHTER DAY

The last time I was here there were no towns,

The only things in sight were stony mounds,

Those clever bunkers built to look like wells,

Each one surrounded by those "sacred" bells.

The Boor Jees must have figured out the rouse

And rained a thousand tons of ground abuse.

But now these towers glisten in the sun

As if no deed of hate was ever done.

The smiling statues dance in fountain spray,

And I, from a window, sing this brighter day.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem710

Rhyming Couplets

Lemoore, California

Lat: Long:

JOURNAL: Ellie's House

~ The Daily Poet

I CHING U CHING

When wisdom hides and all else fails,

Just toss three pennies heads or tails,

Perfor some philosophic trick

With a bit of slick arithmetic,

Get wowed and Taoed by guru-speak;

You'll find your way, no need to seek.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem697

Rhyming Couplets

Bellingham, Washington

Lat: Long:

JOURNALAL: M/V Matanuska, Cabin 20B (1st Night)

~ The Daily Poet

TO CHOOSE A QUEEN

The moon was rising full

On thirteen cows and a bull.

The bull surveyed the scene,

Commenced to choose a queen

By asking each to answer

How deft he was a dancer,

How prime a peerless prancer,

From Capricorn to Cancer,

From east to west and over

The Seven Fields of Clover.

The cows looked up from eating

While he went on repeating

How they should all be truful,

Consider just how youthful,

How strong and clearly bullish,

How wise and seldom foolish,

How long he'd studied Taurus

And the great Tyrannosaurus,

To learn the finer points

Of how to jive his joints.

They surely would adore him

As no one else before him.

And if they watched him closely

They'd find that he was mostly

A neo classic bovid,

A true erotic Ovid.

The cows went back to eating

As he went on repeating

Until his topic wandered,

His energies all squandered,

Too tired now for dancing,

For pirouetted prancing,

And drifted off to snoring,

While silently adoring,

As the moon was setting full,

On thirteen queens and their bull.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem693

Rhyming Couplets

Oak Harbor, Washington

Lat: 48' 17.6" N, Long: 122' 38.6" W

JOURNAL: Ivan & Virginia Lathrop's House

~ The Daily Poet

YOU JUST GO ON

The breath comes in, the breath goes out,

And until it stops you kick about.

Don't think to quit, don't even try;

You just go on until you die.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem692

Rhyming Couplets

Oak Harbor, Washington

Lat: 48' 17.6" N, Long: 122' 38.6" W

JOURNAL: Ivan & Virginia Lathrop's House

~ The Daily Poet

PUPPY LOVE

I really didn't want her but she came,

The puppy on my doorstep with a name.

I picked her up and carried her inside.

She licked my face until I nearly cried.

I felt more love than I had known in years.

If only I could love without these fears,

If only for a day believe again

That someone loves me now and without end.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem684

Rhyming Couplets

Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

Lat: Long:

JOURNAL: Hyatt Place Waikiki

~ The Daily Poet

A TEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCE

It's just a little tragic dance,

A temporary circumstance;

A few more turns around the sun,

Then count it down from ten from one

And we'll start up again, you'll see,

Our briefly paused eternity.

D. Edgar Lamp

At Sea, crossing the equator, bound for Hawaii

Lat: Long:

JOURNAL: Ocean Princess (5th Night)

~ The Daily Poet

MIDDLE BUNNY

I want to give my love & money

Easy sweet like a be-by-bunny.

I've got so much but give so little

Sitting here in the me-my-middle.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem643

Rhyming Couplets

Cairns, Australia

JOURNAL: Ocean Princess (17th Night)

~ The Daily Poet

VANISHING POINT

It's muscle, fat and skin,

That is what I'm in.

But where's that vanishing point

To slip me out of joint,

Where rocking starts to roll,

Where body flips to soul?

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem631

Rhyming Couplets

Gulf of Thailand

JOURNAL: Ocean Princess (5th Night)

~ The Daily Poet

BLACK JACK LONGITUDE

Three hundred sixty paths to choose,

Each with the option to win or lose,

Each with a branching of forks to play,

Lunar by night and solar by day,

Wind from the storm and waves from the sea,

Drum of the dealer for marching us free.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem617

Rhyming Couplets

Yung Shue Wan, Hong Kong

JOURNAL: concerto Inn - Lamma Island (21)

~ The Daily Poet

G.R.I.N.

Pause for a moment and think.

Wasn't it us on the brink?

Wasn't it all out of joint?

How did we get to this point,

Sitting all sassy and fat,

On a grin of a Cheshire Cat?

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem613

Rhyming Couplets

Yung Shue Wan, Hong Kong

JOURNAL: Concerto Inn - Lamma Island (17)

~ The Daily Poet

AS SOON AS NOON

Ignore the second-guessing doubts

The hollow What's-It-All-Abouts

And just get down to what it is.

Pick your poison, add some fizz,

Tip it back with one quick shot,

Give it all the jazz you've got.

Don't erase the scribbled drafts,

Lose the tears and find the laughs.

The day you die I'll sing and dance;

You did your thing, you took your chance.

It's done and gone and that's OK,

You knew I knew you couldn't stay.

I'll see you there as soon as noon.

Save me a seat and a silver spoon.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoems606

Rhyming Couplets

Yung Shue Wan, Hong Kong

JOURNAL: Concerto Inn - Lamma Island (10)

~ The Daily Poet

RAT ON BAT

Autocratic rabid rat

Took the Acro from the bat

Ate its food and drank its beer

Sniffed its nose and bit its ear

Both went down to kingdom come

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem596

Rhyming Couplets

Shen Zhen, China

JOURNAL: Maple Leaf Hotel

~ The Daily Poet

STADIUM GAME

The players in the stadium are all the same;

They elbow up to see some action in the game.

Their dream to wrestle past the final screaming stretch

And turn the upside tables down the bettors's bench,

To glory in the moment lost in winning's flame

To hear a million people chant their name.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem579

Rhyming Hexameter Couplets

JOURNAL: MOSCOW-BEIJING TRAIN (6)

Mongolia is high country. Am altimeter has been reading between 1200 - 1500 meters all day...

~ The Daily Poet

EGG SLICE COLLAGE

Fertility of thought

Is maybe so & maybe not.

The mind well-scissored snips

The image maps of different trips

Proliferates the ties

Conjoining vagrant alibies

Between unlikely things

Like palace guards & apron strings

And what-if"s grinning might

Is all that's left that may be right.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem568

Rhyming Couplets

Stockholm, Sweden

JOURNAL: Overnight on Viking Lines Ferry "Gabriella" from Stockholm to Helsinki (a 5-star cabin on the Captain's Deck).

~ The Daily Poet

INSIDE JERICHO

He tried to keep the people in

With the wall he built in East Berlin.

But everybody wanted out

Graffiti march & hammer shout.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem566

Rhyming Couplets

Berlin, Germany

JOURNAL: Cabinn Scandinavia

(the best little 2-star hotel we've seen)

~ The Daily Poet

HOPE, FEAR & FREEDOM

I hope because I cannot see

The things I know with certainty.

I fear because the dark is real,

And evil lurks in things I feel.

I'm free within God's vast constraints,

Who wound the clock & bent the space.

His life for ours He freely gave,

Then rose to glory from the grave.

It is through this reality

That we enjoy eternity;

Not out in some Nirvana-Land,

But here & now within His hand;

Enjoying Him who gave us breath,

And saved us from our certain death.

Written in response to Kazantzakis'

concept of "The Cretan Glance."

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem556

Rhyming Couplets

Heraklion, Crete

JOURNAL: Kastro Hotel

~ The Daily Poet

GOLD FROM A GRECIAN GALLEON

We nickeled & dimed our way up to the Iron Castle,

And underneath a stone we found the scarlet tassel.

We pulled the tassel up and with it came the treasure

Of a chest encrusted deep with gems in shining splendor.

Inside we found a thousand heavy gold medallions,

A pirate's hoarded take from an ancient Grecian galleon.

It took a year to smuggle out those precious ingots.

We mailed them home all uninsured like little trinkets.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem549

Rhyming Couplets

Serres, Greece

JOURNAL: Agnantio Hotel Spa

~ The Daily Poet

AFTER HOURS

In feminine composure like the night,

On slender lily hips of creamy white,

Your glass the empty nest of a silent sea,

The wine absorbed in the mental nebulae,

I left you feather sunk in a leather chair,

The moon & stars all fingered thru your hair.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 507

Rhyming Couplets

Lisbon, Portugal

Lat: Long:

JOURNAL: Hotel Lisboa Tejo

~ The Daily Poet

OUR MOTTO

Love, Grace, Compassion, Forgiveness,

This is our motto, our purpose, our business.

Love comes first but stays to the end,

Makes everyone family,everyone friend.

Grace is the favor of God that we need,

It grows in our hearts like a little seed.

Compassion is kind and gentle and fair,

No matter who, no matter where.

Forgiveness will cover the mad and the mean,

Like new coats of paint all shiny and clean.

Love, Grace, Compassion, Forgiveness,

This is our motto, our purpose, our business.

Written expressly for the children of

Human Factor Leadership Academy

on the occasion of our visit.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 492

Rhyming Couplets

Akatsi, Ghana

Lat: 6.13, Long: 0.80

MORE SORRY THAN OTHER MALES

That's a very fine line to negotiate,

A horny old cape to navigate.

I wish you well as often as I've

Been caught in that double connive.

The females it seems will agree,

That something they want has been missing that we

Could give them if only we'd stoop to confess

Our pitiful lack of finesse.

But why tell me why they keep running away

On fine trogan stallions who rarely convey

How grateful they are for a galloping ride,

Then buck 'em and toss 'em aside.

Written expressly for Jim Babwe

in response to his poem "HOW I PLAN TO WIN..."

from his comment under  The Daily Poem - 468.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 488

Rhyming Couplets

Accra, Ghana

Lat: 5.56, Long: - 0.20