The Daily Poem

THE DOW OF JONES

The Dow confounding Jones is up again

    I wish I knew the secret of its turns

The money from its fluctuating pen

    Comes flowing in igniting as it burns

Consuming every give and take before

The tide can reach myprofit-taking shore.

I sit and wait not knowing what to do,

    My little raft of temporaries built.

I ledge and cliff my taken breath to view

    The maybe in its plunging promised hilt

Of all-in shining splendor to the brave

Who risk it all on how the waves behave.

Timidity retards my laughing chance,

    Although I feel the magic in its rise,

I can't ignore the shadow in its dance,

    The hidden throns inside its ribboned prize.

The Dow confounding Jones is up again

With money flowing green and golden in.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem598

Venus & Adonis Stanza

Yung Shue Wan, Hong Kong

JOURNAL: Concerto Inn - Lamma Island (2)

~ The Daily Poet

NEW BLOOD MILLENIUM

The sad suspicion sinks their heavy heads

But vodka lifts their eyes enough to see.

The deep depressive urge of unmade beds

That calls the weary workers back to sleep

Is held at bay by anger pushing back,

A flicker in the dark for what they lack.

O come away my dreamless Russian friends,

Your fathers have abandoned you as slaves,

They've taken all the gold to far-off ends

While you have spent your means to gild their graves.

I promise you a life of sweat and tears,

But with new blood you'll thrive a thousand years.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem573

Venus & Adonis Stanza

Moscow, Russian Federation

JOURNAL: Ibis Hotel

Shaved off my beard today. Feels good to have it gone, but strange to see my face again.

~ The Daily Poet

ABANDONED INSTRUMENTS

There's something in the air I can't explain,

A shadow on my sensibility,

A leggy tease of sharp stilettoed feign,

A clamp & sponge industrial reality

The surgeon left in haste to close,

The surgeon left but no one knows.

I look from face to face to find a cause,

But all I see is more of what this is,

The uniform of a surgeon Santa Claus

Who slept the people promised with a kiss,

The instruments digested now are gone,

The instruments they still rely upon.

D. Edgar Lamp

TheDailyPoem572

Venus & Adonis Stanza

St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

JOURNAL: Overnight on the St. Petersburg to Moscow Train

~ The Daily Poet

MAN IN UNIFORM

How fast for raucous love I'd snap transform,

    Held smooth and skillful in my willful skin,

Held rough inside my garish uniform—

    Obliterated clock of paraffin,

So little time to intervene my share,

To pop my plastic lid and take some air.

I only want the you you want me to,

    The trifle present here and now you play.

I want the view you know I view of you,

    To run like thieves on wings of feet away—

Not far I know—thus far I am your dream,

Or so I hope you may just think I seem.

How many are you, trailing like perfume?

    I add the fractions up to something whole;

Some cleavage there across the echoed room

    To keep my breah inside my fractured soul.

A secret shared between two crossing legs

To satisfy the ache my body begs.

A bit of lace unfolding its caress,

    I stitch to what I so repeating want.

I lean against this journey I confess

    As little more this instant than your flaunt

Of what it is you know I need you for,

Of who I am behind this polished door.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 519

Venus & Adonis Stanza

Paris, France

Lat: 48.896, Long: 2.35

JOURNAL: Toulouse to Paris overnight train.

~ The Daily Poet

KIBERA BOY

Kibera out my railway window calls,

    Its million souls in catacombs of tin,

The faces shifting up from merchant stalls

    To look but not entirely to learn

Just who it is that rides along the rail

With a breathless eye inside this serpent's tail.

A boy of six in leaning nonchalance

    Engages me with an instant lifted hand,

The faintest smile as if to beg of Chance

    Just once a small reprieve to running stand

Inside this passing thing that moves like glass

But offers up no clear through calculus.

I am that boy and he is me I think,

    Together in this slip of speed and steel;

His face is mine all questioned black with ink,

    My soul is his erasing what is real.

I lift my hand to wave and then its gone.

But in my heart, connected now, we run.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 479

Venus & Adonis Stanza

Nairobi, Kenya

Lat: Long:

THE SADNESS CURE

The tower of the many grows and grows

   Within the embryonic optic cup

A vision rooting in down greening rows

   Of future harvests climbing up and up

Each man a neuron passing one to one

The focused notion-pulse electron gun.

The trigger-happy clan of humankind

   Bombasts each newly opened virgin eye

With quick traditions pointedly designed

  To sop the tears before they start to cry

Heroic leaps to find the sadness cure

Results are inconclusive, premature.

But R&D with algorithmic speed

   Is shooting through the obstacles of fate

Divining pairs of categoric need

   And soon its valiant quest to satiate

Will take us all to fields of unity

Computing peace with sweet impunity.

written in Orlando, Florida

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Venus & Adonis Stanza)

SECOND SKIN

I've now been watching someone else's life

   For twenty years inside my living space.

I see the image streaming from his cam

   Attached by plastic straps beside his face.

I eaves-and-eye-drop every move he makes

Enchanted by the chances that he takes.

I've been disabled now for eighteen years;

   I get my meals-on-wheels at my front door.

My lawyer blames the LifeCam engineers

   My doctor hasn't seen this thing before

Will treat it as he would an OCD

But all the pills I take aren't helping me.

For now I sleep and wake in sync with him,

   His gallivanting generosity's my own.

They're sending SecondSkin by EpiSym

   For free, since I've become an LC-Clone.

My life with him is just about to start;

Together skin for skin and part for part.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Venus & Adonis Stanza)

PROTECTION

Protection is the platinum I crave,

   To stay the grief and chain the beasts of pain;

And if robust enough, to misbehave

   Without a consequence to entertain;

Immunity from any poor result;

A place to thumb my nose as I exult.

If only pure impunity were mine,

   A Teflon coating thick and slick as ice

That no contrived suspicion could malign,

   No finger pointing out some minor vice,

But free & clear and sailing through the fray,

I’d glide the gauntlet’s maze like child's play.

Indemnify me, mollify me, stage

   A coup d'état before they pick the lock

Of my encrypted antiviral cage.

   Let none approach me, no one knock

Or tap or tamper with my crystal calm,

No agitator cockle my aplomb.

Protection is the platinum I choose

   To thwart the silver rounds of circumstance,

That will not ever fail to always lose

   While I outwit the sloppy rules of chance.

I’ll flirt with every game that can be swayed,

Completely safe within my masquerade.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Venus & Adonis Stanza)