Parallel
Reality is relative and specific
To each participant just as each perceives it
Bright and beatific hellish and horrific
An elastic state which is as one believes it
To be
So your reality is unreality
To me
Indeed we live in parallel realities
You there in your dimension and I here in mine
While at the same time there are billions more of these
Glorious unbearable demonic divine
Yet each like its own star in a grand galaxy
We see each other sparkle in propinquity
And other galaxies to great infinity
I sparkle you this greeting across this fleeting
Moment bridging time and space from my to your place
I see you sparkle back a smile and know
We are parallel wherever we go
Curling Up With Cats
The cats are asleep curled up in chairs
I curl up in mine and they in theirs
And no one has bothered us today
Just as we like (may it stay that way)
The cleaning lady comes tomorrow
(A cleaning lady! Imagine that)
I inherited an extra cat
Friends give me things or let me borrow
Whatever I need: thanks be to God
People are reading my poetry
In faraway places across the sea
And though it is strange and I am odd
Some seem very fond of it and of me
The cats are asleep but I will be
Awake for awhile before I sleep
To savor the unaccustomed sight
Of hope as it dawns on me tonight
A light which is warm and soft and deep
Beckons me join in the cosmic dance
For fate has decided to take a chance
On poetry spelled L - A - N - C - E
Curling up with cats at Studio Lance
Grandpa!
My Grandpa wasn't my grandfather
Whereas one who was wouldn't bother
While the other one was decades dead
And so I had Chief Graham instead
It was "national security"
My father said which kept him from me
So when I appeared on CBS
Who was proudest of me? You can guess
I made books for him even back then
As a troubled child but he died when
I had turned thirteen because he was
The angel of my childhood to cause
Me to know what it felt like to be
One who is loved and I hope to see
This best man this lost boy ever knew
Who loved me unconditionally
Chief Al W. Graham again
In the next world but until I do:
Grandpa! I'm still making books for you
Handyman Keep Your Hands to Yourself
A hobo handyman a tiny tyrant
Blew in on the wind a tumbleweed my way
As fixed in mind as in form itinerant
To work for free but I could not afford it
To suck my soul away while I ignored it
And I had to let him go for good today
Hobo handyman your handymanity
Is just not worth your unworthy vanity
On the one hand you preach at me and you say
That I am no Christian at least not like you
While on the other hand you ask about sex
Well go to hell alone whatever you do
Stay well the hell away from my house and me
Keep the stink of your hobo handyman hex
Far from me and keep your hypocrisy too
My soul and faith are mine nor can you budge me
How dare you order me about and judge me
O Lord from fundamentalists and handymen
Especially both in one save us now and then
As the Sun Rises
So many pages through so many years
Of my life's ages through laughter and tears
Phases and stages of hopes and of fears
Waxing and waning cycling with the moon
Just out of reach and the sun rising soon
Stones on the beach ride the tide to my hand
I hold them and begin to understand
Nothing is in vain nothing is wasted
Each sight I've seen each flavor I've tasted
Bittersweet savored becomes part of me
Everything I live becomes poetry
Love on my lips curls a smile makes me say
I'm happy to be here glad just to be
My life is as it is this is my way
Fresh flavors to taste and new sights to see
As the sun rises on a fresh new day
Familiar Company
Observed as anorexic seen as socialist
Survivor of abuse yet still an optimist
Because it would have been worse had I known my dad
The Bush administration has me on their list
To me my greatest literary feat so far
Liberal Lutheran existentialist lad
And overall a human being as you are
Some good some mediocre blended with the bad
Intelligence has been fun if rather lonely
Just be glad this life was mine not the one you had
Now dried-up and alone I see it is only
Me
But I remain and in familiar company
Forever Free
I would rather be alone than wrongly paired
As I have been before with one who cared
But little if she ever cared at all
Far better in my solitude to be
A leaf flying free on the wind of the fall
Complete in perfect singularity
With no one yet with everyone on earth
If I know loss I also know new love
And as I know death I also know new birth
The grave beneath my feet the sky above
Now lifts my heart so high that I can see
The grave beneath outgrown a size too small
And my heart forever young forever free
Invites you soar along here by my side
The sun itself our groom the moon our bride
Tube a Tuba
A tube a tuba toothpaste
A train a thought in vain
Wasted through unseemly haste
To squeeze away the stain
Ran off the rails with madness
While toothless tuba-mouth
Oom-pah-pah-ing with gladness
Laughed roses from the south
Squeeze not your tuba top-down
Lest toothpaste never come
Before you see a cop frown
Then feel his kettledrum-
Stick beat dissatisfaction
Behind the lower brass
Squeeze in an upward action
Or take it in the ass
To Care and Care Not
A shadow fell between my friend and me
So dark so cold no light nor warmth between
Could pass one to the other either way
Where once we two had been as family
A wall impenetrable though unseen
Rose to divide between as night from day
An absence and a presence equally
A two-faced wraith which haunts us everywhere
It prisons us that neither one is free
From grave-deep trench and head-high thorny hedge
As love and hate dance on this razor's edge
The more we care not is the more we care
My Religion is Kindness
My poems are written as therapy
I send them to my doctor every day
Only he knows what might be wrong with me
Or right so it is not for me to say
I just know I like to write and drink tea
And I hope that handyman stays away
Since he was altogether too handy
I did all the work myself anyway
But my tenants could crush him easily
Defending their landlord muscularly
I may be strange yet there are still stranger
People out there who cannot even write
I use my charm to stay out of danger
As the angels watch over me all night
I am a blend of English and German
Cultures and something of a hothouse flower
An extremely curious Lutheran
And getting more curious by the hour
But never mind that now I talk too much
Leave it at this as the finishing touch:
"My religion is kindness"
The Dalai Lama said
The cruel live in blindness
I will be kind instead
Rose Red
A rose is blooming in my teacup here
In front of me at Friday midnight where
An hour ago red steam curled up instead
Red petals unfold while I watch them near
The place my mother fell and hit her head
I think that rose knows just what happened there
The blood of life at midnight still runs red
My mother smiles at noon from heaven now
Where noon is midnight here as time stands still
The pieces all fit together somehow
The rose my mother and I and we will
Bloom red nor can death make these petals fall
But to the mystic rain which washes all
Refreshing the living raising the dead
The world rose red within my cup tonight
The rain like fireworks blooming into light
This Gift We Live
Out of the silence the shadowed ones speak
Their breath like starlight on this autumn breeze
Hear if you listen and find if you seek
Those sounds which make the strong weak in the knees
Which simply cannot be and yet which are
Defying sense and sensibility
From past our world beyond our yellow star
In words soft sound and sensible to me
I hear them charge us cherish life on earth
Enjoy and not destroy our fragile sea
Embrace and not deface our soft blue sky
Accept this gift we live and give our best
It still is not too late but we must try
They whisper urgently to me and you
The hour is late but too great is this test
That we should fail through failure of desire
Caring so little for life that we die
The death of earth by water air by fire
I want to live and I hope you do too
Broken: Free
Light of always bright and only
Rain to wash the darkness away
Light the night tonight for lonely
Ones who await the break of day
Under their mushroom clouds of fear
Light of always in your rising
Forget us not in darkness here
You who so enjoy surprising
Those who believe but what they see
Skeptical and enterprising
Tonight make unseen things appear
Light of always bright and only
Rain to wash the darkness away
Spiraling specificity
Of highest purest noblest best
As I await the break of day
From east across the night to west
Come shine your always light on me
Shine me into eternity
Fulfill the promise of the quest
Forget me not and let me be
One whom the truth has broken: free
Rind of Reality
Nothing is as it seems
Our eyes can see but the
Rind of reality
As mottled by moonbeams
This surface which you see
Is but the crust of me
While the real is what the
Eye may never discern
One must look deep to learn
Things are but as in dreams
Which is not to say they do not exist
Indeed they exist in multiple forms
But only to say that one can resist
The dullness which would dominate our days
Trying to conform to commonday norms
Like those who see things as they seem always
Reflection
Pinpoint puncture in time and space
Manifold manifestation
Of compound reality in
Joyful juncture of life and grace
A multifoliate mirror
A possible explanation
For what is about to begin
Where in the window comes a face
And the image becomes clearer
If only to shatter again
And so it goes at this window
So polished that even I shine
Seeing both sides above below
With all the layers peeled away
Duty delight despair disdain
A thousand thousand times a day
And the face in the mirror knows
What goes will come as what comes goes
The face in the mirror is mine
But the reflection is divine
Smokey Joe the Extra Cat
Smokey Joe the extra cat bumps me with his head
Offering an ear to kiss which I freely do
As he peers out the window from the sofa's back
This cat I inherited was once filled with dread
Now he drinks his water from the tap in the loo
As those who live here know there is nothing we lack
So Smokey Joe the extra cat is settling in
No more cold nights for him he sleeps inside instead
Now as the best days of his curious life begin
I see that he has found what he was searching for
Smokey Joe you are the extra cat no more
As the Night Gives to the Day
You are every song I sing
My poems are all for you
Whether you know it or not
All I write and all I do
Is for you no matter what
Anybody else may say
Count the countless stars which shine
And you count one dream come true
All the sky is yours and mine
For as you give I give too
As the night gives to the day
Nothing less than everything
You are every song I sing
Harvest Moon of Saturday
When moonlit magic shines my way
It feeds my soul and makes me smile
The harvest moon of Saturday
Is something to savor awhile
As I already feel its light
On this bright blazing afternoon
Here on Thursday before the night
Has fallen yet: but night falls soon
And when night falls then I will rise
When moonlit magic shines my way
I dance beneath the waxing moon
And rise with it through velvet skies
Reflecting on reflected grace
Two rovers riding destiny
We bloom full-blown on Saturday
When we reveal ourselves full-face
Ascended to our rightful place
My friend the harvest moon and me
The Man in the Moon
I wander alone at the midnight hour
And see the face of the man in the moon
Who while saying nothing sees everything
Since he says nothing I might as well sing
At least these words if you make up the tune
Because my heart feels like a blooming flower
It waxed with the moon now it opens bright
To taste the magic in the air tonight
Which affects the cycles affects the tides
As well as everyone and me besides
I study the face of the moon and see
That we are different in many ways
He has the gift of patience unlike me
But I agree with how he spends his days
And when I go rambling he comes along
Over my shoulder my friend in the sky
I think he likes it when I sing a song
About how it would be if I could fly
He surely thinks flying is no big thing
But he just smiles and shines on while I sing
I wander alone at the midnight hour
And see the face of the man in the moon
Who while saying nothing sees everything
Since he says nothing I might as well sing
At least these words if you make up the tune
Fresh-Baked and Only for Today
There is a moment more or less
In which right when I first wake up
I find it clarifying to
Begin my day from nothingness
Remembering that all I do
For good or ill to curse or bless
Find new love or kiss and make up
Is only mine to choose and then
Proceeds the somethingness of when
Fresh-baked and only for today
Alone unfettered by some stress
From overnight to overstay
Since new days ought to be brand new
Let each unfold in its own way
Without the complications of
The preconceived: less fear more love
Reality's Ledge
Now in this moment between grace and sin
Here at the meeting place of night and day
Where light and dark play teeter-totter in
Their equipoise I see a middle way
Before the day can end or night begin
Here at the very tip of time I stand
A middleman between two worlds am I
Dark in my left and light in my right hand
The black and white of only one grey sky
As of one world where kiss the sea and land
Converging in our tandem-beating hearts
Make love to me on reality's ledge
In perfect balance as the magic starts
Come dance with me upon the razor's edge
Where we will glide between the to and fro
The universe will make it worth our while
Between two ways the shadow of a smile
Is how you know that now you really know
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMVII
