Dark Poems Anthology #6

HAIKUS FOR KOTO

King Fishers on the lake shore
Seeking sustenance 
Waters flowing clear

Dragonflies and Damselflies 
Darting dramatically
Short lives lived

Lotuses bloom from muddy marshes
Consciousness from filthy minds

Taoists seek gold from basic metals
Eternal life
Inside and out

From mountaintops
The lowest lands can be seen
Wise men meditate here

Stars reflected in a nighttime pool
Kois circle
Fireflies dancing

A channeled chakra 
Moves fluidly through the body
Like quicksilver

Doubt is the Devil itself
It yields entire armies
And stops all creation

Who rides the horse?
Is it the man sitting?
Or the saddle on his butt?

Grasping at straws
We only get
Bad material for sleeping on

Budding cherry blossoms
So sweetly in the air they hang!
Gone too soon

Geisha girls frolicking 
An old man watches
Remembering his youth

I released a swan today
At first, I was hungry
Now, I am full

Bog trodding shoes
Squish musically with each step
Telling a thousand tales

Metal becomes mind
When first wielded by blacksmiths
Then, by warriors

Fortune becomes fraud
The moment
Gold becomes synonymous with pain

A good catch hides between the reeds
Only patience can bring
The fat fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PAINTING BY NUMBERS

Torn between future and past
Present anxiety
Is everybody's problem in
Modern society

Boredom drapes it's dreary web
Upon our dreams come true
Pressure from a torrent's ebb
Eats at us 'til we're blue

"Who could ever understand 
This vision that I've had?"
Is the demand
Of every artist, like a spoiled lad

Excitement found in golden sounds
When audiences cheer
Yet all performers go through rounds
By facing the great fear

A lion's pride inside the mind
Faces any foe
It only takes to be unkind
To deal the fatal blow

Spears and swords towards the beast
Bounce off uselessly
Voices, just to say the least,
Make it turn and flee

Vibrational waves,
Cosmic parade,
Sensational raves,
More bricks to be laid

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PHILOSOPHY OF POETRY

Sacerdotal Socrates
Was impossible to please

Aristotle's arrogance 
Lead to immortal success

Stories made to Plato's glory
Are Atlantic allegory

Euripides and Freud agrees 
We all have incest fantasies

Hippocrates would cure disease
Describing doctor's death decrees

Purists of great Epicurus
Live life much more adventurous

Sophisticated Sophocles 
Made intellectual bullies

Pyramids by Pythagoras
Weren't just for worshiping Horus

Thales theories lead to queries
Seven sages made a series

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A BRIEF DIALOGUE BETWEEN DR.FAUSTUS AND MEPHISTOPHELES

Faust was once a doctor great
But isolation was his fate
So he sat inside his chamber late
'Til he heard a rasping at his gate

"Who disturbs my nightly thinking?
Is it a beggar who's been drinking?
If so, be whence! Your breath is stinking!
I'll answer, my patience is shrinking."

Descending down the corridor
To open up his chamber door
He saw an old man on the floor
In a cape darker than a Moor

He took the old man in to lay
Upon his bed 'til the next day
Assuming he was weakened prey
Surprised when the old man did say:

"Oh, Doctor Faust, I will presume?
You brought me in, pitied my looks
Invited to your sacred room
Which is the dust of moldy books!"

"I let you in," said Doctor Faust,
"Then you insult my humble house?
Why have you snuck in, like a mouse?
I ought to throw you out, you louse!"

The old man quipped: "Don't be so shrill!
Would the good doctor be so vice?
I have been summoned by your will
And now I offer you my price."

"The plague you have been studying
Which, on the locals, takes its toll
An antidote to you, I'll bring
And in return I'll take your soul."

Faust had been working on a cure
Yet nothing killed the plague for sure
So for the life elixir pure
He thought of taking Satan's lure

"I summoned you? In conscious mind
Would never deal with evil kind!
Yet in my chamber, now I find
A demon that would cure the blind!"

"My deal simply speeds up the time
Which you already waste away
Your soul is barely worth a dime
Since you read useless books all day."

Faust of the holy brotherhood
Was torn between what-for he stood
Can one do evil to do good?
Alchemists worth their own salt should

"I'll sacrifice myself to save
The lives of many, for mine gave
I'll wander through the darkness brave
None shall call Doctor Faustus knave!"

Plague was cured for all men yonder
Soul of Faust not set to squander
His voice today still doth wander
In the minds of all who ponder