BIRTHDAY POEM, For You, Etta

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 162,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.
BIRTHDAY POEM.
For You, Etta

Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye,
Since dawn of humanity, since time immemorial,
Playwrights and poets have often repeated,
Proclaimed similar sentiment and theme!

I lay no claim to talent equal to theirs.





I write pages, and wish today,
To add another chapter, a modest contribution,
To the big-book history of love
I want my verse to be a part of this tradition.

Darling, I believe you have already learned
What it is like to hurry home
Hoping to lean on the one you adore
Instead to find an empty room, waiting and waiting?

Love, shall we deny it when it visits?

Shall we not take what we are given?

In the day light, or beneath the stars,
However daily business overwhelms the hours,
Love; there is only love, all else unreal.

What is life, what more than being near you?

Oh! That I have been given to you and you to me,
How sacred the exchange, how holy the alliance!

PADMA, You May Laugh at Me

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.
PADMA,
You May Laugh At Me*,
A Poem Inspired by T. Wijaya,


Padma, you may have left me,
But the blanket on our bed remains.

Sometimes from out in the street
I hear chatter; I run to the window,
Open the drapes,
Look from our second-story flat,
And I see children.
Because the event more or less reoccurs daily,
At intervals, fifteen minutes before the ninth hour,
I imagine the youngsters are students,
Who hurry, hasten, not to be late for school.

The sound runs major then scales to minor,
But before too long it returns, again, to loudness.

Beneath its ebb and upward flow,
Within the clamors' swirling expansion and contraction,
Underneath it all, I swear to it, darling, I swear,
I very clearly perceive,
Throughout the commotion, a young, collective voice.

In my mind the cacophony
Amounts to no mere happenstance of noisy play,
But is itself poetry,
It seems to capture a lyrical composition.

It is as if the youngsters have gained access,
Know the words and meter of my heart’s declaration.

I feel the children have taken my verse
And boldly recite it for the public.

Their voice expresses every splendid feeling and thought,
I hear my love for you said aloud with excellence,
A match, as though the poet himself read the lines.



2.


Padma, think how strange it seems, paradoxical when
These self-same students learn in classroom,
And study day-long the language of science,
Yet my own textbook teaches at odds;
It stands against current curriculum, revealing solely
Great passion and affection, a knowledge that
No everyday, timely attendance might bring to reason.

No matter the hours, whatever time devoted to lessons,
No amount of homework or tutorial reduces my soul,
Its lyric, to easy, algebraic, chalk–board formulation.

I am reminded of how hapless the task,
Attempting to find reason, to understand
All the marvelous abundance God bestows,
Although we may not merit, no way deserve
His grace, the bounty which freely befalls us.

Padma, you may laugh at me, but when I awaken
I pretend to percolate coffee for you,
Or I imagine that I receive your telephone call,
Your voice at the other end, you,
No longer at business, far away, but here now,
The distance between us breached,
The gap closed, and that you have called to tell me
You are safe and have arrived home.

My emotions flutter when I hear your vocal timbre.

Padma, my dreams of you are constant,
And possess warmth and overall good feeling.



3.


Consider it. Once I recount my story,
The story about you,
You the woman, who has abandoned me,
Would anyone accept this tale?

Suppose we were to search the whole wide world,
Would we find one, one single person,
Who concludes, who believes,
If even for a moment, that I am a happy man?

Padma, I do not regret a single day.
My thoughts of you, our life together, remain indelible.
And when you promised heaven and earth to me,
Those moments in which you had sworn
And ardently acclaimed your love for me,
My remembrance of them, carry me to joy,
To boundless fervor and contentment,
They fire within my mind’s eye.

Padma, a big smile inhabits my face.



4.


Remember the tree I planted in our garden?
Its fruit has become property of another,
And each and every time I think over our life,
The every second we spent together,
I find myself sitting at the desk to write,
As if enthralled by some faery power and driven,
Hoping to explain how I trust every word you said,
Wishing to relate the splendid images,
The visceral weight, and the deep compulsion,
To relive the time, our hand was in hand, and
We were held together, our fingers interlocked.

Padma, in endless run of sentence after sentence,
My life returns to the great day, the glory chapters,
Which comprise the big book of our love,
How thrilled I am to have been at your side!

Padma, in your heart my love for you may be dead.
But each day I rise again in that blue room,
That blue bedroom, where we started the day,
Each day I wake to the same blue sky,
Which houses our Lord, to Him I pray.
I ask for nothing, only His Will for you, for me, today.

Padma, my lovely light, you, the dream which floods
Across this room, down upon the key board,
And drives my fingers to write the length,
-- Oh, the grand expanse over which my bosom races --
No mere chimera, no flight of fancy,
But real as is the space between earth’s continents,
My ardency covers distance,
Real as the miles, which total our globe’s circumference.



5.


Do not fear me; do not fear this verse.

Padma, listen not to friends,
Those who claim misgivings,
Who believe I have taken leave of my senses,
That my ultimate design may want best for you.

You know that is not the case.

Padma, I write in the moment,
And, as you already know,
This instant sums all a human may possess,
We own but this one day, alone,
Still I mean every word I say for the ages,
I want world and posterity to learn.

Oh what a lucky man I have been.
My good fortune, the gratitude I feel
For loving you and having made your acquaintance!


*The Indonesian Poet, T. Wijaya's original title for this poem was RATNA, You May Laugh at Me. I kept the subtitle, but changed the name of the woman to whom the poem is addressed to PADMA. I do not know the Indonesian language and have relied solely on a rough translation into English provided in the original reading of the poem, which was a YouTube upload. I have used his verse as a launch pad for my own. I doubt there is any similarity between his and mine own meaning and sentiment. Yet I must acknowledge how his reading and presentation of the poem had reached across a chasm. No matter how far away its geographic and idiomatic expression, it touched my heart.

CATULLUS POEM 5, An Adaptation of an Ancient Roman Love Poem

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.

CATULLUS POEM 5,
An Adaptation of an Ancient Love Poem


I am here to repeat ancient wisdom:

What do we care what the joyless say?
They should get lost, all of them!

Once our tiny, brief light is pinched out,
There be no night, like that everlasting night,
When earth, it replaces heaven.





So let’s kiss, and let’s kiss again.
Let’s kiss a thousand times, and, then,
Let’s do it all over again, those kisses.

How many? How many? How many?
How many, you say?

Let’s not number our kisses.
There are people with evil eyes,
Workers of black magic,
Who would wish to bewitch us.

They should not know how many.

CATTULUS POEM 58, An Adaptation of an Ancient Roman Love Lyric

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.

CATULLUS POEM 58,
An Adaptation of an Ancient Roman Love Lyric


Johnny! It’s Lesbia*, our Lesbia,
That Lesbia, the girl, Stanley loved,
Loved more than self and all he calls his own,
Now at the Great Hall, Chicago, Union Station,
Up and down the polished marble floors,
She goes high-heeled, black boots,
Sports a short skirt, and an open blouse.
Corn, she husks corn,
For every last one of them,
For any spoiled son of Lincoln with a dollar in his pocket.

*Lesbia was the name of Catullus’ lover, the woman to whom he addressed his poetry. Her real name was probably Clodia. He did not mean her name to designate any kind of sexual sexual preference.

Carmen 58 (in Latin by CATULLUS)

Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa.
illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.

FISH STORY, A Whopper of a Tale

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.

FISH STORY,
A Whopper of a Tale


I imagine that I must have surprised you,
What with your waiting game, your sport,
Exhausting me with your angler’s skill,
You having had me hooked, long, on the line,
It was the lure, you,
I swallowed you whole.





I had not seen the great barb nestled in the fly,
Your beauty, I had become prey to it.
You must have realized, you must have known,
How beautiful you seemed to me,
How you dazzled, your shimmer, it fooled me,
And I ate you right to the lead sinker.

I was your catch.

I believed every thing you said.

Who might have divined it?
Given the great tensile strength of your nylon-reel wire,
Hard to phantom that I could break it;
But I took a deep dive toward bottom,
Then I broke surface with a five-foot leap above water.
A loud snap announced how taut had grown the tension,
Then at once boat and bait had lost all connection.

Who would have envisioned it?
My swimming with that hook still puncturing my mouth,
Your fisherman’s string, its segment,
It still runs along side me for at least a yard.

My injury, it hurt me, and I shall have to bear
Its scar, the remnants of this encounter for life,
But I have set myself at liberty, yes,
Free to travel world’s grand and open ocean seas.

And may I ask, again, take a moment, please, consider,
Who would ever believe my, this fish story!

But it is true; I broke the line.
I have broken from you.

OH CHICAGO! Suite White City

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.
OH CHICAGO!
Suite White City,
February 15, 2012, Rewrite


Chicago, I see you,
Though to be there, I must recover scenes,
Which now are very long ago, and what I share, here,
May be more dream, fiction, than actual historical event.





My life enfolds in pictures,
And revelry takes me from present-day circumstance,
The computer's screen and the key pad, to,
To lake-front parking, a lover’s lane,
Way down at east end of Foster Avenue,
At the time, I date the mother of my future son,
(It was early evening)
That woman with me is to become my first,
My one, my only wife, though
From her today I count over two decades, divorced.

We heard a galloping, thrashing noise,
And when we looked over the dashboard
And out the windshield, we saw a man.
He came from within the bushes,
A stranger, his demeanor was mad,
And mayhem seemed his intent.
Clenched by two fists,
He held a great length of metal rod, a gaffing hook,
Then, from a big, an over-the-shoulder swing, bang!
He punctured the hood on my Dad’s white Chevrolet,
Which had been a brand-new,1960, four-door, hard-top.

We survived the attack,
Intact, secure behind the doors and car in reverse,
We were lucky, I guess.



2.


I remember the time in the high rise, near North Side,
Up on the 18th floor, where my buddy and I,
We knew this cop, yes, she was fine.
Oh my, Chicago, I remember her, the fond delight!
I liked the way she let her 9MM sleep with us.
(She placed it under the pillow.)
And her blues, her uniform with its badges,
And her leather belt and boots, whether she wore them,
Or when they were thrown, scattered and heaped.
A pile of clothes and accessories,
Her undergarments accented the top of the jumble;
I need not close my eyes to picture it.

The ensemble looked good at the bottom of the bed,
Piled-up on the rug of the bedroom floor.

Later, in the back seat of a Chicago,
Blue and white police cruiser,
I joined the convergence, while she drove,
And her partner sat shotgun, chasing the culprit,
All sirens and beacons blazing,
Down the back alleys, behind the bungalows, fast, 30mph,
Galvanized cans crashing, their lids off,
Flying – dare I say it – like saucers,
Garbage was everywhere all over the concrete.



3.


River View, the amusement park, sat down the block
From my first high school, its Ferris Wheel dominated
That side of the North Branch of the Chicago River.
Readers, please, excuse the free thinking.
I leap here and hope to attain an insight and meaning,
Back to the time in 1893,
The year my great grandfather, John,
Came the one hundred miles from La Salle, Illinois,
To Chicago, he wanted to see the lights, the World's Fair,
The white city, magic, and when he returned, home,
He told tales about the town on Lake Michigan,
How great its marvels twenty-years after the Fire.

He, my great grandfather, he returned home,
Home to the dark of the Illinois River valley,
To gas-lit streets, to a wife and children,
Who lit the wicks of single candles
Or kerosene, hurricane lamps to climb
The step to their bedrooms at night.

He, my great grandfather, he returned home,
Home to the dark of the Illinois River valley,
To gas-lit streets, to a wife and children,
Who lit the wicks of single candles
Or kerosene, hurricane lamps to climb
The step to their bedrooms at night.

He, my great grandfather, he returned home,
Home to the dark of the Illinois River valley,
To gas-lit streets, to a wife and children,
Who lit the wicks of single candles
Or kerosene, hurricane lamps to climb
The step to their bedrooms at night. .
When he told the family about alternating current,
Chicago ablaze in the middle of the night,
He ignited in my grandmother's lust, she wanted a part,
She sought the grandeur; She was no longer happy at home,
What darkness, the narrow, a woman’s common lot,
The drudgery of hand laundry, the knowledge that,
As she often had openly lamented,
“Yes, I was born too soon."

No easy task, ironing the household’s attire
With an implement heated atop a wood-fired stove,
Early to bed, early to arise, the great bore,
Small town life, it was said she would bed the devil
-- And many claimed she had -- she wanted out, escape.
She married my grandfather, an itinerant painter,
Who went from town to town painting church murals.

And following the grand cliche,
Grandpa drank his liquor as others might milk from a jar.
And he added to his cocktail’s already heady mix,
The family’s romance says, he had bad habit,
He moistened the stylist between his lips;
And we know, the paint those days had lead for its base.

Her husband, my grandfather promised my grandmother
Life, incandescent, excitement, magic,
And the possibility of dreams come true,
Right there on the flat lands off the shore of the Lake.
Remember, the new town rose up from the old,
Up from the ashes, why, it was a resurrection!

Please! Do not tell me there was not real truth to the story,
Had not the Whites been rescued? Was it not a miracle?
They had escaped from the Indians,
The massacre at Fort Dearborn.

My grandmother sought energy, electric, the moment,
She wanted a big-time story, no small-town idyll.
She desired city burning, burning bright, resplendent.

Oh Chicago! It is from you that I have my life!

LOVE POETRY, Lost Without You

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 161,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 6,960,00.
LOVE POETRY,
Lost Without You


How about some love poetry?

Right now I am so desperate for your touch
That I can barely speak, let alone write a thing.



I could walk out the door into the hallway
And scream with such ferocity
The neighbors might think
I have taken leave of my senses.

When I think of food,
Nothing compares to how I savor you.

When I contemplate delightful vision,
You are the only vision in my eyes.

I love all music,
But no sound is better than your voice.
I await every telephone call,
And lead you with questions,
Just to hear the timbre of your talk, which I adore.

Nothing makes me sadder than a bad connection.

Oh! Baby! I love your smell.
Intoxicated and pathetic, I make the bed,
And fluff the pillows,
I do so expecting the redolence of you.
And when you are gone,
Even after a day or two,
And your aroma is lost, I am lost, too.

At wits end, I circle the bed,
And pace the bedroom floor, like some pet
Whose master has not returned home.

I am frantic without the fresh smell of you.

BRUNET, Electric Feel

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 160,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 7,960,00.
BRUNET,
Electric Feel


The pen rules me,
And many are the hours when it compels me to verse.

Tonight the subject is your hair.
God Herself must envy it.
You are one gorgeous brunet!



One thing for sure,
Were you competing with immortal beauties
In contest for "woman's richest ornament",
World-Title would perforce be yours.

Yet to describe your crowning glory,
No easy matter, it requires a new vocabulary,
A ready command of grammar and idiomatic expression.

Really! Think on it a moment!
All the right words have been used
Countless times before! Tell me,
What hope have I sufficiently to praise
Tresses whose luster utterly captivates my gaze?
What phrase may convey the special
Weight and texture of keratin length,
Which now known to my hand?
Is it enough?
May I sum your majesty, simply say?
I love to curl your hair
Round my fingers when we sleep!

I wish to say, oh girl.
Your hair, it has that electric feel.

Darling, were you to leave me,
Would I ever survive without you?
World too cruel a place,
Neither day nor night could I face without you!

Yet understand I have no wish to suffocate.
I picture no two-bit romance,
Needy lovers joined at the hip. I want
Your freedom and seek only to sleep,
Whatever length of time Destiny grants,
Your body next to mine,
My fingers wrapped in splendor of you, brunet.

LOSING YOU, A Very Early Morning Love Poem

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 160,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 7,960,00.
LOSING YOU!
A Very Early Morning Love Poem


Petal, now that is a great name for a woman.
It is not your name, nonetheless it is great.

Do you honestly believe that you might travel about,
Husband your every business deal,
Allow me to be home alone for months on end,
Then happy to collect you at the airport,
Joyous when you walk through the door,
Or thrilled the times I pay for your dinner?





You very well might be sorely mistaken.
It appears that you have a love you cannot keep.

You have been so selfish in your pursuits.
"How long, pray,
Will you take advantage of my patience?"

You hardly wrote to me at all, and I gather
Some of my letters to you have not been read,
And many of the topics I raised, not addressed.

You have been warned, time and again.
Our life together has been too tightly wound.
Your busy schedule precludes common wisdom.

You have forgotten that in this world,
In this world of ours life soon passes.
We walk these streets a few times,
Before too long we disappear and are gone.
No second chance, we do not return again.

The fact remains I can not take your absence.
I miss the warmth of your flesh next to mine.
My heart breaks when I turn my head in bed,
And see the pillow empty, without your face.

And now it becomes very early morning
And, you know me, that I speak truth
When I say, I have not slept for days.

Tomorrow I go to meet Pastor Borner.
Then I have an appointment with my Doctor,
And, although my face might not show
How tired I actually am,
I really have no way to disguise my sadness.

I always smile but in my eyes my sorrow shows.

Maybe you will get one more chance,
It could happen, I guess.

Yet the fact remains that our love affair is over,
Where once happiness had reigned,
Woe takes its place.

I no longer wish to speak with you.

Any future for this thing of ours seems a dim prospect.

I have lost all hope.
I have no faith that we shall ever see each other again.

SAD, Following an Ancient Writer's Relection

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 160,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 7,960,00.
SAD,
Following an Ancient Writer’s Reflection


Etta, you do not seem to care if I am ill.

Remember last week, when a pinched nerve
Kept me in bed for most of the day?
I could not walk,
I began to panic, and
Believed my back might never be right again.

And your response, terrible, cold and unmoving,
You declared what in my heart was already apparent;
You told me that you had no aspirations,
That if I sought a Florence Nightingale,
I had looked up the wrong alley.

It hurt most, when after a moment’s reflection,
I came to believe your response sounded rehearsed.

It had a tone, which seemed practiced.

You had actually precluded any concern.

I had became lost to pain in an otherwise robust frame,
And you had shown no worry, commiserated not a bit.

Now that my health returns, and I am totally recovered
I must wonder,
If my being ill had not worried you at all,
What good is it to me to be well again.

FOX RIVER LOVE SONG

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 160,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 7,960,00.
FOX RIVER LOVE SONG


Sky, rain, wind, the moon's glory when full,
Awash in light, low to the horizon ...
Eyes, lips, ears and hair,
Glorious limbs, the well-defined hand,
Feet with pretty toes ...

All God's children are beautiful,
His works abound with care and great love.



But she, she was blessed with beauty, exceedingly so,
The sun himself, though he encountered her often,
He would be caught unawares.
She surprised the sun himself,
Whenever she had come into his presence.

She surpassed all items of creation
Not only in feature and proportion,
But in wit and spirit, too.

And were I ever to experience a thousand women,
Have them in my life, she would remain favorite.

The White man brought us, the Chippewa,
The Two Books, their sacred wisdom and stories,
Yet braves eschewed them.

The very moment the medicine man touched them,
He claimed those volumes contained a pox.
He cast them to the ground.

Though now their holy word was written
In idiom common to our own people,
The propagation of any other faith proved impossible.

We knew no other god to match her power.
We knew hers was the face
Which could launch a thousand war canoe at once.
To honor her the topless sentry towers would tumble.

The vision of her face would flatten the high fences
It would vanquish the alien command,
Whose thick, wood fort on the bank of the River
Was sacrilege to all that was natural and good.

And when she step from her tent,
The sun would acquiesce, do her wish,
And burn the invader's barracks.
Fire would justify his great love and devotion.

A LOVE POEM, Found Written on a Page in a Cooking Magazine

http://abigbookofmyown.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/StanleyPacion

http://www.stanleypacion.com/home.html/

http://www.indiaeveryday.in/video/u/StanleyPacion.htm?ss=true
Tweet

As of this date my YOUTUBE Channel has received 160,000 + Single Page Uploads, Visits! A Google Search of the terms Stanley Pacion YouTube Channel yields a result count of 7,960,00.
A LOVE POEM,
Found Written on a Page
in a Cooking Magazine,
Fourth Version, 2012

The man had more than a few weird quirks.
Among them, he enjoyed writing in code.

He invented a special kind of shorthand,
Which allowed him to keep business records
In a language comprehensible only to himself
And the one friend to whom he had entrusted
The secret of how to read his cipher.

At the entrance to his apartment,
Within the middle of his foyer,
The man mounted a two-foot bronze of the god, Mercury.
He centered the statue upon a Corinthian-styled,
White marble pedestal.

The sculpture's left leg was horizontally extended.

In the air and at eye-level a winged, golden metal sandal
Passed beyond the boundary of the art work's stone base.

Mercury's right foot was firmly cemented at the tip of the toe;
The pose conveyed the messenger-god's typical post-haste.

Throughout the apartment the man used cryptic labels to mark
The boxes and folders of everything he possessed.

Visitors could readily see
Scores of items which bore his encryption.

Some have said he was quite mad!

In truth his peculiarities skirted insanity.
Yet when it came life's basics,
His manner of speech stayed straightforward.

And he wrote in the King's English.

He said, "I love you."

And he proclaimed for all that care to hear,
In script and voice alike,
"I worship the ground upon which you walk."