Poetry by Richard Kovac

Repetition For Emphasis
If you say,
"The sun is shining today,"
why say it again next day -
maybe because -
if it does -
the sun continues
to shine on.
If you say,
"The sun is new
every day,"
why repeat it?
Because the sun is new again.
It is all present
and now.
Eternal recurrence.
But maybe we should
say it once,
forever now,
throughout moment-to-moment
...
like life.

But these things
aren't as hard to explain
as even the existence
of one blade of green grass,
or anything at all.


Ticky-Tacky
Some mavens say
a poem should fit into
a box. i.e.,
the available space.
I thought about this
long and hard
and decided
to conform.
Nevertheless
although you are
in a box
try to think
outside the box,
where most
of the meaning is.


Shadrach's Fire
The fire is tame
and tastes
like warm milk.
It looks like
it sounds
like the cracking of twigs.
It looks like
souls ascending...
It smells
like dragon's breath.
To touch it
is not to sear,
but to soar.
This astonishes
Nebuchadnezzar.


The Music As Control
She said some remarkable things.
Intense dancer and lover of music -
the same as mine, then.
She said once, "I don't like it
when the music takes control."
I have been thinking about it
for a number of years,
and maybe that's what we did,
letting a beautiful sad song
go all the way.
The music, in a wider sense,
simply swept us away.
Yet life without music
would be unbearable..
I called her some years ago
after sending the anniversary
we'd danced
edition of Rolling Stone Magazine
and talked to her mother,
who said she didn't want
to talk with me and that
her daughter's taste in music had
changed. So it goes. Tra La.


Notes Heard In A Void
The birds chirp madrigals
whilst the microwave oven
hums to make coffee.
My vacuum of silence
draws into it
this melody of love,
which embraces all.
From silence
and into silence
I proceed,
but for the nonce
the words that matter
can be spoken.
There is time to testify
to the fact that love is truth,
and beauty is their offspring.
Make love not war.
Morning is in the offing.


Method Acting
Hard to trust
a good actor.
What mask is next?

All of us
put on a good act.
We pretend.

Honesty is
a hard revelation.

In classical Greek
the word for
"actor"
and the word for
"hypocrite"
were identical.



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