Ever since the dark days that Eden fell Mankind has cast pennies down the wishing well Hoping to find some bright point of light To get us through our darkest times of night
Ever since the dark days that Eden fell Mankind has struggled to find our place to dwell Hoping as we do to somehow once to get it right That, somehow, we might live past our blight
Curiosity has often gotten the best of intellect With our feelings dancing past being fact-checked Most of us have fallen and know life's drill That inside us all is the heart of a scoundrel
From fanaticism to barbarism is only the one step taken While some of us pray our enlightenment might awaken Most of us remain shaken to our cores and stirred At how these boundaries too often become blurred
Ever since the days that Eden fell Mankind has cast pennies down the wishing well Hoping to find some bright point of light To get us through our darkest times of night
Ever since the dark days that Eden fell Mankind has struggled to find our place to dwell Hoping as we do to somehow once get it right And that, somehow, we might live past our blight
The way to change our world is in the deposition Of what we struggle through in finding our disposition Human nature is often the pursuit of the fruitless And our best selves are too often a bit rootless
The first steps in healing are often in our incredulity That step by step, one after the other, builds philosophy Each of us working for our own sense of improvement And too often frustrated by our failings of temperament
Ever since the dark days that Eden fell Mankind has struggled to avoid our deserved Hell Hoping that we might somehow manage to get it right And that in so doing, we might live past our blight
Ever since the dark days when Eden fell We have looked for peace and love to indwell Casting our eyes toward the radiance of light Praying to an unknown God that we might get it right
(c) October 5, 2023 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
“If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson
“No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.” – James Madison (1788)
If We Wish For the True Keys of the Kingdom by Michael Doyle
It is said that in life's great travesty That it was the things of curiosity That finally killed off the barn cat But I would bet that if we looked in the hat
We'd find that looking in from the outside There'd be another tale to tell that hides And that tale would be the need to form impressions Freely that leads to paths of the best expression
If we wish for the true keys of the kingdom We must be willing to extend intellectual freedom Artists and writers must put this as a declarative That we must not constrict ourselves to a narrative
There is more than one story from one angle And all the perspectives we might openly dangle Make it clear that there is no definitive affiliation That leads to only one path for a nation or nations
Ideological tribes might demand their orthodoxy But all that ever really leads to is a stridency That, however, seemingly moralistic, imposes its cage Unneeded, and if unheeded, becomes the blank page
Filled only with self-censorship and too much fear Until thought itself shrinks until it disappears In disappearing, it at last becomes death's imposition And I submit this as the truth of the dead cat's admission
This becomes the death of literacy and the imagination When anything outside accepted thought becomes an aberration To be conquered or at best, hidden, stifling creativity Until it kills all growth by keeping it in captivity
(c) October 3, 2023 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
“No battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” – William Faulkner, novelist (25 Sep 1897-1962)
October 2nd and the days are wearing thin I suppose it is true that Winter is coming again This, then, is the truth of Autumn seen starkly As the days grow shorter and are seen darkly
Poetry captures violent moments of change Autumn is such a moment when the world rearranges The memories of warmth become the cold's creep And the ice in our veins begins the impartial seep
Deciduous leaves turn golden, touched by death That causes these to fall like the reaper's breath With vivid colors, the leaves shrivel and fall And that certain knowledge changes us as we recall
That Winter is coming just around the bend And the cold of Winter is rarely anyone's friend Time keeps slipping - slipping further away We wish vainly that our childhood might yet stay
To put things straightforward and put it simply Our heartbeats shudder as the truth amplifies These moments that transmute with their radiance As we sit aghast, thinking back on our decadence
A blessedness of sunlight poises hanging in the air As memories collect the love we thought was everywhere Only to find life's true growth never really withers It only hibernates to revive with Spring's turning weather
Old life gives way to that which is thought of as new But without that which came before it, we would have never knew The traces of its ancient lineage that blossoms and flowers In cycles of life that spin out the universal hours
(c) October 2, 2023 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
Heading out of Australia to escape this Aussie winter. First stop Japan, then UK/Ireland and if work doesn't call me back, onto Chicago. I will make it up as I go along
