Here's two poems I wrote, the first one is called "Trouble in Paradise". I wrote it two New Year's ago while my family vacationed in Miami Florida. I was pretty depressed at the time, and things just got worse when, a day after New Years we got the call that Bailey, our beloved Newfoundland had died back home. I sat on the beach surrounded by people having a great time, feeling more isolated than I'd ever been in my life, and wrote this poem. Later I made it into a comic for my Strip "The Life Quixotic".
Trouble in Paradise
By Brent Lengel
Sand.
Golden beads of an hourglass cling to my feet.
Sand? Dust?
Time.
It's unclean.
Rocks & seaweed dot Its' breast; through It, hungry crescents sift.
Why do we paint in Sand?
When It is so easily swept away?
the second Poem I wrote in response to hurricane Katrina a few years ago;
The Tao of Bourbon Street
by Brent Lengel.
Left to
right, east
to west,
up down
up down
"A" "B"
"B" "A".
I sit
on my
couch. Light
filters in
through tired
red blinds.
We're all
so arrogant.
Save the
world? Save
the Earth?
Stop pollution?
Mother nature
needs a
favor now
does she?
Thousands of
lives are
snuffed out
hundreds of
miles away,
and I
don't care.
It's not
that I
don't want
to; don't
misunderstand. It's
a charade
I refuse
to be
caught in.
I put
my five
dollars in
the jar.
Can anyone
who wasn't
there, who
didn't know
anyone really
care? We
can't save
the world.
We can't
kill the
world. Everything
will chug
right along
happily with
or without
us. "Best
to be
like water,
which benefits
the ten
thousand things
and does
not contend.
It pools
where humans
disdain to
dwell." The
Levis broke
and the
flow sent
them on
their way.
I knew
none. I
feel nothing.
I feel
guilt, obligation
irritation, compassion,
but not
true grief.
"Only do
not contend,
and you
will not
go wrong."
does Kanye
care about
black people?
East, West,
Black, White,
up, down,
multiply and
divide. It's
all so
pointless.
Warm air
meets a
cold heart.
I'm sick,
you're tired.
Did
the imaging
really look
like a
fetus? Does
God hate
the gay
adjacent? There's
so much
guilt. No
human can
hold it,
so we pass
it on.
The World
Dies, the
Tao Endures.
