I wonder where the papers went?

 

I wonder where the papers went/that once our cityscape did scent?

The tatters scampering about/their headlines throbbing like the gout.

Want ads or a baseball score/their inky smell is now no more.

We're online, and so paper-free/but worried still of World War Three.

The printing presses silent sit/Reporters think their throat is slit.

And if you want to wrap some fish/there's only plastic bags -- oh ish!

**************************************

this gourd of ours/empty as it seems

is filled with love and pain and dreams.

so locusts saw/and birds migrate;

and worldly men soon abdicate.

*****************************

at my desk I spent the day;

writing nothing, by the way.

then a walk I took outside

in the chilling eventide.

All my thoughts were so sublime

I didn't see the bus in time . . . 

****************************

The sin of boredom I possess;

I covet it with mindlessness.

Not to care, or think, or pray --

to claim how hollow is each day.

I figure that my boredom means

I'm more refined than collard greens.

****************************

There's an old wind which blows

that nobody knows --

It comes now and then

over mountain and fen 

to tickle the head

and put babies to bed.

And when it has gone

there is much more to dawn.