Ruins of a Sunken Pier

Dr Abe V Rotor

Puerto, Sto Domingo, Ilocos Sur (Megabooks)

No, it was not the big gun

that brought you down; 

it was old Lamarckian 

who brought in the clown.

When not in use, a thing

degenerates into nothing;

once a rudiment,

it is a useless instrument.

The limbs of a reptile,

the coccyx of the tail,

Intramuros or Great Wall

are of no use at all.

Idleness and uselessness

are a duo in the art of waste;

great indeed is loss in disuse,

the grey matter's no excuse.

Young Musicians

Dr Abe V Rotor

Marlo, Anna and Leo at home

I imagine young Haydn mimicked

a strolling fiddler with pieces of stick,

and young Beethoven writing music

from birds and lambs at the creek.

In Messiah Handel saw God's image,

while Mozart excelled before the king,

and Chopin the piano-poet of his age

saw neo-classical music emerging.

Happier are those who play the tune,

than he who stops at the chord,

they who keep alive the inner vision,

the music that lights the world. 

Light in the Woods, 1995 Megabooks 

Halloween - celebration with the dead, ghosts and spirits

Dr Abe V Rotor

Talking with the dead. 

Remember our dead beloved, the unsung, unknown;

     catch up with time for our failed expression,

prayers unsaid, love denied, gesture unrequited -

     day of the souls to amend our infraction.    

Transported to the land of the dead. 

 Treat or threat.

   Whose party? Where have all the people gone?

            Masks or real faces?

   Faces, faces, young and old,

  fair and coy and bold;

masks, masks, masks we are told,

sans feeling and cold. 

Merging of the real and imaginary. 

   The devil comes alive. 
    

The dead takes center stage. 

Come let's visit Dante's Inferno, and Milton's world,*

     call on Frankenstein,** his monstrous creation;

travel to Transylvania, track the undead Dracula;   

     join the dead, their ghosts in celebration. 

Good and evil for once their boundary open,

     so with that of heaven and hell we implore;

take the backseat apostasy, paganism alive!

     make haste, before Hades closes the door.       

* Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, epic by John Milton

** Frankenstein, novel by Mary Shelley