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Best Poems Written by William Masonis

Below are the all-time best William Masonis poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | William Masonis Poem

Get An Education

"The boy's got a broken brain!
- Fix him for me now,
I can't do a thing with him."

     - So I hear you say,
     Though he seems intelligent enough.

After all, he's smart enough 
To know the whys and wherefores
Of every deal that goes down on his street -
Every $ passing hands in the dark,
Summed and totalled in his head.
But Math - Forget it.
And you'll never see him crack a book for study's sake.

Perhap's that's because you broke his heart,
Long ago, though his face will never show it.
Because he bleeds inside,
Though to hear him talk you'd never know it.
You tore his shadoworld apart
Just by never being there -
You broke his proud red eggshell heart
Because he knows you never cared.

Perhaps this is why Rage is his religion,
And he only values Gain,
Why Payback is his Creed,
His only currency Pain.
This then is why he wears the shirt 
That reads, "Never Forget, Never Forgive";
This why he's unafraid to kill or die,
Yet terrified to live.

So go get an education -
 Start with a hard look at yourself -
You that schooled a nation
In the politics of Greed,
Builders of the conflagration
Of burning, unmet Need
Now threatening to consume us
As it climbs into the skies,
As it whispers warnings to us
From his vacant, coldstare eyes.

You broke his heart,
A wound more deep
Than I alone can mend,
I, just one beleaguered horseman.
Cannot set it right again.

You must help put things back together,
If you want our nightmares to end.

Details | William Masonis Poem

My Bed's Just Here For the Cat

Fatcat,
Hairy nuisance
Sprawling over bedsheets
Crowding limited sleepspace with
Blubber.

Details | William Masonis Poem

How It Is

Here's How It Is:

The atoms dance
While Space expands
And shoals of galaxies race away
Towards every point of no return
And spin and spin
Like Catherine Wheels
And firework flashes
Brilliantly blazing dazzling sparks
Against a night so deep it swallows thought
A trillion times a second,
Everywhere and Nowhere
Things are starting
Things are ending
Things are becoming
Thoughts are groping
And in the spinning wheels and flashes
The sparks themselves are spinning
As are the sparks around those sparks
And so and so and so
Down again into the waiting atoms
Everything whirls
And because of this
There are worlds and worlds
Weaving themselves together.
Their billions of alien skies
Sliding over landscapes full of
Death and Life
Love and Hate
Fear and Hope
Beginnings and Endings -
Because of this
These lines are flowing.
A mind reads them,
And because of this
The whirling goes on 
Out and Out
In and In
Dancing down to and up from the atoms -

And All of it, All of it, All of it
Is happening RIGHT NOW
Has always been happening RIGHT NOW

Everything's awhirl, Snowflake:

So just go dance in the black Sacred Wind.

                                                        DANCE

                                                             !

'Cause that's How It Is.

Details | William Masonis Poem

All Mothers Must Sing - a Song For the Bulldog

It was not long ago
By the reck'ning of things
You were yet a wee one
Yet under our wing-
But now you have grown up
Like snow follows Spring -
Now you're a Mother,
And all Mothers must sing.

All Mothers must sing,
Though not always with voice;
'Tis a matter of Truth,
Not a question of Choice.
They sing with their hearts
And they sing with their souls
They sing while they're young,
And they sing when they're old.

     All Mothers, all Mothers, all Mothers
     Must sing,
     Some sing but a whisper,
     Some make the walls ring.
     They know that they hold 
     The most Precious of things;
     So all Mothers, all Mothers, all Mothers
     Must sing.

They sing with their smiles 
And their hearts and their sighs,
They sing us to bed 
And they sing as we rise;
They sing in response
To our smallest of cries
And all with the brilliance of love in their eyes.

So from now to the time
You are grey just like me
Darling, sing to your babes
As I sang to thee;
They shall grow to be kind,
To be honest and true;
They shall grow to be Wonderful,
Just like you.

     All Mothers must sing
     All Mothers must sing
     All Mothers, all Mothers, all Mothers 
     Must sing;
     Some sing but a whisper,
     Some make the walls ring;
     They know that they hold 
     The most Precious of things;
     So all Mothers, all Mothers, all Mothers 
     Must sing,,,,

Details | William Masonis Poem

In Praise of All Old Friends

Of all old friends, those we have of old are best;
These the souls we travel with by preference,
Theirs the spirits to whom we grant all deference.
Their hopes are ours, and ours their own; 
All victories shared, from like ambitions grown.
Their years match step with ours,
And show like passage of the hours,
The silent steps of Time with which our lives are sown.
They are moved as we are moved;
Troubled and pleased by like turns of Fate,
We pass through one another's gates
Into the rooms where loyalty is proved
By ties of woven sympathies,
By bonds that no outsider sees.

By bonds that no outsider sees
We tie ourselves to those who share
The pithy heart of all unspoken cares,
The shadows that would dim our days
If no one shared our private ways,
If none there were to let us know
The fitness of the face we dare not show;
The old friend nods and quietly stays
Close by our side when mere acquaintance leaves,
Unashamed to share our darkest inner night;
Awaits with us the slow return of light.
The old friend trusts and faithfully believes
The tales we tell ourselves of joy or sorrow,
Looking back to yesterday and forward to tomorrow.

Looking back to yesterday and forward to tomorrow,
We walk with them through the wilderness of living
Thankful for their presence and forgiving,
As do we, the flaws that mark our human bounds
Ignoring the discordant note that sounds
From time to time in all the narrative
We build to define our days and give
Form and substance to the constant rounds
Of night to day and day to night,
Our mutual progress towards Eternity,
The approaching dark we do not wish to see
Unless in company with the comforting light
Of well-earned close companionship,
Of sympathetic souls who join us on the trip.


Seeking truths wherein the brave heart delves,
We guide each other through our dwindling days
And face the world, and learn its ways,
Its cruelties and its beauties shared
Both the better for each time we dared 
To question this, our common Lot:
To Be, awhile, and then to Not.
And so we share all we have got
To fill our time, to weave our lives.
Without old friends, the path is drear and long,
Where goes but one to compose the song
To tell of what we were, and how we strived
To rescue Sense from Folly, and all the rest;
Of all friends, those we have of old are best.

Details | William Masonis Poem

Inside Job

Building castles in the air,
Gold and diamonds everywhere;
You were the brightest stars in your own skies

In empty space you built your dreams
Behind  computer screens
You rode in long expensive cars 
Drank in all the trendy bars
As all the while you lied and bet
Against the ones who'd hoped to get
 A  piece of our communal pie;
They bought your homes and bought the lie.

     It was all an inside job
     Pulled by a faceless mob
     Of bankers, lawyers and their ilk.
     It was all an inside job
     By a thoughtless, greedy mob
     Of men who rob the poor to sleep on silk.

Smoking candles, fallen flowers
Foreclosed homes and broken hours -
This is the aftermath of what you've done,
Games ill played and ill begun.

And the rich get richer
Though they've painted us the picture
Of what happens when you set the weasels free.
They've no concern for you or care for me
Or the discrepancies we see;
Should be enough for us that they should always be.
No one's punished,no one pays,
They remain complacent in their ways.

     It was all an inside job
     Staged by an untouched mob
     Of bankers, lawyers and their ilk.
     It was an inside job
     Perpetrated by the mob
     Of men who rob the poor and  sleep on silk.

And now this evil season
Has descended without reason
And the sheep will stand and wait
To receive their unearned fate.

I hope you're proud, you sleep at night
While masses live by candlelight
May your riches find you lone and cold
When you at last are frail and old
And no one mourns your passing days
And none thought loyal will stay
To watch with you all through the coming gloom
That pushes you, alone, unto your tomb.

Castle building in the air
Gold and diamonds everywhere;
The brightest stars will dim away
Replaced by others, other days.

     And so it goes, the inside job
     Brought off by the blacksuited mob
     The bankers, lawyers and their ilk.
     The framers of the inside job
     That heartless, faithless, grasping mob
     Will one day drown, beneath a sea of silk.

Details | William Masonis Poem

Bravery Is All There Is

When darkness falls and finds us all alone,
When the heart becomes a small grey stone ...
     Bravery is all there is.

When thunder shakes the windowpanes,
When those we love lie wracked with pain ...
     Bravery is all there is.

Bravery concedes its fear;
Does not attempt to hide its tears.
Bravery is born of holding calm,
In quietly, doggedly, carrying on.

When reason fails to light the dark,
When the answer is a question mark ...
     Bravery is all there is.

When justice seeks to rule in vain,
When sorrow sweeps the roiling brain ...
     Bravery is all there is.

Bravery trembles while it stands,
Accepts what it cannot command.
Bravery bears its burdens well,
Looks not to see if others tell.

     Be brave then, Mystery asks of us;
     Face the unknown with silent trust -
     For at the End, there is only this:
     Bravery is all there is.
     Bravery is all there is.

Details | William Masonis Poem

My Father's Face

From somewhere far beneath,
My father's face is rising to replace my own.
Each year the brightly silvered surface of my mirror
Reveals some other common feature
Pushing its way to the fore.

The silver of the years finds its way
Into the hair retreating at the same rate;
Years marching forward as the hairline marches back
In lockstep time. What's left shines
With the wintry distinction of age.

Whose eyes are these that now look out
From beneath my brow? Are these the eyes that watched my child in sleep,
Or now those elder eyes that watched over me so long ago?
And what self is that at rest behind my silvered temples,
That rests its thoughts so heavy on these things?

Photos of the two of us together
Show the kinship of expression
The matching etchings of experience
That leave no doubt
As to the common blood by which we're bound.

I can no longer view myself
Without his prescence being there as well;
Moreover, the image of his father
Shows the like upwellings in him.

The visage of the man who came before
The three of us I've never seen;
But I deem it probable there was little difference,
And so back this face we share may go, ad infinitum.

Every face is a story
Of the life and its ways that shaped it.
This being so, I cannot help but feel ennobled
By the lines and lessons which have been passed to me.
This is the face I shall carry
From now to the end of my days.

My I tend it, and wear it, well.

Details | William Masonis Poem

Some Old Style Verse For a New Frame of Mind

The Middle Time is now upon me,
And the tune to which I dance is somewhat thin;
A ghost remembrance of that cacaphonous din
To which my steps were measured in my youth.
I know there lies now less before 
Than all those days that lay within
The sepulchure of careless memory passed,
And I apprehend the sometime bitter truth
That evil days approach my door
When much of what I've come to love will bid its leave
And I be forced to gaze aghast
At sights my eyes would fain not see,
When I to faithful hope must cleave.

And yet, what better time than this, the high point of the feast?
That Jester, Youth, has left the table
Leaving us the better able
To speak of things which more befit the greyed brow,
Matters weighty and sublime
Which better suit our natures now, though perhaps in tone more sable
Than such issues as delight the Fool,
And content the simpleminded sow -
Let us worthily pass the time
To Banquet's End, in company merry and refined,
Reviewing all we gained in Life's long school -
Establish what we value most and least,
Then say we fed our souls while yet we dined.

O grieve not that thy step be not so quick nor light
As was it's wont to be in bygone days,
Nor pine for carefree, childish ways -
They had their time, and sweet they were,
But now thou hast a surer, measured step
And the nobler thought is the one which stays,
And Youth for all its joyful folly
Is not a state forever to prefer
To a mind and manner better kept
From fancies and seductions strange;
Who but a Fool would be forever jolly
And deny his Midlife's further sight,
It's deeper view, it's wider range?

Details | William Masonis Poem

My Little Bulldog

No challenge stops her
    stance is set
       shoulders squared

                                  She needs no reassurance
                                  no protective arm

What she wants
    is what she wills
     she harbors no illusions

                                   No man will tell her
                                   what to do

She has lain out
   her own way
     and swept it clean

                                   No distraction is allowed
                                   to interfere

Her goals are set
   and bannered, waiting
     for distant days

                                     She will claim them all
                                     in triumph, never doubting

Small of stature
   great of heart
     she turns to face the wind

                                      Gentle as a running stream
                                      Unyielding as a diamond

She acknowledges 
   the difficulties
    then passes through

                                        No lie accepted
                                        no truth denied

She scans the road ahead
   weighs its options
     gaze sure and steady

                                         Fears are felt
                                         then disregarded

She does not move back
   she sets her grip upon
     each thing she wants

                                          Her goals must surrender
                                          to her determination

A child in years
   an elder's wisdom
     sits upon her brow

                                          Discouragements will bring no change
                                          a mountain of resolve

Seasons change
   worlds revolve
     she sees it through

                                          The end in sight
                                          stays in sight

Such nobilities
   within my child
     humble me

                                          Her father frets for her
                                          but can never fear

This is my little bulldog
   holding the world 
     by its pantleg

                                            Naught that she needs escapes her
                                            what kind of fool would try