Thou Art My Verse

Thomas Quitzau

August 1, 2021

Some words, not ours, have been said

to belong to a muse

Some thoughts, at odd hours, have been bred

causing us to lose

Some semblance of time, monsters in our heads

banging the bars in calaboose.

Bon voyage, clairvoyant: time travel

is possible if practiced

Discoveries, sought beyond Earth’s arc,

  need flexible didactics

Pretending is recommended as one

of many old bold tactics.

How could we be mindless and mindful

at the same time?

Out of our minds and in someone else’s

and still able to rhyme?

Or close to it, far from perfect, human,

trusting in the sublime?

Oh verses! Whether free, blank, or ode

sonnets, rondeaux, haikus

Oh lines! Stanzas mazing words

cast into quivery queues

Your nuclear cores blaze celestially

projecting cosmic truths!

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.