Doors and Windows

I don't need to be told. I already know

That when God closes a door, I should check the window

and glance for a chance, an opportunity.

I never do know when it's looking for me.

Sometimes, I'd like to reach out and grab it,

Bud sometimes I'd rather retain my old habit,

and sometimes I'd like to read, or write poems,

and want solitude in a room that is closed.

History of American Literature, as Understood by a Poet and a Baseball Fanatic

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

I'm sure that he knows what that means.

I suppose I contain some bacteria.

I'm, by my culture's standards, unclean.

I suppose if I did contain multitudes,

Then many would like Christmas songs,

While a few would enjoy raunchy parodies

The court system struck down as wrong.

Some enjoy triple cheeseburgers.

Others don't like to bunch at the waist.

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

If I do, it accounts for my tastes.

Not All Who Wander Are Found

I exist on uncertain footing,

In a landscape covered in the sands of misunderstanding,

But I exist nonetheless.

I think that I am less homesick–more simply just a mess.

I think that I am too keenly aware

That I moved to a room where I've hardly written–from another,

and there from another.

If I thought I had the resolve, I might resolve to write more.

My Office in Room 1348 of the Panopticon

I mount to the poet's pedestal when the mood strikes,

Though it's only on level thirteen of twenty-five.

I am not an especially friendly man.

I keep my own counsel as much as I can.

I'm thought of more often as “brooding” than “fun,”

and I might be an island–but I'm not alone on one.

I try not to judge. At most times, I take care.

Most times I remember I ought not to stare,

But what you reveal, the public will see.

The uncovered window forfeits privacy,

and I don't wish to be caught unobservant.

Observation's evaluation, on the road to judgment,

But I didn't earn this guilt–and you didn't close your curtain.

Two Travelers Converged on a Road

I have become blind to innocence,

Or perhaps immune to perceptions of it.

We all get dingy. We all stay low.

There are pieces of all of us we left along the road–

The unmissed we don't remember we know.

So when others see you tease a camera just right,

I just see turnabout you're playing on life.

I don't expect you not to have a history.

I'll just help you look for pieces if you do the same for me.

The Poster in the Basement Room

I remember believing

That we're not alone among the stars,

That it wouldn't be too long or too far,

That there is life on Mars.

I remember wanting to believe.

I remember treating the uncertainty

As tantalizing possibility.

I had not yet learned what silence means.

I remember needing to believe,

The thirst, the lust, to seek and find

Of a creature with friends and family, but no kind.

Now, all I believe, I pretend to know:

That we may just be, or may be left, alone;

That any who managed to knock or pick up the phone

Would be too smart to crash our reality show.

The Post-Postmodern Prometheus

It marches in place

On the frozen electron river

Of these ersatz notebook pages:

An entire army of me,

A thousand narrators

Of a thousand different stories,

and someday I will find the one

Who is enough of me to be human,

and little enough of me to live on his own.

No Time For Love

You say I could still leave, with you in tow,

Disparaging the scope of the places I'd go.

I wish to compose an ocean of oddities,

To see waves of my words as wide as the seas

Crash upon sonnets as the sands on a beach,

and when I'm not doing that, I wish to teach.

I ask only for the time, and not the help.

You could tell me I'm only distracting myself,

(and if you can say the words, then why not me?)

But how many of us would actually believe?

Seeing Is Not Believing (In Which Our Hero Talks Himself Out of Another Crush)

I believed there was no settling for two out of three this time.

I believed there was more to her than three boxes could define.

I believed diamonds dazzled her, but didn't fill her heart.

I believed what I saw when she gave me a start.

Now, I see the way she is consumed by the style of things.

Now, I see the what kind of habits she's been making,

What little she does, and does over and over again.

Her shapes don't come together right from my new angle on them.

The Loser's Prayer

Defeat can leave you winded,

So take the jeers of the fair-weather fans,

Those who dare not play,

and breathe them all in.

Defeat can leave you exhausted,

So take all of those hateful words,

and swallow them down inside of you.

Defeat is thirsty work indeed,

So drink in the sickening feel of it.

Defeat can leave you cold,

So wrap yourself in the hate of it.

If you lost this week,

It is time to rebuild.

It is time to reload,

Because the only one on the field this week

Who can stop you again next week

Is you.

The Heart or The Stomach?

When you walk into the room,

I mistype my password.

When you sit down beside me,

I forget myself, and remember my posture.

When you speak to others,

I reach out for every word,

Wishing each was made for me.

When you speak to me,

I try with all my might to listen,

and I fail as fully as ever.

Your gesture is my signal.

Your joke is my gospel.

Your wish is my command.

I think I can promise you my attentions,

(Tied in a grubby, Gordian knot,)

Whether we want that or not.

Fallen Angel

I see fell meaning in the commonplace.

I see the meaningless in rituals.

I see sins in the simplest things.

I see tragedies in mere trappings.

I see the same world as you see.

I look through fire-colored glasses.

I see shadows in people.

I see shadows in shadows.

I am among strangers.

I think I have always been.

I think I do not belong.

I do not see a way out.

My Personal World, Part 19: Bittersweet Time Machine

I remember the first time that rhythm caught me.

It didn't exactly hit me in the head.

It was nothing nearly so violent as that.

It kind of grabbed me under the arm

and yanked me a quarter-turn around.

If you want to pick nits,

It was an illegal block above the waist.

Today, again, that same rhythm caught me.

It didn't exactly pull me to the ground.

After all, this isn't the first time around.

It kind of got in real close, face to face,

Until I let it take me by the hand

and lead me right back into the other moment.

If you want to pick nits,

It didn't leave room for the Holy Spirit.

I wonder when the rhythm will catch me again.

I wonder how gentle it will be next time.

Will it remind me of the winter, the couch, the friends,

Or the tragedies of the spring that followed behind?

Will it come with a caress or a kick?

All I know is that the rhythm is finished,

and it left me at least a little bit tired–

Perhaps not of it...

If you want to pick nits.

The Tao of the Yo-Yo

Don't leave too soon, and don't stay away.

Come back within earshot. I'm dying to say

That you make me demented, deranged, foolhardy,

and I like the way that you make me feel.

Don't forget that romance happens only in the mind.

Don't search long and hard enough to leave yourself behind.

Everything about you that makes us not work

Is exactly what made you stand out from the first.

Pulling and Pulling

I need a pull-starter just to speak up.

It's like pulling taffy to stay engaged,

and like pulling teeth to walk away.

It's even an effort; it even feels strange,

Like drinking a milkshake, every time I inhale.

I think the air between us is unusually full.

The Invitation

We dearly wish that you would join, in time,

A future found unbound among the stars.

We realize this for you means quite a climb

From lunar foothills barely past the start.

We must remark it's strange that so complex

An animal as yours should live in hives.

Our scientists believe that this reflects

Potential genius living bounded lives.

Perhaps to reach the stars you must boycott

This self-sustaining, self-destructive course

If so, we'll find your kind and ours are not

So different as intrigued us at the first.

Despair that you can't make it now? Don't fear.

Just as you're stuck there, we are stuck here.

Little Green Woman

I made tracks for the other side of everything known,

A place where I'm an alien, the place where she is home.

A place where an adventure could be something that you eat,

A place that's full of people just a little bit like me.

One of them took me by the hand, began the universal dance,

Then stopped in the middle to apprise me of conflicting circumstance.

There's part of me still panting, insisting this could work,

But I'm not really Captain Kirk.

Shock the Monkey

I'm caught in a quandry between my brain and my eyes.

The one insists on depth, the other merely size,

But in a dazzling display of both variety and scope,

While the one has thrown off training like an undesired yolk.

My better angels try to tell me when–and not–to try,

While the TV shows me goals enough to fill my insect eyes.

I can change everything I am to get what I'm told I want,

Or be only what I am, and mostly pleased with what I've got.

Twinkle, Twinkle

You eat yourself to change yourself,

To power your strange, unknown place.

The lives of every single one of my kind

Strung together beginning-to-end

You would outlive with time to spare;

It would take us that long just to get there.

You are a real-life wonder of an alien world,

So it is only natural that some people

Might look to you to learn their future,

But I think it is even more beautiful,

and I know that it must be more sensible

To look to you to learn your prehistoric past.

Not Hard, But Very Difficult (Kids Poem for Teaching)

My job is not very hard to explain.

They pay me money to fly an airplane.

Who am I?

Red Hot (Kids Poem For Teaching)

When I drive down the street, everybody else knows.

Some people tell me that I'm a hero.

My job and my truck, you could say, are red hot.

I put out fires that others cannot.

Who am I?

In Day or In Night (Kids Poem for Teaching)

My job is important: keep everyone safe.

I arrest bad guys and put them away.

I must be ready in day or in night.

I drive a car that has red and blue lights.

Who Am I?

A Self-Cleaning Mess

I'm sure it gets old when I whine

That I've more desires than time,

and should you wish a moment entwined,

I would steeply be that way inclined.

It's relief and dismay, then, to find

That our meters will not fall in rhyme,

For you with another recline

While my problem takes care of itself.

Clothing Our Souls

You never met a day that meant a thing

Without breaking down, breaking out, to sing,

But you presume I'm less than genuine

Each day I am not so inclined.

You complain you have not seen my soul.

Ignoring reasons for caution, control,

I don't see why you don't suppose

Our souls just shop for different clothes.

Just as you are convinced you must bring me along,

I could be sure you hide something 'hind smile and song.

I might be more subdued, and I might be sleepwalking,

But I'm still honestly me when I'm writing and talking.

The Other Other Side

I am no kind of artist by trade.

I have no devices specifically made

To name, identify, or classify color.

In short, I don't know one shade from the others,

But I have brains enough to settle, and eyes enough to see

That the grass here on my side is green enough for me.

The Dao of The Dork

Some folks stay on the lookout for a penny or a buck.

I will quit looking the second that I think I have enough.

Some people start things early so they never get behind.

I start the same task later, and then do it in less time.

Some people will do anything authority demands,

But I never have struggled with–or lingered by–quicksand.

Some people change their strategies.

I don't change horses in midstream.

I don't bother to parry accusations

That I am useless and lazy,

Though it's also been said that I might-could be zen.

Just maybe.

Stay Exactly Where You Are, Young Man!

Myself, but experienced, older,

Is all I desire to be.

Forest Gump and Horatio Alger

Both failed at inspiring me.

Neither sugar plums nor Armani

Blur my vision or dance in my head,

So not once in my life will you catch me

Either grinding or getting ahead.

To explain fully what I put into life,

Know that all I wish to get out

Is something to write with, something to write on,

and something to write about.

I Did Manage to Poke My Finger Once

I have heard it said before,

That the pen is mightier than the sword,

But if I commanded as many swords as pens

Then I would be a feudal lord,

and not this futile lord of words,

Who, in almost three decades' time

In a land with no willpower in sight

Attempted to use sheer force of will and mind,

and accomplished nothing.

Cooking Accident #1099

I cannot help but notice

Even from the very moment

That the knife hits.

Then it bites, and then sinks

Into my flesh,

Time moving at its very slowest.

My reaction, of course, is far too late,

and then disturbingly deliberate.

After all, this is not the first time.

Green (Kids Poem for Teaching)

There are green watches and green clocks,

Green mountains and green rocks.

There are green t-shirts and green pants.

I have never heard of green ants.

There are green trees and green grass.

Church windows have green glass.

Leaves are green, and so are mangoes.

On green floors, green shoes do tangos.

In my country they say that money is green,

and they say that you can't beat it,

But if your food turns green, well, then,

It's better you don't eat it.

What Do I Wear? (Kids Poem for Teaching)

The girl's school student wears a skirt because that is the rule.

The artist wears a T-shirt because he says it's cool.

The businessman wears trousers to his meeting in the city.

The lady wears a dress because it makes her look so pretty.

The basketball player wears basketball shorts to play a basketball game,

and every good kid wears a coat to go out in the rain.

The Unheeded Landlord

It's the thing that makes my output seem lazy.

It's the thing that makes me hope there's no such thing

As psychics or psychic phenomena,

Because I wouldn't want anyone to hear.

It's the thing that makes my eccentricities seem usual.

It's the infestation. It's the worm.

It's that phrase that cannot exist outside my head

and will not cease to exist inside it.

I want it gone by morning.

Same Question, Different Answers

You follow me around like my red ink,

From sink to work and back to sink.

You are the person who taught me to think

That it's not nearly enough to be friends.

You are my answer to every question

That every poet hates to love asking.

I am the face on the back of the milk carton.

I am the face in front of you in line.

I am your future, arriving now at last,

But you're quick to settle for your past.

Territories of Self

I suddenly find my eyes confronted

(Because all looking is a confrontation

and men and women merely contestants)

By five thousand sides,

By all the shadows and shapes

That used to be, and are now only remembered

In this two-dimensional state.

It takes my eyes a thousand different places.

It takes my mind a thousand different places,

But I have no idea what it means.

Are You Experienced?

If Jimmy had been asking me, I would have answered “yes,”

Though were Jimmy anything like you, he'd shout 'till I confessed

That my experience is not all mine, and I'll not hide that's true.

Yes, some of it is borrowed. (Yes, and some of it is blue.)

The secondhand experience just supplements my own,

As one learns from others while at school, and from oneself at home.

I gaze selfish upon my own life; on others differently.

Since I've both lived and listened, oh, how much more have I seen!

As Close as Your Toothbrush

When you let anything get as close as your toothbrush,

It can fill up your ears from the bass to hairbrush,

and so it was with my ears and your words,

Whether they did me no favors or worse.

I drank this sweet honey of silver siren's song.

In the decadent ease, I just floated along

My feet pointing downstream, best for warding off rocks,

For the jolt of collision might my mind unlock.

The Sound of Two Angels Falling a Little Further

I'd ask if you wanted to get out of here,

But which of us has anyplace else to go?

I think I would have left sooner, and alone,

But I don't have anyone else to be.

I wish you wouldn't have offered a drink,

But I know you don't have anything,

and all I can offer is to let you share

My moment of despair.

Epoch-a-Lips

Thoughts of you settle upon me

Lightly, slowly, unnoticed until I am buried.

It was realization, not you, that rocked me in earthquake,

Though I would still call you geologic.

The new gray hairs in my beard are proof

Of how long it took me to get over you,

Of all the time I waited for the comet-strike.

So ends Pre-Graying Period of my life

When I would end the world for your kiss,

My epoch-a-lips.

Fool Me Once

I know just what it is like to be the new hand,

To fall not just for, but all over the old trick, to land

In a pool of derision, which asks “how could you fall?”

But what matter's the trick's age? I was younger than them all!

I remember this clearly, though it were long ago,

But you and I are here now, and that trick I now know.

You Don't Understand

“You don't understand,”

You say before you go.

You don't know what I know.

You don't remember the times

I said the same thing;

I scratched similar stings.

You are just now meeting molehills

I mounted many years ago.

I know new winds will blow.

You do not know how right you are.

I know too much to understand.

Second Impressions

They say you never get a second chance,

To make a first impression.

In lieu of that,

The world and I should make a confession:

I could lift some small straw of the burden

(There are seven billion of us, heavy with judgment.);

I could make the world a kinder place

(Without the contortion of forcing

A smile onto my face);

I could be a better man

If only I gave more first chances

To make a second impression.

Fill In The Blank

Some questions have no answers.

(If the barber shaves every man in town

Who does not shave himself,

Who shaves the barber?)

Some questions need no answers.

(If the barber shaves every man in town

Who does not shave himself,

Who shaves the barber?)

Some people, in a rush for answers

Rashly rush to ridiculous judgments,

Only later learning that they know better.

In their fevered frenzy, they are unwell,

But still they would play Jeopardy against Time itself.

The Pusillanimous Poet

There was once an American man,

A poet, a flash in the pan,

and when he feels sick,

He stops writing; he quits,

and it frustrates his grandiose plans.

Man from the Sticks

There once was a man from the sticks

Who got fed up with hayseeds and hicks,

So he eats his cheese stinky,

Drinks his tea with raised pinky,

and the opera's where he gets his kicks.

And What About the Ten Years In Between?

It is not quite shocking,

and more a pleasant sort of frisson

To learn about a band,

Of which I was a fan,

Entirely without knowing,

At least, when I was a teenager,

When I could not have known better,

While what I do not know now

Is whether I ought to be embarrassed

and making these excuses.

The Picture That Came in the Frame

You look so much like me.

You look so much like you did

When I saw you in Target

Ten thousand miles away.

You remind me of Target,

Which is close to other parts of my life

That were once more important.

You look so much like home,

Which only serves to highlight

That you do not belong here,

and I am offended just to look at you.

The Very Newest in Old Folk Wisdom

Bakers rise early. If pie's easy,

Then what are they doing?

How many shrinks you think it takes

To screw my loose screws in?

If suffering builds character,

What do characters build?

Unless your glass is in outer space,

It's totally filled.

If your aunt was your uncle,

She wouldn't be your aunt.

There are three kind of people:

Those who can count, and those who can't.

There are two kinds of jobs:

Experience required and experience preferred,

and always, always remember

Your patience will be rewarded–eventually.

Questions Unheard

I ask the gray-green jungles

As old as trees' grandfathers' grandfathers

As young as this last growing season

If I might learn to live among them,

But they so silly as to indulge adult cares,

Not silly enough to speak to

The stupid question of youth.

I ask the full-bearded mountain,

Each whisker a wasted labor to shave,

If I will find welcome in this new place,

But the mountain keeps the silence of wisdom.

Oh, the fool thinks this place is new?

I ask the living, teeming streets

If this welcome might last,

If these young friendships

Might grow old with me,

and they keep their unsilence.

They do not stop to listen.

Their din won't change in answer.

They simply talk amongst themselves

As they have always done.

Perhaps they're waiting for me

To do something different.

The Smiles of Newness

I am surely an old hand

At the smiles of newness.

I have seen these all before.

I have seen them change

Into something else,

Something new for oldness,

No more pretended welcome

Once I know the truth of it.

I am surely an old hand

At the smiles of newness.

I have seen these all before.

I have seen them change

Into something else,

Something new for oldness,

No more pretended welcome

Once I know the lie of it.

I am surely an old hand

At the smiles of newness;

Just as surely a new face

Among these new faces.

Movie Pitch as Movie Title: Laconic Tagline

Today's stories are not told,
They are ordered.
You have a choice of four endings
(Light, dark, green, or extra crispy)
Between white-bread leading actors,
The same old sideplots
and some stale, withered toppings for color.
The modern movie is not written,
It is assembled, like a value meal,
Every bit as healthful and unique.

As Separate Springs Turn To Separate Summers

I have seen you before,
But rarely this beautiful.
I have seen you before,
But rarely this happy.
I have seen you before,
With others just like him.
I've seen more than enough
To know it won't last long.
I'm glad you're happy now,
But not as glad as when he's gone.

Man/Island/Sand

I am a man.

I am an island.

I am as sand,

Too gritty to be trod upon for long,

Unbreakable against the ocean,

The waves of fluid opinion.

I am a man.

I am an island.

I am as sand.

Wicked Cool

I'm a writer, a poet, always carrying my poetic license,
But I pretend to be cool, fool some people sometimes.
When I admit it, people I know say I'm fine.
I've a mirror, so I know that. Cool's not so quickly defined,
So let's ask the mirror. Come, you know half the lines!

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who's the fairest of them all?”

Then the mirror is heard to howl,
“What's fair elsewhere, here is foul,
So I don't know, but you'll do for now.”

An Instant and An Eternity

For someone with no short-term memory,

Five years are an instant and an eternity

In which to make even obvious changes.

I am not what I used to be,

Even if I am exactly who I always was.

I must creatively clothe my personality,

To show the world someone who looks different.

For someone with no short-term memory,

Five years are an instant and an eternity

In which to make even obvious changes.

For someone with no short-term memory,

I was once more than the sum of my parts,

But now the sum of my parts is much less,

and I feel like nothing at all, and I must change,

Just to be something, even if it is something else.

For someone with no short-term memory,

Two weeks are an instant and an eternity

From which changes now bear down on me,

Though I could not be more unfeeling.

I have yet to catch myself savoring;

Perhaps I will also forget to miss the old same.

Red Light/Green Light

I don't see traffic

As a little army of oversized ants marching,

Though it is,

Nor as the fires of industry,

Parceled out into moments and pieces,

Though that's what it be.

No, that line of cars making its way

Is no more or less than a series of breaks

Eagerly waiting to drain my day

From the thousand cuts of a thousand short waits.

The Flying Dutchman

The world is full of strange stories,

So many theories thrown aside,

But little is new that is not ancient.

Little is dead but not waiting to return.

Now hallowed minds are hollow caves

In which strange wisdom hibernate.

In a time when the old gods are new-age,

When Genesis and exogenesis both strain into view

I still managed to pick something not on the menu.

Every Other Time Around, Pt. 2

Words from old favorite tales come out of hiding.

The leaves empty their woodworks in the retelling.

Those words are secrets I kept from myself,

Self-kindness in self delusion, neither wanting nor needing

Another source from which to hear the same old things,

Echoes of convention and prejudice from a favorite character

Who I can now only wish didn't sound like my mother.

Has life truly left me mere handfuls of syllables

Away from changing my mind about any work of literature?

Fireside Pop Psychology

You have one year of incomplete data,

and one brain to process it.

Yet, I find that my breath is baited

As I do nothing but sit and wait

To hear the conclusions of your study.

To fear what you think of me

Is no more or less than to fear my own shadow,

and perhaps in three or four years, I will learn better.

The Two Thousand Stare-Downs That Changed Me

I am the ranger, the immortal, the elite.

I run toward other writers' greatest fear:

The blank page, which I can only see

As the moment of infinite possibility,

So I can't help myself from charging in, with glee,

and if it's the hard part, it's all downhill from here.

Spelled Correctly

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But you're wearing the wrong color dress.

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But my shrink said I should try to be honest.

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But I couldn't stand being that sexist.

I wish I could call you a sorceress.

It would probably be for the best.

I wish I could call you a sorceress.

I could, if I liked you less.

A Man Without a Demographic

I don't know how to write for the young ones.

I remember when life was all excitement and exclamation,

Except the parts that were disinterest and depression,

But it changed before I finally learned how to live.

I don't know how to write for the old.

I don't know everything they know,

Nor even know most of what I don't.

I don't know how to write for the broken,

Despite recent, bitter experience.

It is not enough just to understand–

If I knew, I'd no longer be among them.

I don't know why to write for the healthy.

By cultural definition, they don't like to read.

I don't know how to write to privilege,

Despite my sex and my skin,

Nor how to write for the privileged,

Whom I've always thought I was fighting.

Don't Touch That Dial

It isn't my advertising money.

They aren't my royalty checks,

Nor my reputation with the FCC.

I'm not the kind to make records spin.

I've never been a market researcher,

Nor a DJ, nor much of a musician.

Still, I think you should know

That your radio station's motto

Seems to have been “lottery odds

and bingo-night payoffs.”

Short Circuit

They built me with a charisma switch

On the back of my neck.

I don't get the highest output,

But it will turn on.

There's a problem with overheating

Up and down the circuit breaker,

Especially if I leave it on too long,

Which sadly has to be most of the time

When there are more people

Everywhere, every day,

and I only know like one of them,

and she's talking to somebody else.

This world is not built to accommodate introverts.

I'd call the repairman in to fix it,

But I don't feel like talking on the phone today.

The Other Side of Gossip

I talked myself into you,

and then back out again

Without your permission,

But you only showed me reasons

To make the first decision,

But today somebody we both knew

Told me about things I didn't think you'd do,

So I think I was right the first time I saw you,

But that the second way was right too.

The Sound of Seven Billion Snowflakes Not Falling

There are no people who like failure,

Only different efforts to resist it.

There are no people who like failure,

Only people who try to change failures.

There are no people who like failure,

Only the people who hate it

and those who are used to it.

There are no people who like failure,

Only numerous, various, spurious, specious

Definitions of success.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People–For Your Health

There is no meaning of life.

There is sometimes meaning in life.

Nobody has meaning in life.

Nobody finds meaning in life.

The lucky make meaning in life–

Perhaps they're less lucky than good,

But if you're not so good or so lucky,

Decide what you want to be

Or what you think you really are

and just be that.

If no one will pay you, do it for free.

Don't ever say you don't have time for it.

Nobody has time in their lives.

Nobody finds time in their lives.

The lucky make time in their lives–

Perhaps they're less lucky than good.

Some of them save time with TiVo.

Some of them don't watch television.

Some of them haven't even seen a movie

Since the freaking nineteen-eighties.

Some of them don't sleep so much.

Some of them are very out of touch

With gossipy, unnecessary trivia.

Sure, everyone talks about those things.

Sure, those conversations take time,

But by far the best way to save time

Is to spend less money.

If you don't need it to live or be you,

Don't buy it.

If you don't need it to live or be you,

Don't do it.

If you don't spend it to live or be you,

Don't make it,

and the candle burns slower at both ends.

An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms, Pt. 4: Parsing the List

Athletes, aesthetes, artists

and the average viewer

Think of words as less than whole.

They prefer the language of symbols,

But I love plain old language, too,

and they would be–will be my tattoos.

From spelled-out spells I draw my strength.

My skin my leaf, I'll write at length.

Superior State of an Inferior Being

My body is just transportation–

A bike, a ride, a rickshaw for King Brain.

The body has cruising altitude, a governor.

It can rise so high, and just so fast, and then no more;

To each pursuit, a Super Bowl,

Which one must hope can fill the hole

In ambition, ego, in the soul,

Because there's nowhere else to go

(I've not been, but read and told; I know),

But upon the brain, that's not imposed.

There's one more poem to compose;

There's one more novel to comprose;

There's one more thing to learn, to know.

I cannot finish ere I go.

The Writing Process/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms pt. 3

People preconceive prewriting

As cogitation, notation, organization,

But it ought to begin with inspiration,

and then proceed to trepidation

(Because they are not good ideas

Until they start to make me nervous).

Once I embark upon perspiration,

I am no longer prewriting, but writing;

That part is always worth the waiting.

A Complete List of Rules to Live By/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms Pt. 2

A Complete List of Reasons to Live/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms pt. 1

Lower purposes are history;

Higher planes are a mystery;

Problems and purpose come in threes.

I must remember that while I'm here

Inspiration, Perspiration, Exhilaration;

Adrenaline, Victory, Ecstasy

Are all I need.

The One-Winged Carrier Pigeon

I have doubts,

More doubts than talent, really.

I'm held back by an old life injury.

I need to see people, to do things,

To make a living,

Such as it is.

I need practice.

I need to work on my voice.

I need to work on my characterization.

I need to learn what the heck I'm doing.

But if I don't do it,

Then who?

Winter in Montana, Pt. 2

The first snow of winter

Is always a limp thing.

It is uncertain, non-committal,

Half rain, just Jack Frost's spittle.

It is redeemed by the first real snow,

Which is not interrupted, which grows

Into fluffy, downy ground pillows,

So that when Jack Frost's full fist is upon

Us, we might be cushioned.

An Act of Creation

Thus spake God unto the angels:

“Okay, what we're gonna do here

Is take a grizzly bear, and shrink it down,

and make it really, really like English,”

The results of the experiment, after nearly thirty years:

For starters, I always wear a beard.

I'm well-insulated for cold weather,

and I always want to shut myself in and write all winter.

Grow a Pair

A new pair of glasses

For the new academic –

They don't hide themselves (the frames are thicker).

They do enwide themselves (the lenses are bigger).

They do not represent a new look,

Just a little black White Flag to the book,

Just the perfect transition

From a closet full of sporting goods and skeletons.

Every Other Time Around

The first time is open-to-close,

A slow, straight, sequential slog through prose,

and most exciting, as it traces the unknown,

But once you're done,

You're free to start in the middle, or jump

From the first fruitful phrase to the next one,

and just generally read whatever story you want,

and that's the beginning of the real fun.

Nine Tenths

I didn't make it, but I polished it.

I didn't build it, but I furnished it.

I didn't forge it, but I sharpened it.

I didn't draw it, but I framed it.

I didn't earn it, but I saved it.

I didn't grab it, but I protected it.

I didn't write it, but I revised it.

I don't deserve it, but I want to keep it anyway.

Second Visit to the Optician

It is a special day,

A day when I stop seeing the world,

and start seeing into it,

See the beautiful more beautiful

and even see the ugly uglier.

It seems that something within me

Makes the world more of what it is than it is,

But it is not inside of me,

Only just outside, and bound to fade.

Then the world becomes the world again.

The Other Other 99%

I know about one percent of people I see in a day.

The ninety-nine percent make me want to get away,

Away from the traffic (blah blah break pedal blah),

Away from the long arm of civil law,

One percent as a precaution,

Ninety-nine percent to keep myself sane.

Soon enough, I will likely be gone,

Out of the fire into somebody else's fire.

New Favorite

It usually takes a dozen sightings

Before I'm actually glad to see someone.

It could be what I hear. It could be what I see,

But something in you caught something in me,

and I suppose I have to pick someone,

So you are my favorite new person,

For today.

Enjoy.....?

The One True Path

I insist on paths less traveled. You don't disguise you're bothered.

You push a family and career, push “breadwinner,” and “father.”

You speak normal, and average, and orthodoxy.

You'd have me live like the sitcoms you watch on TV,

But that life's not for everyone; that's why not everybody lives it.

For me, normal waits in line, not on the pedestal you give it.

Your benevolent pushing me into the “right way to live”

Ignores that I don't believe that such a thing exists.

I understand that it's your care for me that's leaving us both sore,

But I won't tolerate any more.

Greg House Would Dig It, Pt. 3: People Don't Change

It's a source of more amusement than fright that my body

Is an empty shell, cracked open at the knees.

I will always come back to football

No matter what's wrong with the NFL,

Be it dull gameplay or the (completely nonexistent) morals

Of the irredeemable, despicable quarterback

On the team I guess I still like,

and I take a break every once in a while,

But canceled or not, I still watch the X-Files.

I am always the same person that I have always been.

A complete list of the ways I have changed:

Questionable Motives

I know there's a line between self-reliant

and just being defiant,

But I have never seen it for myself.

I'm a basement-dweller

Who knows lightening by the thunder,

and so I'm left to wonder–

Do I write because they can't stop me,

Or because they keep trying?

Me and Your Shadow

The cremated lack for crosses,

and it's been years since I saw your tree,

But in many ways, I still live in your shadow.

Everyone I know sees me darkened by it

Every day wondering if, sometimes,

The unforgettable is meant to be forgotten.

As An Alternative to Being Busy (a Poem-in-Dialog)

“How do you keep writing in today's world,

When there are so many people to see

and so many ways to make money?

I barely have time to floss my teeth.”

“Well, I've had many false friends.

I've seen false mahogany.

They make false teeth.

But I have never, ever known

A false sense of satisfaction,

A false sense of accomplishment.

It's non-transferable and genuine.

Walking Ghost

I know all the best corners.

I know how to be unseen and unheard.

An incomplete list of the best places to hide:
1. In plain sight.

I am the unfriendly ghost,

The one who walks away

To haunt emptier places,

Forgotten but not gone.

I Guess the Honeymoon Is Over

I might have asked you to lift a finger,

Or to lay one down, and let it linger.

I could have asked you to tell me what's wrong.

I might have asked your help so I could follow along.

I might have asked you to dance with me, out in the street.

I could have asked you to to say where you want to eat.

I could have asked you to do your best

To remind me why you're different from the rest,

But I just asked for my freedom from you.

It was just one more thing you weren't willing to do.

My Irene

You were a breeze in life's blizzard,

A moment in memory's eternity,

A perishable, cherishable challenge,

A whole relationship unspoken.

I have every right to soon forget.

I've even have half a mind to let

My anger burn through all that's left,

Leave where you swelled my breast a cleft,

Or just to detest,

But I haven't yet.

The Next Step

Human life is out of order

In every sense of the phrase.

It has sequence, in the loosest sense;

Theme doesn't rule over our days.

We aren't separate pieces assembled.

We do not come in a kit,

Nor with an instruction booklet.

We are not, can not be, completed.

We are not as simple as that,

But if you are willing to admit

That you're no more than an Erector set

Mistakenly manufactured of fluid and flesh,

Then feel free to say you're “taking the next step,”

But I never want to hear it again.

Flexibility

I have been to you wall and editor,

Cliff Notes and coat rack and smartecarte.

I can be an entertainer or a hammer.

I am the toolbag who would become toolbox.

You have returned more than the thought

As teacher and manager and nurse,

As audience and muse and producer.

We have been to each other second parents,

Feeding and clothing one the other's heart,

We have both filled needs of happenstance,

But we missed the father-daughter dance.

We have not traced the mortal step,

“The next step,” “the final step,”

Which, in my experience, is no step up,

Which, as I know, is not final or meaningful,

But love is flexible.

Survival of the Fittest

I do not need to be known or called.

I am neither my name nor a rapper, after all.

I have an entire drawer full of names.

They're disposable. Though different,

That makes them the same.

Marshall is probably Shady sometimes,

But I've never even felt Sarah Valentine.

I do not need approval or love.

I am not my source of funding.

I do not, in fact, need anything

That can easily be found in a wallet.

My species has managed to persist

Through grinding poverty,

Through indecent exposure,

Through deliberate obstruction.

My rough crossings are marked for me.

My hands are light and my right foot heavy

With the knowledge that they shall pass.

Chronological Conundrum

You are impeccable

In your watching and reading.

Your words are always worth hearing.

You are interesting,

But I didn't find that out

Until I was already interested.

I don't know how you managed it.

Get Crackin'

Life is a familiar mystery,

A woman's body language,

A foreign tongue I haven't used in ten years,

A complicated technical jargon,

A substitution cypher.

I can read it, but I don't know what it means.

My Own Hypocrisy

A poet finds a reliable refuge in audacity,

Which is liable to become refuge in hypocrisy,

Comfort in the things he does with his pen, between the sheets,

But hypocrisy is the most human of honesties.

No matter how many times I drew inspiration from mediocrity,

Only to rail against life's banality,

Only to rail against heaven and earth,

I always believed in the work.

I suppose the poet is a jerk.

Those Things They Told Me

They told me school would make me a well-rounded person,

and they were right.

When I came back to college four years ago,

I was shaped something like a letter V or a letter Y,

and now I'm kind of a round guy.

They told me that my writing was a waste of time,

and they were right,

Because no matter how many times a few people liked it,

No matter how much of my own joy made an audience irrelevant,

No matter how many times I haven't broken down publicly,

Criminally

(and believe me, I would have liked...),

They won't be convinced otherwise.

They told me that substitute teaching

Would be a valuable experience.

It has been an experience –

Where I learned to teach unplanned,

Unsuspecting and underprepared,

Without rapport or relationships,

Without anything the professors told me

Was the essential, was the base–

and I learned that I'll still be okay.

So I have a few things to say, or at least to vent–

Neither truth nor its speakers are prophets heaven-sent.

I suspect some lie, blind, into truth, on accident,

Or that they told me some things they didn't believe themselves.

(There's a taste of the things I've been wanting to tell.)

Island

You tell me “no man is an island.”

That's an interesting idea,

and one that brings you some comfort,

Which you'll no doubt continue to preach.

You insist that that I'll have to come crawling back,

To seek contact and company,

But the man who doesn't need to be believed

Doesn't need to be seen,

Which must no doubt be frightening.

How would you get leverage on him?

Until My Head Gives In

I am not a sword or a pen.

I am the head of a battering ram,

A legion of foregone writers behind me,

Too many to count or stop or read,

and if they should stumble over debris,

Perhaps the precise prison of our economy,

Our precisely pathological love of money,

Then, by their momentum, on I shall carry,

Until my head gives in.

Show Me How to Show Myself

It is not a matter of following all the steps,

But a way of stepping off the path into greener grass.

It is not a matter of preparation,

But a way of being comfortable unprepared.

It is not a matter of knowing what to do,

But a way of stringing mistakes together with style.

It is not a matter of putting the pieces together,

But a way of being whole, despite defect, despite flaw,

Despite profound empty places in one life's experience of the world,

Of painstakingly placing my list shred of sanity

Into my little, black book of madness–to close it again,

So I can show the world what is left.

Substitute Teacher

The differences between teacher and substitute

Are in hiring committees and line of sight.

The teacher sees an expanse of potential, pitfalls and progress.

The substitute sees the gamut of genuine human emotions –

Relief, slight excitement, and crushing boredom.

I don't know what the hiring committee saw.

All Dressed Up for the Crystal Ball

You couldn't have known better than to ask a poet

What he sees when he looks at you.

You should have, but you couldn't.

Even from back here in the present

I can see that you're the kind of beautiful

That will attract a long line of people

Who will never even notice your kindness, your brilliance,

The joy that shares the atmosphere with you,

and I want to find a way to warn you

Without telling you,

Because knowing ahead of time

Just drops the heart an extra story

and ends in the same place.

That Demon Expectation

You can't expect me to give in to these demands.

You know I'd sooner say “no” out of hand.

You can't push this unreason on a reasonable man.

You have to know exactly where I stand,

But you don't stop coming at me.

You can't expect me to sit here and take this.

You can't expect me not to think it.

You can't expect me to sit here and listen,

If that's really what you're saying,

But that's exactly what you're saying you expect.

I should have known that this would happen. Off my toes,

I'm sorry I let you think me exposed.

I'm half to blame if I keep asking where this goes,

But now I can't help following my nose.

I think I know what stinks.

One Wing Broken

I remember when I thought I had talent.

...

Anyway, I remember liking to pretend.

There's a certain innocence

To believing that you're good at things.

I still remember who took mine.

No matter how high I manage to get,

I will never fly the same way again.

Litosophical Conundrum?

Inspiration blows in on the breeze and the dolors.

You might say my muse wraps herself in many colors.

It's impossible to predict a poem.

So I frequently find myself facing philosophical conundrums,

Choices which I'm always in a rush to make.

Is it better to try a (presumed) creative take

On a topic I find trite, almost feloniously overdone,

Or not to write one?

Physisophical Conundrum

Dear every single solitary woman,

You are a physisophical conundrum.

I'm not trying to be a misogyn.

It isn't really you I'm blaming.

I find many of you pleasant, utterly.

To saw the old cliché, it's not you, it's me.

It's not that you're A pos, it's that I'm AB.

I am the universal Mr. Wrong.

I like my sin too much to date a Christian,

and God too much to date girls who don't believe in one.

Most of all, the lifestyle I'm craving...

This lifestyle I'm creating...

What I'm saying...

Is that I won't have the energy for a relationship that's work,

and I don't want you to wear yourselves out on a jerk,

...so consider me married to my pen?

Happy Ending

You said you still wanted to be friends,

But we're not.

I'm not sure we ever were.

Relationships are all give and take,

But friendship gives and reluctantly accepts.

You were mostly good at the taking.

We were.

I don't think I know how to pine for you.

I only know how to miss you,

Though I am relieved that it is over.

I guess I know this as the perfect ending.

Nothing was lost.

Doubtful/Forgettable

I was doubting my mind and my talents,

Doubting my mission and myself.

I was doubting my decision

To get up in the morning,

and you gave me a tiny reason

To doubt that humanity is evil.

It was but a little pinhole

In a wet blanket of a day,

But fear not, I did notice–

and soon enough, I will forget.

On This Site in 1897 (pt. 2)

Nothing important happened today.

Nothing interesting happened today.

Nothing redeeming happened today.

Nothing even made me smile,

Except my own suspicious nature

As a possible pathological liar.

I would say that today was worthless,

But if I have another day not like this...

Even the ugliest bridges have purpose.

Slightly Out of Time

I can't say it's wrong, but it doesn't feel right,

Like rushing out to hear church sermons in the middle of the night.

It ought to be sad if it isn't quite funny

Like a beggar who haggles when people give him money.

Like hearing summer's anthem when I wake to frosts of fall,

Even though it shouldn't, to see you here, now, appalls.

A Room Full of Ghosts

I can't tell if it's the year, or if it's just tonight,

But the corners keep coming, too fast and too blind.

I don't have the heart and can't summon the mind

To tell if I'm wrong or I'm lost or I'm right

In this pacing and plotting and leaving behind.

I just can't help but see, and then can't help but smile

At these ghosts at my elbow, in the corner of my eye.

Degrees of Time Wasted

We are walking massacres,

Wading a sea of assassinated hours,

Slain unremembered, for no discernible reasons.

Whim, fancy, and animal instinct

Aren't really made for mourning.

Then, there are the hours spend on secret passions,

Misunderstood as more masochistic murder

Of little pieces of our own lives.

I would not trade those hours for anything.

Adam, Karl and Harold Were Wrong

If I had a reason, I did not write

Because I thought it was needed,

Or because I thought there was money in it;

I am not dancing fool, but a poet.

If there had been a reason,

It was not because of the tradition,

Though I may have been aware of one.

No, I wrote, hoping you would smile,

and in hope that I would see,

and if I had succeeded,

It would have been worth my while.

Yes, No, or Option C

Those who let authority push reason from their head

Give choices that are narrow, or a line to walk instead,

But every two-choice question has a third – it's true or false or flight.

I know where all the corners are. I don't mind more time to write.

Not a Riddle

What would you call me?

I don't see myself as angry.

It's true that I get angry.

Most people have a berserk button,

But I have at least three,

Which are not equivalent morally.

What kind of person does that make me?

The Self-Destructive X-Phile's Tale

My whole life is an X-File.

You ought to visit my mind,

Home to a shadowy syndicate of conspirators

Bent on my eventual destruction,

Where I can only flash my badge and my gun

and watch the unthinkable happen.

Acquaintances' Faces (They Blur Together)

There are so many ways to become acquainted

With a person's face.

Of course, there's the regular way,

and strangely I seem to practice it regularly.

Of course, there's also the TV,

and various other celebrity-smeared screens,

Though where the average see an actor,

This writer sees only the character,

(and perhaps others that look much like each other).

The number–and similarity–of faces keeps building.

The world grows less like many faces and more like a gradation,

To the point that I recognize everyone,

With no idea how I remember them.

Schrodinger’s Coin

Sometimes I just get up and go

Where I want. If I don't know,

I let the universe decide–

A green light means I drive on by,

But if it's red, I'll stop instead–

Unless I don't like where I'm led.

If I don't like the cosmos' choice,

It galvanizes my own voice,

So even if I ditch fate's lead,

It still helps in deciding me.

From Ann to Anna

She's old enough to be my mother.

She's young enough to be my daughter.

She's pretty enough to have other friends,

Successful career women, popular men,

People who have something to offer,

and that doesn't seem to stop her.

We have little in common. Experience,

References, fly fast–and right by each our heads,

and if one of those people who says

That guys and girls can't be friends

Tries to file a complaint against her

I will bury him. In “paperwork.”

I Exhale

Most people speak words.

Few exhale them,

But they are as much a part of me

As digestion is.

I could stop them as easily

As my heartbeat,

Words mounting words

Following words

Followed by words,

Most saying nothing.

When I have something to say,

I will tell you,

Unless I forget.

(I'll probably forget.)