Wildfire/Spreading/Growing

The back of my throat is wildfire.
I feel it spreading.  I feel it growing,
and the pain amounts to nothing
Next to being utterly blocked,
Next to knowing I have no voice.
That pain, too, shall pass
Once I stop pretending it is new.

Your Taxes

Civilized society taxes freedom
At the highest marginal rate.
They tax them all, save one,
Then return a percentage.
This is your refund.

The one untaxed freedom is thought,
Which we relinquish without a thought
Every time we hear a word
and give that word the permission to be a thing
and give them both permission for offending.

Remember, next time you are easily upset,
That you are only raising your taxes.

Shinier

I am a poet without hope, and the shinier for it.
To lay down and gaze up longingly at the stars
Would be to make a landing pad of myself,
To invite the wild, unschooled skies
and the rigid, unquestioning authorities
Down with a cargo against which I hoped the hardest.
It's not that I can't see the poetry in adversity,
It's just that a poet who writes only of suffering
Becomes a bore even to himself,
While I maintain an avid interest in my own life.

It's Just...

It's just like me, giving the long explanation.
It's just the easier way.
It's just like your parents, the quiet frustration.
It's just one of us going away.
It's just like the time that we swore we'd be eager;
It's just plain to see that we're not.
It's just something that happens; It's just that time passes;
It's just the best option we've got.
It's just like that picnic we went on last August.
We're just the bare stem of the clover.
It's just like you not to admit to yourself–
It's just over.

Ususual Beasts

Beliefs are the most unusual beasts.
Faced with the most inhospitable climes,
Assailed at every moment, from every side
They often find a way to thrive,
Even growing stronger, more robust,
Changing only to grow a scaly crust.
Yet, elsewhere, though they are the stronger,
They may just choose to live no longer.

Tugging on the Strings

I may not be a puppet,
But from nine to five I feel it
Tugging on the strings inside.
This meat-bag just conceals it.

Other hours, the bag that contains me
Is primarily there to carry ideas.

My multi-function biotechnology
Is complex enough to guarantee
If more than one should ever meet,
That one the other will mislead.

It's A Process

Tongues always grow spry
Around unusual tasks.
They ask how (if not, it's why);
I answer if they ask.

I say “it's a process,”
and so is dialing a phone.
What I mean is “it's in progress,”
and I don't really know.

The Next Line

I love it when I know the next line
Before watching.
It's how I know there's a writer on board,
That someone's driving.

I hate it when I know the next line.
Why should I watch what I could write?

If I could have written it,
Why am I not getting paid?

The Pointlessness

I string a few symbols together,
Then weave the strings into one another.
So, poets make lanyards of words.
I wonder how many laugh at the pointlessness,
But I like things that make me laugh.

The Siren's Call

Everyone's heard of the siren's call,
But English class did it no justice at all.
The truest allure of it isn't the sound,
But the hope of the lost that they may have been found.
For so long only led where our culture compels,
I'd follow another voice anywhere else.

One Hundred Twenty

One hundred twenty months don't hide what I didn't do.
After ten years' time I can't be sure I even remember you.
I never pictured myself this much older.
I can't believe I'm still no wiser.
I can't believe a decade is all I get–
So long to decimate my soul with regret.

I never really moved from where she left me.
Here I am, on the other side of should-be,
Surrounded by questions I can't answer.

They call this living–
Just one more thing
I never did for her.

Let's Play a Game

At first it was “let's play a game of six-on-one.
Winners don't have to sit in the corner and cry!”
Eventually, the games got a little more sly,
and I stopped sitting in the corner.
Finally, we played around of “monkeys see, monkeys do.”
Ever had a hundred people try to look like you?

I never belonged,
But I survived.

Now, on the way from too little new
To way too much to do,
I'm constricted by an ill-fitting schedule.
The long arm of bureaucracy thrashes me up and down–
One toe-deep end-one toe-deep end.
I don't belong...

Nightmares

Naked in a room full of people you know,

Falling, and waiting to hit, but you don't,

Or the dead-soul dullness behind the eyes

Of someone who turned your unwaking life

Into something even the dead wouldn't want–

The content is never important.

What's important is that fear is only a dream.

Unbelievability

Unbelievability,
Sesquipedalian,
Triskaidekaphilia,
Antidisestablishmentarianism–
Why do we have words like them?
I've always assumed it's because
Anything you can't say in one word
Doesn't count.
Otherwise,
Why would someone try
To reduce "poetry" to one word?

More Than Fair, Pt. 2

You make me run when you won't move,
Interrupt me, but demand I listen to you.
You stay at home, but then you lash
At me when I'm not chasing cash.
You gawk, then tell me not to stare,
But as a muse, you're more than fair.

Illogical

My behavior around you
If not yet ill-fated,
Has been ill-conceived,
Most times illogical,
Perhaps inexplicable,
Try as you may have.
You've called it love;
You've called it madness;
I've disagreed that there's a difference.

A Dog and a Poet

I never understood “artists” who are always on the grind
For more of what store clerks and pizza boys find.
I'm as commercial as a slight breeze, and almost as driven.
I'm a dog and a poet. That's the mind I've been given.
I don't spend effort chasing “that story,” “that rhyme.”
I'm just looking to flavor (or waste) lots of time.

Vandalized

I move through a book on my imagination's feet,

Which is why reading keeps my mind fit.

Every book is a playground, too, so reading keeps me young.

It takes me back to my own playground days,

and sometimes, to the first time I saw one vandalized.

The first time I ever came across a bad apple in a good batch,

A book all wrong in a genre I thought was alright.

It was like someone had torn down the monkey bars and the slide.

Now, when I dive into a book, I make sure to bring some cement.

Miniature

I live in a world of quantum challenges,

and academic responsibilities,

Of infinitesimal risks

and artificial consequences,

awash in insignificant glances.

Heck, I live my whole life in miniature.

Unsolved

Too young to know better and too old to resist,
We were just close enough to be kept apart,
So we each changed, in habit and form,
If nothing else, to repulse the other.
Neither one of us would turn blue,
If we could hold it more than five minutes.

Solve 4 Ex

Place x and y variables
On opposite sides
Of an advanced problem.
Add novelty and desperation
and the equation is unbalanced,
But all you need to do
Is subtract attraction
To divide both sides
Before they multiply.
There should be no remainders.

Ex Plus Why

The value of ex plus why is often negative.

It wasn't that we stopped getting along,

But we so rarely came in together.

I was late when you were early,

and I was playing when you were resting,

So either I can syncopate my life for you,

Or we can never hear from each other again.

In the Keeping

Secrets swell in the keeping.
Sometimes someone sniffs them out,
But there is nothing that does not turn.
Nothing can grow as big as the world,
and all things forgotten dry up.
Some secrets don't need digging for,
Now that they are just more dirt.

The Breath of the Past

Two decades of my life were brisk,
and they blew by,
One day never having a scent of the next,
Or a clue about the last,
But now the breath of the past
Blows cold upon my back.
I can't move so fast,
But perhaps if I remember, I'll adapt.

Straw

She is a straw in a great well of love and nature,
The spirit world's ambassador,
None and all may travel with her.
She is an astral commuter.
Unheard and deeply understood,
Rejected and deeply beloved,
To describe her is to gift-wrap a flower,
A noble and futile gesture.

Get Right

Get going, get over, get traction, get up.
Hang tight, hang loose, hang out, hang tough.
Hold on, hold steady.
Keep it level, keep on trucking,
Keep your head up, keep your stick on the ice,
Shake it off, Shake it out.
Shake it.
Unhitch the trailer.

Get right.

Weapon of Choice

It might be some silly tradition you've had

Since you were four years young.

It might be a vice that you know you should quit,

Which makes it twice as fun.

It might be friends you don't deserve

Who let you talk too long,

Or some catchy, third-rate, number-twenty,

Upbeat little song

That came out seven years ago

and you just heard it now.

It only matters that you fight back.

I don't think it matters how.

Lighter Than Air

The way you walk makes the dragonflies stare.

The words you exhale come out lighter than air.

The gears of your mind whirr by too fast to see

Why you'd flirt with a ground-bound man-mound like me.

I tried to follow you, but the winds just weren't right,

and you sailed a thousand miles with one step into the night.

A Woman

A woman I rejoiced in meeting

Brings more with a familiar greeting,

But though I laud, her folks lament;

They wonder where their young girl went.

I find it backward, bitter how

They hardly see the her of now,

But girl-her's not gone anywhere;

In summer growth, spring's seed's still there.

Only Nature

Some say, in quiet, nature hums.
It's their excuse to play their drums.
Deep in the throes of tie-die dreams
They talk of nature's harmony.

The only nature I know is
A place no hippie's fit to live,
A place that's red in tooth and claw
'Neath anarchy of Darwin's law,
A place of stingers, spikes and thorns,
Where all from man to ant make war.

Unconsidered Words

Nothing tastes more disgusting

Than my own unconsidered words,

Reductive, repugnant, ridiculous,

Regretted the second before they left me.

Nothing tastes more delicious

Than my own unconsidered words,

Unregretted, unrepentant, unrestrained,

Unchained in pursuing my own passion.

They're only words, after all, only symbols

Which lose strength as they ripple.

The Alchemical Properties of a Seating Chart

In the wrong hands, a seating chart is the philosopher's stone,

Capable of turning an actor, an athlete, an artist,

A future father of three distinct daughters

Into “the one who sits in the middle of the third row.”

Struggling Writers

I have made my peace with subjects and predicates,

With message and purpose and audience,

With phrases and clauses and serial commas.

What I'm fighting is the pejorative use of the term "struggling writer."

All writing is grappling with a language; no writer will ever pin it down.

The only truly failing writer is the one who stops struggling.

Bits

If a bit falls in the cloud

Before it gets any pageviews

Does it make a sound,

and if it had two million

Two months ago, did it?

Time is a mystery

Wrapped inside a gordian knot

Wrapped inside the human brain,

But the internet's a funhouse,

and our memory is a mirror.

Facebook is now, on its way to then.

Youtube is always, and never.

Half and Half

I've come to a sort of rough comfort with space

'Tween proverbial rocks and their partner, hard place.

Between need to and want to I've left some regrets,

But neither is that choice as bad as it gets.

Between want to and want to, I'm no more than half right,

and the what's wrong can never be less than half my fault.

The Consumer

I have lived decades on a steady diet of American Culture.

I have chewed on it for long hours and drunk it down in great gulps.

It is in the very air I'm breathing; immersed even now, I absorb it by osmosis,

and because I cannot push it out, I am heavily impacted.

After all, American culture is not high in fiber.

Writer's Edge

Writer's block's well-known, a failure of the whole brain.

Writer's edge is much less so, a failure of imagination,

Where I step out as far as I feel that I'm able,

Swipe at ideas just out of reach on the table.

I'm not brave enough to take a step closer to them.

I'm not fool enough to take one step closer to them.

Core Beliefs

An incomplete list of my core beliefs:

1.  I am a fifth-rate poet, pretending to be a fourth-rate poet.
I have to believe it.
It's a safety net
For a man who has lived dangerously enough to learn that

2.  Indifference is the only emotion that can't be disappointed.

Another Link in the Chain

Our starched moral rectors play dismay well,

Their mouths open, aghast at the bloody mess

Made of what they try so hard to sanitize.

First, the teens are taught to be meat puppets.

Then, we throw twenty-five of them,

An unmatched set, into a big, sweltering melting pot.

Finally, we tell them to grind it out for a year.

Didn't anyone know this is the recipe for sausage?

Watson

Donne had his sonnets;

T.S. had his tomes.

Holmes had his mysteries,

and Watson had his Holmes.

Jacques Cousteau, he had his diving suit;

Chuck Yeager had his wings.

What we search for is the same;

It's strange we'd all find different things.