To an Ingenue, Who Deserves Better

Plenty of folks can make hearts skip a beat,

But you make a man's skip three.

You're a once-in-a-lifetime person to meet,

and a dime a dozen, that's me.

I never felt that we got close enough,

But I'm close enough to see,

To admire in you all of the good stuff

That doesn't exist in me.

Yet I know that naught comes of admiring

When it only goes the one way.

They say there's a first time for everything,

But I don't think they said it's today.

So all that's left is making myself see;

To accept these facts, deep in my mind:

That I was born nearly a decade too early,

and you were born ten times too kind.

To an Ingenue, Talking in Class

You are too young (which you're tired of hearing)

To be sick of the ride, though you've yet to try steering.

In every thought of you, I hope you really mean

That you're sick of this place, or you're sick of routine,

Or you're sick of being shuttled from the desk to the shelf,

Or even sick of time spent with the poet himself.

You won't always be locked in an ivory tower,

and our time together has ticked down to mere hours.

You're chained one more year to the life of the letter,

and I find myself hoping you find something better.

Why I Write, Part x+272: Drive It Home

I've lost some pop; I've popped, gone flat,

Replaced Bitter Bierce with soft and fat.

Now I'm the gray A-baller, just playing out the string,

An old one-trick pony still doing the same thing,

Driving a pen that sputters and coughs

Its way back to the well. I go back to the trough.

I scarcely recall having faith that I'm right.

I still wear the sword, but I skive off the fight.

I used to write because I blazed with belief.

Now I write just to turn an old leaf.

Total Loss

It's just a matter of time, but it matters.

So many miles you wouldn't know my wear pattern

Have passed under my radar and under my tread.

I aspired to leap; oft, I boiled instead.

All the cells in the boy who let you die are dead.

That idealist made by self-interest myopic

Has been wholly replaced by this consummate cynic,

So that, were I given a post-college try,

I suspect that you'd prob'ly still die.

All hail the new guy, same as the old guy.

Why I Write, Part x+271: Unicorn Blood

Of you is the gossip within my swelled heart,

So allow me to do Shakespeare's kindness, in part.

In fact, my heart won't shut up about you.

I will help you live on, just as Eos might do.

The knowledge you're near thrills my skin like a feather,

So I'd like to grant you cursed half-life, forever.

You might be immortal, but how will you know it

When committed to text by an unread blog-poet?

Why I Write, Part x+270: Why I Might Not Write Much Anymore

I failed to be the man I'd become

When you needed me, and now all is done.

I came equipped with intent, but no plan,

and I am the white-armored bannerman

Of storytelling tradition that makes women props.

Who you actually were, I have almost forgot,

Though I recall vividly how you once made me feel,

Like I need to think of myself to make you real.

Was I really your friend, or did I get confused–

the millennial Hamlet–use your ghost as my muse?

I still hope I regret my part and your ending,

But that I write of you, I'm no longer pretending,

and now that at last I have ended this lie,

We'll see how many ways I can let a thing die.

A Bad Poem for Good Times

I finally figured out which want

Is secondary need.

If contentment is elusive,

Then I've got closing speed.

It's efficient transportation

and the best part of my day.

It's called a motorcycle,

and it's my two-wheeled bae.

The Gentle Waking

Dawn usually breaks, but sometimes it heals,

A sunrise I taste even more than I feel.

The new light softly through yonder window breaks

and something inside me that feels years younger wakes.

The first morning in ages that's not just evening's end,

But beginnings of what gentle dawn can portend.

It doesn't even feel like the calm before the storm...

It just feels warm.

Between 'Know' and 'Notice' and 'No'

Little Miss Vlad the Retailer,

Rejected by the fool of fools

Who dated Belle the Impaler?

I suppose over time, a poet learns

This passing disregard for design,

Mental ointment for psychic burns.

Sometimes, the cover hides the words

From those who might check you out,

Or the circling carrion-birds.

I've never seen you, only spotted.

It's not a real rejection if

I just don't know enough to be besotted.

Try, Try Again

You must make a second effort
If only one should fail.
If three efforts end without success,
Then blaze another trail.

Frozen in Time

Take care as time continues

With all the folks you've met.

If relationships don't grow,

The beginning's all you'll get.

If their budding maturation

should, for some reason, stop,

They'll freeze into position,

As ice might in a mop.

I'll say how my folks treat me,

and you'll see what I mean:

They always will be forty

and I'll always be fourteen.

Why I Write, Part x+269: Accidentally On Purpose

Though I wish I were more painstaking,

I imagine how tight it would bind

If it weren't merely a saying

To truly be of a single mind.

I would be thoroughly discontent

Without those thoughts everyone gives

On accident, absent all intent.

Those thoughts are where poetry lives.

The Number-Two Reason (After Lack of Talent) That I Am Not a Famous Author

There's a million emotions I don't really miss.

I can't recall fear, but I still can feel bliss.

When I write, I feel happy. Do I ever feel sad?

I sure do get angry—take the good with the bad.

I never feel stress, and go years 'tween premonitions.

I daresay I'm no expert in human emotions.

My favorite one is probably “motorcycle,”

But the one I feel most would be nothing at all.

My Personal World, Part 25: Open Up Old Times

I get out this album, again, and I open up old times,

Improved by melody, meter, and rhymes.

I remember the one who made my good times better,

Improved them with sympathy, laughter and letter.

I remember this one gave me understanding, stimulation

When I was at my worst, with no career or avocation.

I remember how this one served as my armor,

Protection from myself and enemies at my door.

I remember the ones who supported my foreign years,

Who forged a connection 'tween my home and my heres.

I listen and remember, or at least I try,

and I smile because I forgot how to cry.

Ketchup and Catfood

Most folks need an occasion to go out on a date.

I need only a lost fork or a broken plate,

Or cookies and bread, or a blade to shave my face

Or new lock to keep shut the gate at my place.

To put more texts on my prepaid cell,

To clear my head when I'm not thinking well,

Ketchup and catfood, or any of the above

Gets me a night out with my two-wheeled love.

Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Better, pt. 2

Perhaps to see the road rush by,

Perhaps to feel the breeze,

To take the turn at 45

and forty-five degrees,

Perhaps to go there just for fun,

Then take the long way home,

Perhaps to seat exclusively

Wherever I may roam,

Because no jurisdiction's law

Holds traffic to its letter,

Wherever I've heard four are good,

I've found that two are better.

A Limerick Eaten by a Thesaurus

I utilize uncomplicated words when I compose,

Admitting it appears a smidgen mundane and hackneyed.

I scribble what I recognize,

Allow my rectitude to appear,

and I'm confident that I apply the words properly.

Macklemore Might or Might Not Dig It

What's wrong with wearing something gauche or passé?

Why spend down to the lint to keep a wardrobe up to date?

The answers don't suffice, because nobody really knows

What's wrong with wearing your father's old clothes.

Think about it a second, that's all it takes to realize

That the same genes might make the man the same size.

If the shoe hurts, don't you dare just grin and bear it.

If the shoe feels good, why, then it's a good idea to wear it.

Hunting the World's Most Dangerous Book

The thesaurus is a dangerous work.

Behind its calls, writers' folly does lurk.

The thesaurus might make jesters of us all.

If into its trap do we wearily fall

By mustering new talks up into the fold

And serving them as they were just like the old.

One Day a Year (I Miss Big Box Stores)

The weight of our culture's priorities

Bows many of us to our bended knees,

and one day a year turns the whole world pink.

Through rose-colored conscience, we choose not to think:

Why just one person? Why just one day?

Why mothball steadiness, friendship away?

I guess everyone, every day would be kind of demanding,

and I sure do love the candy.

Why I Write, Part x+267: For No Good Reason(?)

Though it's unpleasant, and thought it is trite,
For near fifteen years I've continued to write
Of a beautiful life and its ugliest end
Which I've long understood, but refused to comprehend.
I might've covered every detail, but over this I've glossed:
The world gains nothing from the writing, and the life's already lost.

My Personal World, Part 24: Relativity

Bass banging out a blistering back-beat,

Hoping against hope to hold the high point

Of the dying week,

The ticky-tack ticking-away of time

Siphons, slurps, slips, sags, slides, settles,

Into a slow leak.

Out of the Box and Into the Fire, or A Poet's Worst Emotional Argument for Universal Basic Income

“Just think outside the box,” they say

As 'hind clichés they hide.

A residence outside the box

I wish they would provide.

For though I've searched in foreign lands

Across the sea's dark sheen,

There's few things I have yet to find

Save refuge from routine,

and though I'm mostly stifled,

My moods and muse both wan,

To remain confined by management's

My one preserving plan.

For when I'm working, “different's”

a longer word for “worse.”

I'm quickly made complacent.

It's my temperament and curse,

and outside of a schedule

Upon my face I'd fall.

A refuge in quick failure

Is no refuge at all.

New Years Resolution

Oil and water, mixed poorly from birth,

At peace at the opposite ends of the earth:

The one's hopes map well to the other one's fears,

and though peaceably separate for miles and years,

The one misses the other in spite of the pain

Of deliberate friction with nothing to gain

and the other is creeping toward missing the one,

toward regret for his being an unpleasant son.

It occurs, in this Janus, to this lingering other:

This year's one to make peace between child and mother.

The Old Man and the Seed

Gaze now, callow youth, upon the old man spurned,

His overtures honest, his calls unreturned.

Why should he long, unmet, for this one connection?

To change callow youth from his own sins' direction?

To guide one who holds the same interests as he?

To extend the world's recall of how it used to be?

Or perhaps it's not to teach. Does he aspire, then, to learn?

Gaze now, callow youth, upon the old man spurned.