My Friend of Misery

You taught me everything I know
About the kind of person who can go
A whole life as a leader
Without resorting to fear.

You taught me half of what I know
About sacrificing pieces of myself.
I twist the knife for my own goals,
Or pull it out to bleed for someone else.

Most of all, it was your teaching put to rest
The child's fears I had of death.
I don't keep those anymore,
Now that I know living is the true horror.

I carved your marks into my weak left side,
Notes even my mess of a life couldn't hide,
an unyielding, unhealing, technicolor scar.
I smile desperately to remember who you were.

First Impressions of the Third Kind

When we introduce ourselves to the aliens,
I hope we don't hold a press conference,
Or, worse, trot out trailers and a marketing campaign.

(HUMANS!
Coming Soon
To a theater near you!)

These means to power and production,
Where we spend our days and nights
Are available to anyone downwind of satellites.

Instead, I'd show them baseball, 'cause it's patient, 'cause it's whole,
'Cause we haven't yet forgotten all that's uselessbeautiful.

I Swear

I swear, I once lived colorfully,
and it dried onto me.
And it dried into me.

It shows on me, that I'm not new.
I can't whitewash; it just shows through.

To black it out, to block it out,
Hides the designs but not the doubts,

and the first time I get wet,
Scrape, break or bend,
Flecks of my past show through again.

Before I Close My Eyes

I set out last night,
Seeking a poet's odd prize,
The words I think, half-conscious
Before I close my eyes.
They are senseless and priceless,
Apparently unrecoverable,
Dreamily irredeemable,
Forever unpreserved.
They, like our grandfathers,
Have the misfortune of being born at the wrong time.

These Misshapen Masochist's Dreams

We all have those misshapen masochist's dreams,
Those brain-breaking, sleep-waking deaths born of fear,
Unbearable ruts of thought we worry quick and deep,
The conditions to the statement "if it happens, I'll just leave,"
Even if the place in question is the life we breathe and bleed.
The only thing that differs is the doomsday we believe,
and I'm learning the ultimate definition of sanity
Is as simple as thinking that the nightmare's not yet here.

Didn't Rule It Out

I never really wanted to meet you; I just didn't rule it out.
I never wanted to look at you the way I'm looking now.
I would never dare to ask you to be more than I expect,
Always dazzling with your eyes, your smile and your intellect.
I didn't need you to sway your sway, to waive just so with your waist
Or to make so many references and flaunt such impeccable taste.
I didn't ask you to jump every gate that I build before I've finished it,
But I didn't ask you to quit.

I Mean to Linger

We live in a world that can be explained scientifically
By some large, finite number of favored theories,
Some simple and elegant, like global rotation,
The Big Bang, evolution, or universal gravitation,
and some grow large in labyrinthine complexity,

But the world can be explained in all sorts of ways.

The world is a buffet,
and I mean to linger.