Consumed

I don't know why I am consumed

By the same arguments

Over and over again.

Perhaps they bring me hot comfort.

I don't know why I am consumed

By hypothetical perfection.

It seems like an futile

and time-consuming direction.

I don't know why I am consumed

By taking things out of their times and places

and putting them in another.

Perhaps it's the scientific feeling of ultimate control.

I don't know why I am consumed

With the memory, with the old me.

He was smaller, particularly in the belly.

And the mind.

A Face in a Magazine

I saw a face in a magazine,
and it looked like yours,
Or at least my eyes connected
The past to the present,
The memories to the moment,
My discretion to my desire,
My heart to my mind,
and my passion to that pale imitation.

I doubt if you would remember me.
I doubt if that will make a difference.

Inertia and Unkind Thoughts

Propelled by inertia and unkind thoughts,
I don't even start on the work that I've got.
I lack any sense of direction my own,
and shut in or crowded, I wind up alone.
I'm unsure of my exit.  I don't choose to leave.
In the past, collisions with life wakened me.

A Modern City

A modern city is a work of engineering art,

A codependent social network of a bunch of moving parts.

There are factories to make our things and warehouses to keep them.

We need recycling, waste and sewer services to come delete them.

Then there are roads and public transport, all organized at city hall,

and of course we need a power plant, or it won't run at all.

A Mammal's Cells

A mammal's cell's unbound by walls. It is more changeable than pretty.

In that way, as in others, it's just like a modern city.

Its nucleus is City Hall, abuzz in plans, administration.

It depends on mitochondria for power generation.

Miscellanea sit in vacuoles, life's self-storage units.

A manufacturing sector? Let the ribosomes do it.

The recycling, waste and sewer are a job for lysosomes,

and the endoplasmic reticula can stand in well for roads.

Nightly

I have addiction (the doctor says need)
For my nightly six hours of sleep,
Hours I'd like back to pay myself first
From a schedule that's otherwise ready to burst.
So instead what I get every night is a choice
Between forging a path into the future for my voice
Or paying mind to the old master-iconoclasts
Who put words in my mouth with their voice from the past.

Fighting My Past

I'm fighting the memory of things that I've said.
I'm fighting the setbacks no longer ahead.
I fight the expectations forged by others' memories.
I fight the expectations forged by how life used to be.
I have no way of knowing just how long I'll last,
But that's how much time, to the second, I'll spend fighting my past.