One Melody

You'd be surprised how many things

One melody can mean,

The mundane things, the obvious,

The things we've never seen,

Interpretations driven by

Affection, irony,

and this snoring revelation:

We're not who we're told to be,

So the joy-chords on the radio

Are distorted by TV,

Because I'm not as joyous as

Cartoons said I should be.

Time Spent Searching

I savor time spent searching

When I don't make it into a chore.

I always find what I'm looking for.

I am no Walter Sherman.

I am no Sherlock Holmes.

I don't always find what I started looking for,

But I always find something.

The Words You Know

You speak in terms of growth.

You speak in terms of progress.

You can only use the words you know

To describe what you think of my leaving.

You just assume I don't have a reason.

I have the one reason that never occurs to you.

One man's evolution is another man's decline.

You are only one man, and I am another.

Childish

We are too immature to be in the same room.

Our whole relationship is childish.

We always squabble like children.

We always squabble the way children paint.

We mix everything together into an ugly mess

Until no matter what else you put in,

It starts to look worse and worse,

Or you can't tell the difference at all.

To be honest, I stopped looking hard.

Hawkeyed Focus

I find your hawkeyed focus strange.

Given your focus on what was

and what might someday be,

Where'd you find the gaze to glare at me?

When I say I've had it,

I guess it means I don't have it.

Find some other stone to bleed.

I'm not in a donating mood.

By a Dam

A river is not the same thing as a man.

I am not made weaker by a dam.

If life is flow from wake to sleep,

Unmoving moments bring relief,

But still momentum plays a part.

Where there's no stop, there's no restart,

and after interludes from go,

Man might forget just why he flows.

Evaluated

For some reason, people think genius

Is more worthy of praise than study and practice.

To be evaluated by others is scary,

Am I a Mozart or a Salieri?

I say I can't be either one

As an amateur with professional pretension.