The Consuming Tree

It is a great green everything,

Hollow, emptied and meaningless.

It is the leaf off an old oak tree:

The very means of its living.

It can be plucked and escape all notice.

Midsummer

Now is the midsummer of my discontent.

I grope for AC, but I've nary a vent.

A head-shrinker might call it a minor depression,

But I know that myself, so why schedule a session?

I suppose opinions might vary. Let's see.

Is there a such thing as reverse S.A.D.?

I suspect if there is, it's, at most, at the behest

Of the most very beautiful pharmaceutical reps,

and who doesn't have enough overdiagnosis in their lives?

A hippie would eschew the medical, and say I have “bad vibes,”

But the sixties are over. His argument is irrelevant.

I'm simply writing less, and what I do write doesn't rhyme.

At twenty-eight, am I skiing the back face of my prime?

The Zombie's Hobby

Being hit over the head by inspiration

Is like being accosted by golden retrievers,

Going down under the furry licks of flame,

Sudden but ultimately uplifting.

Tripping and falling into inspiration

Is like falling headfirst into infatuation.

It pushes everything else in life aside,

A beautiful inconvenience.

Pursuing the ultimate end of inspiration

Is like undertaking a scientific investigation,

Following a logical, but not always linear, path

To the newfound, ancient unexpected.

Writing is all of the best parts of life

Without the exertion required to live.

It is, more or less, a zombie's hobby.

The Difference Between Depression and Anorexia, Pt. 2

My mind is mired

In quicksand, in memories

Wet with waist regret.

The Difference Between Depression and Anorexia, Pt. 1

My mind is mired

In quicksand, in memories

Wet with waste, regret.

Some Days and Some Days

Some days, the sun rises a little higher

In the classroom and on the teacher.

On those days, the spirit seems to rumble

As walls that imprison understanding crumble,

and the world is enlightened from underneath their shadows,

and some days, seeing your skinniest student eat a sandwich

Has to be enough.

And Lady Mondegreen

A lyric drops me in the deep end of a teeming memory

Because of a mishearing that I wish the song could be.

Other times mistaken eardrums send me down into the gutter,

Awash in thoughts that I regret, or relish, but can't shutter,

But usually when my mind over ears trip and fall,

The image I land in makes no sense at all.