Not All Who Wander Are Found

I exist on uncertain footing,

In a landscape covered in the sands of misunderstanding,

But I exist nonetheless.

I think that I am less homesick–more simply just a mess.

I think that I am too keenly aware

That I moved to a room where I've hardly written–from another,

and there from another.

If I thought I had the resolve, I might resolve to write more.

My Office in Room 1348 of the Panopticon

I mount to the poet's pedestal when the mood strikes,

Though it's only on level thirteen of twenty-five.

I am not an especially friendly man.

I keep my own counsel as much as I can.

I'm thought of more often as “brooding” than “fun,”

and I might be an island–but I'm not alone on one.

I try not to judge. At most times, I take care.

Most times I remember I ought not to stare,

But what you reveal, the public will see.

The uncovered window forfeits privacy,

and I don't wish to be caught unobservant.

Observation's evaluation, on the road to judgment,

But I didn't earn this guilt–and you didn't close your curtain.

Two Travelers Converged on a Road

I have become blind to innocence,

Or perhaps immune to perceptions of it.

We all get dingy. We all stay low.

There are pieces of all of us we left along the road–

The unmissed we don't remember we know.

So when others see you tease a camera just right,

I just see turnabout you're playing on life.

I don't expect you not to have a history.

I'll just help you look for pieces if you do the same for me.

The Poster in the Basement Room

I remember believing

That we're not alone among the stars,

That it wouldn't be too long or too far,

That there is life on Mars.

I remember wanting to believe.

I remember treating the uncertainty

As tantalizing possibility.

I had not yet learned what silence means.

I remember needing to believe,

The thirst, the lust, to seek and find

Of a creature with friends and family, but no kind.

Now, all I believe, I pretend to know:

That we may just be, or may be left, alone;

That any who managed to knock or pick up the phone

Would be too smart to crash our reality show.

The Post-Postmodern Prometheus

It marches in place

On the frozen electron river

Of these ersatz notebook pages:

An entire army of me,

A thousand narrators

Of a thousand different stories,

and someday I will find the one

Who is enough of me to be human,

and little enough of me to live on his own.

No Time For Love

You say I could still leave, with you in tow,

Disparaging the scope of the places I'd go.

I wish to compose an ocean of oddities,

To see waves of my words as wide as the seas

Crash upon sonnets as the sands on a beach,

and when I'm not doing that, I wish to teach.

I ask only for the time, and not the help.

You could tell me I'm only distracting myself,

(and if you can say the words, then why not me?)

But how many of us would actually believe?

Seeing Is Not Believing (In Which Our Hero Talks Himself Out of Another Crush)

I believed there was no settling for two out of three this time.

I believed there was more to her than three boxes could define.

I believed diamonds dazzled her, but didn't fill her heart.

I believed what I saw when she gave me a start.

Now, I see the way she is consumed by the style of things.

Now, I see the what kind of habits she's been making,

What little she does, and does over and over again.

Her shapes don't come together right from my new angle on them.