Dressing One Sleeve at a Time

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the beard.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the smile.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the girl on my arm.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not her scent.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

Just as red for my heart on my sleeve.

The Consequence of Listening to Christmas Music in January

Nostalgia is joy with no timing.

Time for the past has passed.

I would be twelve hours early

By the path of the sun

(In a month when I'm not used to one),

If three weeks hadn't expired.

How could something so timeless

Be so precisely ill-timed?

Home Is Where the Stomach Is

Brave is thought a blessing; foolhardy a curse.

Quicksand and a rut both stick. I'm not sure which is worse.

I've gone a little more than just around the bend.

I'm down; I'm in it, up a creek, completely out of hand.

I am completely foreign in a completely foreign land.

I am the only stranger in a room full of friends.

On the other hand...

I'm eating dessert and watching a favorite movie.

Home is not something you ever fully leave.

Who Needs Mary Jane?

The last thing the world needs

Is a superhero without a cause;

The first thing I need is for it to be me.

I don't need very impressive powers.

I don't really need the one-name fame.

I don't even need the Hollywood ending;

In fact, I need to stop in the third act.

I just want the lights-dimmed part of the movie,

Where time draws out and the world turns against me.

I wish I wore my freak on the outside

So people would leave me alone.

Sigmund Freud's Excused Absence

With the same risk of falsehood, I could be kind,

and say you live on near the front of my mind.

I've no doubt that it would be more Christian

To say I took attendance in my life and you were missing,

That as life flows on, thoughts of you move upstream,

But I honestly believe that I'm as heartless as I seem,

Which I prove to be fact by believing that the truth

Is that I could find a thousand girls here just like you.

Doors and Windows

I don't need to be told. I already know

That when God closes a door, I should check the window

and glance for a chance, an opportunity.

I never do know when it's looking for me.

Sometimes, I'd like to reach out and grab it,

Bud sometimes I'd rather retain my old habit,

and sometimes I'd like to read, or write poems,

and want solitude in a room that is closed.

History of American Literature, as Understood by a Poet and a Baseball Fanatic

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

I'm sure that he knows what that means.

I suppose I contain some bacteria.

I'm, by my culture's standards, unclean.

I suppose if I did contain multitudes,

Then many would like Christmas songs,

While a few would enjoy raunchy parodies

The court system struck down as wrong.

Some enjoy triple cheeseburgers.

Others don't like to bunch at the waist.

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

If I do, it accounts for my tastes.