The (Im)Personality of Authorial Intent

My poems sometimes, but do not always, rhyme

In couplets or triads or alternating or mid-line.

They can be in iambs or in trochees or in abject lack of meter.

Their metaphors can stroke egos or kick those in the Peter,

But from 'assonate' to 'yarning,' whatever these lines do,

I wonder if you've realized that they are recording you.

Three Rounds with the Fourth Dimension

I feel like I've been in the octagon with time

After most of a month of the kind of days

That put content and intent both in a blender

With casualty and causality and eventuality

and inevitability and pre-existing instability,

Which is to say, “Vigilosomnia, it's been a helluva bout,”

But I will fight forever, or immediately tap out,

Whatever it takes to keep this week's hand off 'liquify'.”

Mirror Mirror, in the Dark

It's fashionable to wonder who people see

Every morning, every night, when they look in the mirror,

and to wonder who those people are in the dark,

But I've found philosophy the lightest of larks,

'Cause I won't look in the mirror, away from what I write,

and unlike using the mirror, it's not contingent upon light.

In fact, I'll happily stay at it long into the night,

Writing in pitch air tinted only by the screen's glow

and by the nuclear fire deep down in my bones,

and though to say so out loud seems dishonest, seems lame,

The man in the mirror and the dark–in all times–are the same.

The Scattershot Ballad of Classical Napalm

Deep in a distant fourth-dimension land

Was the first time that I played the passionate fan

Of a low-tuned, lack-talent teen garage band.

A couple years later, perhaps a touch brighter

In my eight year of being an unfinished-novel writer,

I thought up one plot to thrill me, and another to excite her,

A fiction-universe foundation, should I manage to write her.

When I was still near-to-beer-age (twenty three years, by name),

Some friends started a band, but their handle was lame.

I decided that should I ever want to form one of the same,

I'd have Classical Napalm set metal aflame.

Fresh off seeing my best character play baseball, where it led,

My worst unfinished novels cleared from my head,

I set work on semi-fictional teen years instead,

I reminisce, connection, and appellation all to bed,

and in fiction does Classical Napalm forge ahead.

Now a moment of noise, and raise your devil-fists

For a hard-rock/metal/punk band that doesn't exist.

All Hail Classical Napalm!

Compatibility Breeds Contempt

We might both sleep with lights on, you keeping fear at bay,

and I afraid of waking up blind to pen and page.

It's true that we are satisfied, 'gainst friends' and parents' wishes

With our figures and our forms, and find each other's delicious.

It's true that neither of us think of marriage

As a lace-white fairy-tale-layered icing-carriage.

It's a commitment to all time, every time, at any time,

But you use all your time to learn, and I to write,

Pursuits which we would never bear sacrificing.

We agree on all of these most important things,

and that's why I can't see us working.

Habit's Gilded Cage

Culture and convenience can ensnare us, bind us tight

To habits we don't care for, even practice we deride,

With which we keep on breathing; without, feel dissatisfied.

The grass is always greener-looking on the other side,

Though if you ever make it there, you'll struggle to survive.

Even if you spend every minute on the outside, all your life,

Using sticks to hunt, your hands to fish, and even leaves to wipe,

and though you thought it drudgery, you'd not trade for paradise.

We are so easily institutionalized.

The Life Cycle

Waking to eat,

Eating to walk,

Walking to work,

Working to leave,

Leaving for home,

Home to sleep,

Sleeping to wake

--

Waking to eat,

Eating to walk

Walking to work

Working to leave

Working to live

--

Living to work