20/40

As friends graduate, move on, my mind dwells on the road.

I've traveled parts with people; in the whole length, I'm alone.

It's best traveling light on such uncertain paths.

Once confident in the route, God changes it fast.

If you asked me a year ago what I'd be doing today,

I'd say almost the same thing, just half a world away.

Hindsight's not just 20/20. It's the luxury of rest.

And foresight, done at high speed? 20/40 at best.

Why I Write, Part x+260: Why I Unwrite

In my youth drawn by song into meter and rhyme,

But with no sense of my place in it, and no sense of time,

I've learned to treat great masters' sweat-born inventions

As an Empire to fight against, as merely conventions,

So I cover over them, thinly connect them, bite into them, a spider.

I'm no author of record. I'm only the unwriter.

Playing Doctor, Pt. 2

Diagnosis: Mood disorder that doesn't exist.

Symptoms Include: Tendency to insist

On passionate wording of grand declarations

Announcements, pronouncements, and their explanations;

Attempts to regale you with tales of past glories,

Or at least entertain you with shaggy-dog stories;

Preferring my eyes' lies to other, wiser senses;

Ignoring the banalities of income and expenses;

and disdain for life, contemning days and nights

For you, and somehow thinking that it's right.

Playing Doctor, Pt. 1 (Why I Write, Part x+259)

Diagnosis: Mood disorder that doesn't exist.

Symptoms Include: Tendency to insist

On passionate wording of grand declarations,

Announcements, pronouncements, and their explanations;

Attempts to regale you with tales of past glories,

Or at least entertain you with shaggy-dog stories;

Preferring my eyes' lies to other, wiser senses;

Ignoring the banalities of income and expenses;

and disdain for life, contemning days and nights

To write.

The Perils of Picking the Wrong House-Sitter

The roses are dead

and the violets are, too.

A thumb that's not green

Leaves vacationers blue.

Alanis Morissette Would Dig It

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

I've been known to write poems;

I'll write none about you.

Collegial Conference

Three eminent young scholars (or students, anyway)
Engaged in heated argument, sans evidence, debate
About digital expression, and specifically what face
One should show to those who've seen it (also, the NSA).