The One True Compliment

If you're looking for love,
Then you're stuck between a stone and a cold place,
and if you're looking for life,
Then you've landed square on the bachelor's pad,
and if you're looking for the One True Compliment,
Then your treasure is in another dungeon,
But I will give you this:
You are exhausting.
Most people aren't.
I will get bored, and walk away,
and not look back,
Long before I'm even breathing hard.

Runner, the Epilogue

You're a small comfort.  I'm a big imposition.
We're a long-running joke about a friendly competition.
We look out for each other.  You look better than fine,
But we aren't in a race toward the same finish line.
I've seen where that track leads.  I know where it ends.
I hope that we're both better off as just friends.

Executive Vision For Dummies

A working definition
Of executive vision:
The courageous conviction
To make a decision
That's a nightmare for everyone.

You had an executive vision,
and my days were halloween:
Dress up and play professional.
But the road to awesome
Doesn't even have an exit at normal,

So stick it in your third eye.

The Other Side of Sensitivity

I have indeed seen the sheath, and the sharpener.
I am a woodsman of the board and the block.
What I mean is that I know right
Where I could put the knife,
But for the moment, I am too kind.

...Said the Metalhead to the Ponce Prince of Pop

Some fast and forceful words, I've wished unsung, unwrote, unsaid—
For their content, or who said them, or the paths down which they led—
But the bland, vanilla pabulum's the lesser by a mile.
A breakfast made without cracking an egg won't make me crack a smile.
That which is of value is by conflict always followed.
That which provokes interest, by definition, must provoke.
Are you too weak to survive the things that shock, annoy, appall?
The truly inoffensive is an insult to us all.

Take Me To Your Leader, Pt. 3

I'm not necessarily averse to having anyone
I'd just take exile long before everyone,
Before I'd mingle in a mangled menagerie, a human hive.
So instead, I sit, somehow hating and loving a life
On this colossal crumb of a planet where
Having headphones means never having to care.

Communications Are Down (a Poem-in-Dialog)

She said "you have to understand
That I only want what's best for you."
I said "I understand,
I just don't comprehend."
She said "it's easier for people to love you
When you act like other people do."
I said "it's only possible for me to love me
When I'm doing what I love."
She said "some of what you love is bad for you,"
and I said "life is bad for you.
It's just better than the alternatives."