Prophecy, Preserved in Stone at Age Fifteen

Roses lose petals.
Violets do, too.
I'll still listen to metal
When I'm a hundred and two.

To My Closest Unvalentine, Separated Only By Fifteen Years

I will never miss reacting, like a human, to the cry

Of idiot Emotion, and just barely asking why.

I don't relish being wrong, as when I thought that we were matched.

I don't miss those two months when you were gone and I attached.

I'll never miss the worries, or gut-flurries, or the game,

But if pressed, I will admit that I do miss your old last name.

Sympathy and Empathy Have Empty, Shortened Memories

I know they’re in a better place.

I know there is a plan.

If we talked about this down the road,

I’m sure I’d understand.

When talking from the outside,

There’s an insight you don’t see

If my friends are in a better place,

Then were does that leave me?

In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (an Incomplete List of Things That Don't Count)

Books whose covers say “Patterson,” reviews say “gripping;”

Stumbles that are only lurches, no tripping;

Rains I can't hear, except for from the roof dripping;

Bands that don't play music, 'cause I can only stand the drumming;

Singers who don't sing with words, but only scat and humming,

and breakups that I saw because they took so long in coming.

Moving Too Fast For Titles

I have a self-mocking confidence.
I do still aspire to competence,

Some of the time.

I can’t help but acknowledge a physical decline.
I can’t bring myself to the same, of the mind,
So when the earth and the circumstances align,
I ride, nearly run, past concern and lost time.
My heart rate, my breathing, my passions all climb.
My production, my intellect, respond in kind.
All in all, and in short, I come on too fast,

and I’m afraid I took all the fun out of it.

First World Problems

Canted over, I carve the curves,
Tires tracing the twister parts
Of a several-season-cycle semester abroad,
The epic apex of my extended adolescence,
and I am befuddled, and suddenly struck
By the enlightenment that, right or wrong,
Most of my life is the time of my life.

www.timemachinematch.com

I shouldn't continue, but heck, I've begun.
Of my many ill-advised verses, here’s one,
Written to entertain, starting with me,
and perhaps as a shotgun boost for self-esteem,
and because I find writing incomparable fun.
I don’t mean to suggest things that oughtn't be done,
But the more-than-ten-years-ago version of me
Would move worlds for the you that has just come to be,

and he would have a point.