Macklemore Might or Might Not Dig It

What's wrong with wearing something gauche or passé?

Why spend down to the lint to keep a wardrobe up to date?

The answers don't suffice, because nobody really knows

What's wrong with wearing your father's old clothes.

Think about it a second, that's all it takes to realize

That the same genes might make the man the same size.

If the shoe hurts, don't you dare just grin and bear it.

If the shoe feels good, why, then it's a good idea to wear it.

Hunting the World's Most Dangerous Book

The thesaurus is a dangerous work.

Behind its calls, writers' folly does lurk.

The thesaurus might make jesters of us all.

If into its trap do we wearily fall

By mustering new talks up into the fold

And serving them as they were just like the old.

One Day a Year (I Miss Big Box Stores)

The weight of our culture's priorities

Bows many of us to our bended knees,

and one day a year turns the whole world pink.

Through rose-colored conscience, we choose not to think:

Why just one person? Why just one day?

Why mothball steadiness, friendship away?

I guess everyone, every day would be kind of demanding,

and I sure do love the candy.

Why I Write, Part x+267: For No Good Reason(?)

Though it's unpleasant, and thought it is trite,
For near fifteen years I've continued to write
Of a beautiful life and its ugliest end
Which I've long understood, but refused to comprehend.
I might've covered every detail, but over this I've glossed:
The world gains nothing from the writing, and the life's already lost.

My Personal World, Part 24: Relativity

Bass banging out a blistering back-beat,

Hoping against hope to hold the high point

Of the dying week,

The ticky-tack ticking-away of time

Siphons, slurps, slips, sags, slides, settles,

Into a slow leak.

Out of the Box and Into the Fire, or A Poet's Worst Emotional Argument for Universal Basic Income

“Just think outside the box,” they say

As 'hind clichés they hide.

A residence outside the box

I wish they would provide.

For though I've searched in foreign lands

Across the sea's dark sheen,

There's few things I have yet to find

Save refuge from routine,

and though I'm mostly stifled,

My moods and muse both wan,

To remain confined by management's

My one preserving plan.

For when I'm working, “different's”

a longer word for “worse.”

I'm quickly made complacent.

It's my temperament and curse,

and outside of a schedule

Upon my face I'd fall.

A refuge in quick failure

Is no refuge at all.

New Years Resolution

Oil and water, mixed poorly from birth,

At peace at the opposite ends of the earth:

The one's hopes map well to the other one's fears,

and though peaceably separate for miles and years,

The one misses the other in spite of the pain

Of deliberate friction with nothing to gain

and the other is creeping toward missing the one,

toward regret for his being an unpleasant son.

It occurs, in this Janus, to this lingering other:

This year's one to make peace between child and mother.