The Television

The television tells all of us lies,
Repeats just a few important ones.
By the time we are half-grown,
At least enough to reach the power button,
We already know those lies as mantras.
I have been all my life lying to myself,
Saying that my life has a destination.

Life tells all of us truths,
Repeats just a few important ones.
By the time we are full-grown,
We're almost ready to admit knowing them.
(We'll never be ready to admit knowing them.)
I am a hard man to lie to,
Which is why sometimes, I just look for the end.

Lying to You, Pt. 3

You said I was brilliant, and even a find.

You were not slow in praising my rational mind,

But were equally quick in insisting I should

Subscribe to the worst lies in all Hollywood,

A narrative unchanged in two hundred years

In which I am loyal without wait or fear.

Instead of an interest that builds up to trust

You were insistent that your boyfriend must

Live at once for one woman, and no other “her,”

Who is not even you, but who you wish you were.

You say that few things are as sexy as truth,

But you only reward me for lying to you.

Lying to You, Pt. 2

What the voters see on the shelves, it looks great,

and in this store, like others, you don't have to pay.

The government's Mastercard's bigger than yours,

But paying it off? That's what voters deplore.

Asking them to make payments gets us voted out.

Even thinking to mention it leads them to shout.

The late King of Camelot didn't see things this way.

He was honest about it, and noted to say

That you must serve your country before it serves you.

The public was listening. What did they do?

The cheered and paraded–and killed the man dead.

It's not even certain whose shot pierced his head.

We're the butt of your jokes when we don't tell the truth,

But the way to get in is by lying to you.

Lying to You, Pt. 1

Your chocolate went missing, the brown on my face

Good for one week of grounding, one minute's disgrace.

Your pudding went missing and never was found.

You assumed it was me; one more week on the ground.

I've made selfish choices and clumsy mistakes,

and you've said I should tell you before it's too late,

But whether it's accidents, candy or toys,

It all costs the same: quiet after loud noise.

I never did homework, and sometimes you asked,

But there's no heading it off when it brings the same wrath

As when you find out at the end of the term,

Right down to asking why I never learn.

You make a good show of demanding the truth.

You taught me I'm better off lying to you.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 7: Odes to Spring

I wonder why my schoolfellows write odes to spring,
The season of leaving,
This one-way entrance door to four months of not seeing,
The time to leave behind thinking,
The time to be intellectually stagnant,
When I put the pursuit of happiness
On hold for the pursuit of cash,

But then I watch a baseball game
Wrapped in the evening sun's embrace
and the breeze's cool caress,
and I wonder why I haven't.

Too Late

The dearly departed are too late to forgive,

But perhaps the living have done wrong in their mourning.

Mother's comfort in youth seems a warning:

If the dead look down on us from above,

They'd see a whole life's worth of lives, full of

Broken hearts hemorrhaging archived love.

If my friends kept their eyes

After they lost their lives,

Then I should apologize.

The Gift of Life

The gift of life has ten thousand million faces.

The gift of life is given in all sorts of different places–

In the handrail we grab before we fall,

To both young and old in the hospital,

At the intersections in the midst of the street,

At the end of the budget where there's just enough to eat,

In storms that veer away from the peak that you climbed.

The gift of life's given more than one time.

Birth is just the start of it.

Birth is just the least of it.