Keeping Your Eyes Out

The human race is fourteen billion eyes.

How many are just looking?

The human race is seven billion tongues.

How many ask the right questions?

If you can't put your face to your problems,

Then put your head down.

If you can put somebody else's face to them,

Walk away,

and if you still haven't found the answer,

Stop looking.

Even if your doctor says indifference isn't right for you,

Learn to love solutions from afar.

Treat them like an internet boyfriend.

Only then will they be eager to meet you.

Footsore and Floating Free

The soles of my feet were sore

From the time I spent walking away–

Away from their definitions,

Away from their expectations,

Away, in short, from everyone,

But though I walked ever away,

I hadn't found the way to walk apart.

The fronts of my eyes were sore

From the time I spent looking–

Looking for a way out,

Looking for a way over,

Looking for the answers,

But though I looked until my eyes

Stopped searching to vibrate between hiding places,

I did very little finding

Until I stopped.

The top of my head is sore,

From walking the world upside down,

From all the ideas I keep scraping off it,

But it's not the only part of my head that hurts–

My brow aches in concentration;

My cheeks burn with laughter.

Intellectual Whiplash

First, fourscore and seven years ago...

Then it was a dark and stormy night...

Next, life is a single dragon doing the locomotion...

Afterward, thirty-two feet per second per second...

One minute I see the bright smile

Of a successful student I've worked with for years...

The next, I see a recent graduate

Looking six-months-on-meth rough...

Finally, trying to write...

Marching Orders

There is no other creature quite like belief,

Who burns all the brighter for his unnecessity.

The average day teems with don'ts and with dos

That are hand-me-downs someone was told to tell you.

Most are done (or not done) and there's nary a question,

But we all have a few that it's best no one mentions.

Ink Meets Instinct

It was hardly worthy of note.

I was most of the way through

A book I mostly disagreed with.

I will never forget that moment,

Because all I needed to know,

All I needed to get out of it,

Is that normal is abnormal.

My whole life, I had been trying to fit,

Something I should have been trying to fight.

What relief! I finally knew I knew, that night.

Note to Self

In ten years, you'll be near forty, and a poet, you will not.

They peak before they're thirty. They burn up the fuel they've got,

But the writing keeps you running. You'll need to keep it strong,

Because I've seen you go with out it. You collapse. It don't take long.

I've set you up to shift your focus, to be the man that you once wished.

The poems that I've written have made you a novelist.

So don't change, and no excuses. Don't tell me you're snakebitten.

I've left you notes for several books; I want to see them written.

I Ride the Rollercoaster, Pt. 2

Modern life might make me seasick–

No stroll down tranquil paths is this,

But a challenge to balance so many extremes

By pushing and pulling on distant mechanisms,

Our actions, or losses, regrets

In this land of hours and instants.

What horror brands into the brain

Is soothed by a salve of time,
Only to be replaced.