Doors and Windows

I don't need to be told. I already know

That when God closes a door, I should check the window

and glance for a chance, an opportunity.

I never do know when it's looking for me.

Sometimes, I'd like to reach out and grab it,

Bud sometimes I'd rather retain my old habit,

and sometimes I'd like to read, or write poems,

and want solitude in a room that is closed.

History of American Literature, as Understood by a Poet and a Baseball Fanatic

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

I'm sure that he knows what that means.

I suppose I contain some bacteria.

I'm, by my culture's standards, unclean.

I suppose if I did contain multitudes,

Then many would like Christmas songs,

While a few would enjoy raunchy parodies

The court system struck down as wrong.

Some enjoy triple cheeseburgers.

Others don't like to bunch at the waist.

Whitman wrote “I contain multitudes.”

If I do, it accounts for my tastes.

Not All Who Wander Are Found

I exist on uncertain footing,

In a landscape covered in the sands of misunderstanding,

But I exist nonetheless.

I think that I am less homesick–more simply just a mess.

I think that I am too keenly aware

That I moved to a room where I've hardly written–from another,

and there from another.

If I thought I had the resolve, I might resolve to write more.

My Office in Room 1348 of the Panopticon

I mount to the poet's pedestal when the mood strikes,

Though it's only on level thirteen of twenty-five.

I am not an especially friendly man.

I keep my own counsel as much as I can.

I'm thought of more often as “brooding” than “fun,”

and I might be an island–but I'm not alone on one.

I try not to judge. At most times, I take care.

Most times I remember I ought not to stare,

But what you reveal, the public will see.

The uncovered window forfeits privacy,

and I don't wish to be caught unobservant.

Observation's evaluation, on the road to judgment,

But I didn't earn this guilt–and you didn't close your curtain.

Two Travelers Converged on a Road

I have become blind to innocence,

Or perhaps immune to perceptions of it.

We all get dingy. We all stay low.

There are pieces of all of us we left along the road–

The unmissed we don't remember we know.

So when others see you tease a camera just right,

I just see turnabout you're playing on life.

I don't expect you not to have a history.

I'll just help you look for pieces if you do the same for me.

The Poster in the Basement Room

I remember believing

That we're not alone among the stars,

That it wouldn't be too long or too far,

That there is life on Mars.

I remember wanting to believe.

I remember treating the uncertainty

As tantalizing possibility.

I had not yet learned what silence means.

I remember needing to believe,

The thirst, the lust, to seek and find

Of a creature with friends and family, but no kind.

Now, all I believe, I pretend to know:

That we may just be, or may be left, alone;

That any who managed to knock or pick up the phone

Would be too smart to crash our reality show.

The Post-Postmodern Prometheus

It marches in place

On the frozen electron river

Of these ersatz notebook pages:

An entire army of me,

A thousand narrators

Of a thousand different stories,

and someday I will find the one

Who is enough of me to be human,

and little enough of me to live on his own.