Springtime in Anywhere

Spring is freedom if you hate school. To me, it's being left

Socially and spiritually, intellectually bereft.

Though it's not a social matter, nor the people I miss most.

It's not surrounded (in Church or otherwise) that I've known the Holy Ghost.

I'm simply an animal that requires inspiration –

Intellectual stimulation–to long continue respiration.

At a time when excitement and nostalgia are in order

I come down with a reverse seasonal affective disorder.

If I'm not being creative, or at least academic,

Then I start getting depressive, or even just plain sick.

If I'm not writing or teaching with my life, then what am I doing?

I hate spring.

To an Ingenue with Nowhere to Go

It seems you can't go home again

For the risk of slipping on your solitude

and becoming mired in muddied memories.

It seems you can't go home again

While the sky cackles in triumph at your loss,

Raining in sheets to mock your mere drops,

Saying, “even your tears are nothing

To the rest of the world,” which has it all.

It only seems you can't go home again,

For Zeus profits nothing by your losses;

You were made in God's image, not Jupiter's.

You will breathe and live and love

Long after the thunderhead's cloudy countenance

Is a skull stained by rainbows, bleached white by sun.

God has the rest of the world, and has it all–

Even your back–

So go back.

Home is where the heart was,

and can find its way to be again.

Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Better

Deciding how to please myself and my earth-mother,

I can't us'lly do both, and pick one or the other.

Always choosing between my wallet and my heart

Which, on sports ticket and employment, are miles apart,

I should unlearn my American training that bigger is better.

I don't want to drive a greenhouse in all this hot weather.

I solved all that with a cut back to two wheels, from four.

I opened the cage, freeing not just a solution, but more.

I don't need to grow wings and a tail, since I've learned

About tucks, wind resistance, and banking my turns.

I've always wanted to, and thought I wouldn't, go through with it,

and now, having started, I don't want to quit.

Countdown to Sunday/Fuzzy Math/Eight Ways a Week

Half-Satisfied/Half-Displeased

No surprise modern life leaves so many confused.

The world can't even agree on the right attitude

A person should take toward their hobbies or work.

You're either too negative or an arrogant jerk.

If I won't be my own fan, why would anyone else.

If I'm not my own worst critic, aren't I deluding myself?

The so-called healthy attitude is to try

Keeping the world close to half-satisfied

But I hold more closely with those who believe

It's much simpler to fool folks than trying to please.

Deliberate Conformity and Inevitable Nonconformity

Governing two decades of life by two rules:

Better contentment than accomplishment, accomplishment than cool,

and if you can't get better or get even, just get out

Leads to roadbeds of resistance and uncounted gravel doubts.

It's not just road less traveled; it's road not even paved,

But these rules my life both guided and improved, and even saved,

and thought it's prone to washboard and it's potholed with regret,

The former keeps me wide awake; the rest ain't stopped me yet.

Poorly Planned

I'm sure that same gameplan has served you for years,

Getting by on inconsistency, bailed out by tears,

But I've got a defense like you ain't seen before.

It might have worked then, but it won't anymore.

You need to learn when to go for it, when to punt.

You ran a draw on third and twenty.  You ain't getting what you want

For the first time, left tongue-still and mouth-agape.

Good luck next time.  I'm already studying tape.