Sympathy and Empathy Have Empty, Shortened Memories

I know they’re in a better place.

I know there is a plan.

If we talked about this down the road,

I’m sure I’d understand.

When talking from the outside,

There’s an insight you don’t see

If my friends are in a better place,

Then were does that leave me?

In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (an Incomplete List of Things That Don't Count)

Books whose covers say “Patterson,” reviews say “gripping;”

Stumbles that are only lurches, no tripping;

Rains I can't hear, except for from the roof dripping;

Bands that don't play music, 'cause I can only stand the drumming;

Singers who don't sing with words, but only scat and humming,

and breakups that I saw because they took so long in coming.

Moving Too Fast For Titles

I have a self-mocking confidence.
I do still aspire to competence,

Some of the time.

I can’t help but acknowledge a physical decline.
I can’t bring myself to the same, of the mind,
So when the earth and the circumstances align,
I ride, nearly run, past concern and lost time.
My heart rate, my breathing, my passions all climb.
My production, my intellect, respond in kind.
All in all, and in short, I come on too fast,

and I’m afraid I took all the fun out of it.

First World Problems

Canted over, I carve the curves,
Tires tracing the twister parts
Of a several-season-cycle semester abroad,
The epic apex of my extended adolescence,
and I am befuddled, and suddenly struck
By the enlightenment that, right or wrong,
Most of my life is the time of my life.

www.timemachinematch.com

I shouldn't continue, but heck, I've begun.
Of my many ill-advised verses, here’s one,
Written to entertain, starting with me,
and perhaps as a shotgun boost for self-esteem,
and because I find writing incomparable fun.
I don’t mean to suggest things that oughtn't be done,
But the more-than-ten-years-ago version of me
Would move worlds for the you that has just come to be,

and he would have a point.

311 Would Dig It

My heart hot, my blood cold, my emotions mixed,
I stand on the spot, unformed and transfixed
As a bolt of brilliance rips into the night.
The dark storm and dim slumber are, for the moment, set alight,
Marbling the black and the charcoal gray with white.
It feels wrong to take in, as splendr'ous sight,
Zeus getting in his destruction for today,
But what doesn't get less ugly, far away?

Love Is Deaf, pt. 2

I will be stunned to disbelief.

I will cry myself to sleep.
I will crave your approval,

and dread your touch.

I will spend mornings

Looking in the mirror

Searching for a flaw,

For what it was you saw

That inspired you to say that,

Searching for my self-esteem,

and I will pretend I didn't hear.