Why I Write, Part x+265: Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find

That if I'm writing with an audience in mind

I do it not to move, but rather to impress,

And that I'm rarely if ever at my personal best.

800 Days of Summer

In the last five years of “play ball!”

My Pirates have learned to stand tall.

Though I should be thankful, I'm appalled

To note, as the last of them turns to fall,

That they've yet to win anything Major at all.

Horseshoes and Handgrenades

I want to play.

Let's play a game

Of horseshoes

and handgrenades.

Together, we'll be

Almost perfect.

We can get close,

Close together

and then you can

blow my life up.

Lies My Devices Told Me, Pt. 3 (Or Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 2)

Check off that box,

and then go see a show!

Life's in schedules and lists,

What you make, where you go,

What you spend when you get there,

All the to-dos we all do,

Not subvocalized reasons

We have to push through.

It's the tangible clutter

That I purchase with time

That I could spend relaxing

My thoughts into rhyme.

A Love Anthem for the Survivalist

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

If the world ends tomorrow,

I hope I'm with you,

(Violets are blue.

Roses are red.

But if you're a zombie,

I'll aim for your head.)

I Don't Do Haiku (But I Do Miss Winter)

Hot chocolate, wrapped in

Hot porcelain, wrapped in cold

Hands, wrapped in time-fog.

Catalog Poem

Real silverware, polished well, how it shines!
Yours for the price of two twenty-nine.

Candy-apple-red dress, like you’d see in a store
For sixty-three dollars and seventy-four.

Electrical football, players buzz like a hive
For a low price of seventy-eight ninety-five.

Stiff, rough, unstonewashed, bark-like and blue:
Work jeans for only forty-five ninety-two.

Baker’s yeast: white-brown grains to make your bread leaven
Will only cost two dollars seventy-seven.

Rocking chair kneeling on your porch as it repents:
Fifty-five dollars and fifty-five cents.

Lincoln-logs (brown-painted, roughly-notched sticks)
Go for thirty-five dollars, and cents twenty-six.

Purple polka-dotted parachute pants, eighties fun:
Used, for a price of five ninety-one.

Pleated pants, sized for most, in the color of slate
Cost just under a hundred: ninety-nine ninety eight.

Towering, teetering entry-way tree
Of a coat rack for twenty-five seventy-three.

Hot rod of a holly-berry Harley,
Spokes straining the wind like a field of barley,
Shining pipes with wide mouths that holler
For the low price of twenty-five thousand dollars.