Summer's Day

On all poets' talk of a fair summer's day,
Or eyes outstripping starlight (they twinkle and play!),
and all of the ridiculous, besotted things to say:
What some wish to call profound lyrics
Are descriptions of people who do not exist.

Perhaps how I feel about you is ridiculous.

Why I Write, Part x+161: The Halls

The halls of my mind have been rather alive,

In a sense. They were dancing with meter and rhyme,

But at some point in the last two months, my verse

Has ceased to make merry, preferring perverse.

The cold weather came, and it followed the bears,

Or perhaps my mind just went downstairs,

and now it returns.

I have emerged,

From a cocoon,

Utterly the same poet.

It's as though 'me' is a thing that really exists.

Candles and Obelisks

You burn each of my moments, statuesque.

You make of them candles and obelisks,

But you are neither mason nor chandler;

We make moments, and my mind shapes them thereafter.

We make the same moments unlasting,

But your mind is a different craftsman.

The result is inferior workmanship;

The result is a romance that doesn't exist.

To an Ingenue, After the End of Days

It was written by logic and prophecy and destiny

and my present but questionable moral fortitude

That we should speak no more forever,

But with miles and hours and days between

Our separate (and likely unequal) screens,

You and I watch the same movie,

and I see what I think you would see.

It does not make me feel together,

Like I thought it would.

It makes me feel that we were never;

Which makes it honest, good.

The Microcosmic Market

I dissociate, and my mind meanders to examine my past acts.
Through the microcosmic market,
I wander stand-to-stand,
Living domino-chains of consequences,
Getting the feeling that none of us have lives,
Just liabilities in series, which we try to minimize.

The People Who Lie to You (an Incomplete List)

1. A goodly number of people who make entreaties.

2. A better number of those who just make treaties.

3. Ninety-nine percent of the people who say they love you.

4. One-hundred percent of people work positions up above you

5. and one-hundred ten percent of those who work in retail, or for tips.

6. Those who tell you to count on our race's honest lips.

7. Those who tell you what you can expect.

Oh, the harm of lies of earnestness.

Deciding What To Do

Deciding what to do with a life,

Might take no more than a thought-space in time.

All that remains is inconsequent consequence,

The ashes of the choice to sin and suffer

In front of, in the name of another.

Deciding what to do with a life

Might take time I can't imagine living,

That which I value, and lie for, and can't stand giving.

As hated, as dreaded as endings are,

An important beginning is ten times as hard.

Tonight's Trees

Tonight's trees haunt me,

Snow-covered skeletons standing against the cosmos,

Beautiful in living death

(Yeah, for about a minute).

The ghost of almost-enlightenment has already faded.

Once, in life, clouds blur the sky,

The scene's already started to blur in my mind.

You will haunt me differently.

May I live a hundred years

and you live a thousand years

and our paths never cross again,

I'll get halfway to saying something

and fumble it,

Or the drink in my hand will spill,

Because even if our paths never cross again,

Our minds will.

I Am What I Eat

You've changed the poet where you can't changed the man.
I am what I eat, and you feed me inspiration:
A strange stew of love and pessimism;
I can't live without you, fear I won't see you again.

Scrabble and Grasp

I stand more than arm's length from the end of my past,
So I reach and I stretch, and I scrabble and grasp
and I claw with my fingernails to hook it, get it back,
But there's barely a nibble and the line goes slack,

and all I'm left with are fish stories.

Someone else keeps the parts of my past
That aren't really mine anymore.

Most Times

Sometimes I regret saying things I don't believe

Just for attention, with superficial intentions.

I regret so many words that no one else remembers.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I apologized.

Sometimes I regret the things that I said

To breathe life into connections

Or to leave them broken and dead.

Sometimes I regret being too smart

To risk my lifetime for a good time.

Most times I forget not to think; I regret those times

When I said nothing and shouldn't have.

Let Everything Go

I do not save the date. I do not save a place

In labyrinthine lines, in the ahead-of times.

I just let everything go, in my indifference

and it rolls down life's path of least insistence,

Into uncertain, uncomfortable, ripe situations,

A life-landscape that far exceeds all expectations,

'Til my world is populated by brilliant, beautiful women

and a lot of adroit, admirable men,

and my curse has left me blessed again.

You know awesome by analysis?

Meet magnificent by mismanagement.

Loose

I'm up for that.

I'm down for that.

What's going up down the street?

What's going down up the street?

Pass it up. Pass it down.

Pass it on, pass it off.

Pass off, pass on, pass away.

Take it up, take it down,

Take it in, take it away.

Put on, put off, put away.

Put it on, put it off, take it away.

It's a given, I'm quite taken.

Keep on, keep off, keep out.

Keep choppin' wood.

Put your feet up.

Put your hands up.

All I do is loose.

Just 'Cause

I want to write a movie called Extracurricular Activities,
and a book called Male Teachers Don't Wanna Get Hugs.
I want to write a song called "It's Been a Dog's Age Since I Saw You
(But Since Men Are Dogs, It Feels Like Forever),"
and I want to direct a porno called "service," just 'cause.

I want to sing like the world is tone-deaf,
and dance like the world isn't watching,
and eat like I missed breakfast today,
and drink like I will again tomorrow.
and take a pass at the homecoming queen,
Just 'cause,

But my youth is in its last breaths,
So I want a preview of what's next.

Snowflake

The classroom is a showroom,
Featuring twenty-one new,
High-end model students
With more than a few flashy,
Expensive aftermarket features,
and one crazy guy who writes too much,
and talks too much, and reads too much.
It makes me seem like a snowflake --
White and short-lived and insubstantial,
But don't we hold that in common?

Blessed

I can't count the times that I wished I'd confessed

That my lucky star's brightest, that I know I am blessed,

But I've given up asking the whys and the hows.

I don't want to leave questions for homecoming cows.

I just want to thank you, my field of four-leaf clovers.

A day that's filled with you all is what truly runneth over.

Precipice

I stand on the precipice of a new beginning,
Which is a euphemism for an ending,
and I look back on the freedom
and the diversions and the discourse
and the dining and the drinking and the dancing
and I know my jealous mind will miss them,
But my heart will not admit it, and I will be alright.
The friends though, the friends...
My heart already mourns their absence in foresight.

Grain Train

Rolling through life's night is friendship's grain train,

A mile long, unstopping, unchanging,

In shadow, barely visible to passersby,

Not exciting, but unwavering in form.

Romance is a mere stick laid on the tracks,

Its potential only to derail and be destroyed.

As a writer in a house-world built of paper and ink

On a shaky foundation of my diminishing mental capacity,

I am thankful that friendship has direction.

It is unyielding, solid, uniform, there.

Why I Write, Part x+160: The Triple Standard

I've acknowledged, so let it be known

That I don't judge others' words and work the same way as my own.

In the company of strangers, I'm pleased if they just entertain me,

But my words don't merely represent. I expect them to contain me.

One might expect my friends to fall 'tween stranger than myself,
Based on how close they are to me, but the truth is something else:

That there's another standard yet, pertaining to my friends.

It's not that I go easy to avoid a need to make amends.

I see their prints on what they do, the ridges of their minds.

My friends' work takes a picture of the best folks I can find.

Runner

She's brighter than the sun and yet

She's always out of sight.

She circles my life like the moon.

She'd warm the darkest night.

I don't know who she is when I'm gone,

Or ask this spell I'm under,

But she's all smiles when I'm here.

I love my little runner.

She is the kind of girl

Who leads my heart around in circles,

With long hair and eyes so deep blue

They nearly turn to purple.

I'd do her a rank injustice

To say she's just a stunner.

I love her 'cause God broke the mold

Once he had made my runner.

She's brighter than the sun and yet

She's always out of sight.

She circles my life like the moon.

She'd warm the darkest night.

I don't know who she is when I'm gone,

Or ask this spell I'm under,

But she's all smiles when I'm here.

I love my little runner.

She leads me through the woods

And off the path and over hurdles.

She always wears her faith

Like it's an armor-plated girdle.

I've been chasing her since spring

Was out of earshot from the summer,

And I am breathless with exertion,

But I still love my little runner.

She's brighter than the sun and yet

She's always out of sight.

She circles my life like the moon.

She'd warm the darkest night.

I don't know who she is when I'm gone,

Or ask this spell I'm under,

But she's all smiles when I'm here.

I love my little runner.

I don't know what I did to earn

This endless, weary race.

I don't know how I earned the right

To glimpse her smiling face.

She doesn't want a steady date.

She thinks these games are funner.

I disagree with every word

But I still love my runner.

She's brighter than the sun and yet

She's always out of sight.

She circles my life like the moon.

She'd warm the darkest night.

I don't know who she is when I'm gone,

Or ask this spell I'm under,

But she's all smiles when I'm here.

I love my little runner.

Concerned

Where you are concerned,

I see, and I notice,

But I didn't appreciate,

and I have a certain estimate

Of the volume of your mind,

A pure hypothesis I've left

Most utterly untested.

The fact is that I see you once a week,

and sometimes in the halls

and hardly talk to you at all,

But when you're away

My life plays the scatter-brained

Geographer, all over the map.

I don't know where,

and I don't know why.

I spend weeks finding and returning it.

J. Sebastian Bach

No one points a finger to the calendar or clock

When we speak of names like Beethoven or J. Sebastian Bach.

They painted on the very air. Their music's truly art,

But that isn't the whole picture; other songs can play a part.

So many songs lack greatness, but are arguably good.

They're easily remembered and just as quickly understood,

But the leave the mind, the heart, the ears, awash in vibrant peace.

Everyone I know deserves to wake to songs like these.

Everyone Has

Everyone has a past like everyone has an ass.

Most of them are ugly, and they all stink,

But not really.

There are three kinds of pasts:

The tearful, trying tale of woe,

The excuse for needing an excuse;

The timeless, ever-told song of the whale,

The melancholodic cautionary tale;

and the belly-built beats of the bard

Who laughs because he's had it hard.

My Contagion

You are my contagion.
You are my salvation,
That which many can desire
and none can deserve.

I can't keep living my life on paper.
I can't clear my head of you with vapor.
I want to tell the world about us,
But I don't even want to tell you about me.

Five Minutes

Find destiny five minutes late and see your chances blown,

But leave five minutes early and you never could have known.

I don't think skill and fate alone decide the search for love

When random happenstance helps us deciding who we're thinking of.

When some poor bastard misses out, they say his timing sucks

What others blame on timing, I just put down to luck.

Full Circle

When I was five, my first love was baseball.

When I was ten, I first learned “don't trust people.”

When I was fifteen, I said I'd write five novels.

When I was twenty, I wasn't quite so hopeful.

That's life for you – it always comes full circle.

Introduced

I was out with friends,

(Yeah, it happens.)

and I ran into you.

I didn't know you well enough,

So I introduced myself.

Eventually, I was out

(Yeah, yeah, again)

and I ran into you,

So I introduced you as a friend.

I was out with you,

and we ran into someone I knew.

I introduced her as a friend.

I introduced you, too.

(Your name wasn't new.)

I was out with someone almost new,

and we ran into each other,

Like we always used to do.

(You never know which time will be the last.)

I introduced you as someone from my past.

Too Big

Life stores its beauty behind accidents.

There is nothing in this world I can't comprehend,

But more than a few things too big for intent.

No, life's great insights and mysteries are to be tripped over.

I want to fall headlong into the skies behind my eyelids,

So that I find myself soaked,

So that I find myself cloaked

In knowledge and understanding and wonder.

These are the moments

That both the poets and the scientists live for.

We just put different metaphors to them.

Why I Write, Part x+159: The Stars

The poets have been writing of the stars

Since before there was writing involved.

There's something about the mystery

Of those infinitesimal, cute, twinkly,

Utterly unlivable hellscapes,

That bring light to the darkness,

But disappear in the day,

Hiding unfathomable distances away

That is even more beautiful when solved.

Up a Hill

In this tedious slog up a hill we call “living,”

You stand out in a dark sky, a point of light-giving,

But like meteor showers on gray-clouded nights

You may pass any moment, unseen, from my life.

Why I Write, Part x+158: Telling Stories

I could not write so much poetry

If it weren't so incredibly easy,

As natural as telling stories,

As looking, and narrating what I see,

'Cause the world looks different

Once passed through a self.

Everything becomes metaphor

For everything else,

and I see more, though not clear,

as sight takes many passes.

The world is all mirrors,

and I am colored glasses.

No, Galileo!

I used to think you circled me

In deep orbit.

I used to think there was something

That held you to me.

I was looking too hard for you

To see.

I am no Galileo.

You are the attractive one.

I am the attracted one,

and I should have known.

I am spinning in circles.

My Personal World, Part 15: Fertile Fields

What was once a new song's fields fertile verdure

Now seems as distant – as old – as my ardor.

What was once the edge of uncharted words' wood's now bereft,

Which is to say that I see nothing there left

For me, if not for the one who hears it next.

My Personal World, Part 14: My Watch-Dog

What was once my watch-dog, warding depression,

Now grates on my ears.  The mangy chord-progression,

The rib-visible skeleton of an over-pushed beat

That once kindled my action has been losing its heat,

Shedding eight-notes as it grinds over my dried mind.

A fiery song that burns long is sure hard to find,

and soon, with no watchdog I find myself hurled,

Overthrown down from my personal world.

Under My Fingers

I'm not of a mood or a mindset to linger

On the work or the play I've got under my fingers,

But I've three-fourths of a mind to start dragging the tips

Up over your skin 'til I stop at your lips,

But you seeped through my brain where the outside world cracked it.

My heart only pumps out when I'm feeling distracted.

Digital Age

If desire's the sin, then time wasted's the wage
In this awkwardly in-person digital age.
My mind is old, analog, an unwieldy worry-holder,
and the first time I met you, it felt me get older.
My mind drafted my skull to ward off my heart.
You accepted my friend request.  Guess that's a start.

We Were Once

Though I suffer isolate, and before in stoic silence,
We were once a team.  This was once a shared loss.
Now it is the unity and the sharing that is lost.

I miss the genius, the leader, the one out ahead,
and I miss the substantial beauty, my woman in red,
and I miss the wry wit with the world in his head,

But you, my overlooked, the sweetest, strongest one,
With a soul of gold and a heart of filigreed iron,
Of all who are left, I miss you most of all.

To Deserve This

If I'm awake, I'm late.
My alarm clock broke again.
My legs refuse to bend,
and I missed a call from friends.
There is no time to eat.
The pain shoots through my feet.
I've got someone to meet,
and I can't stand him.
Slow drivers?  I can't pass.
I have an early in class,
I slip, land on my ass.

No one has to ask what I did to deserve this.


So many kids to teach,
So many friends to meet,
So many meals to eat,
A long soak for my feet,
and a classic Christmas tree
Forty-two days early:

No one seems to ask what I did to deserve this.

Human Weakness

I believe in human weakness, not humanpower.
I do not see strangers as candy and flowers,
So imagine my look of shock when I see
A person I almost know bloom right in front of me,
Show a self-professed side I'd not believed was there.

It was damn near enough to almost make me care.

Impermanence

Could I give up impermanence like I didn't give up play?
Once all the normal things in life were prices I would pay
Merely from an eagerness to throw them all away.
I saw so many things differently than I see them today.
Am I just going soft, or hardening in new and different ways?

I will never grow old enough to know...
_______________________________...or perhaps I may.

Ah, Genetics

Ah, Genetics!  They are twice as good as Vegas.
The house only wins half the time,
and their study is science, not economics,
But there is no love lost for genetics in my house.
I got my father's back and ingrown toenail.
I got my mother's knees and mental illness.
Though I hold those four cards and a joker
(I need someone around to laugh the luck of my draw),
The only choice is to see the hand through,
See what a pale half my parents' minds can do.

I refuse to fold this hand.
I can only ante the next one in hell.

The Minefield

Complimenting women is really all about

Removing branches of interpretation that leaf in self doubt

Without the words becoming too many or too much – that is, emphatic –

Which might come off aggressive, or she might take as sarcastic,

So I might want to put it off, but then she might feel she's left hanging,

and I'll have to do it all again, and I've just doubled my planning.

Out of the three Fs – family, friends, and foods – she's 4-F – fun.

I might someday call her 'girlfriend', but I can't now call it “love.”

The movies say “be honest. Just tell her how you feel.”

I do my best to avoid war metaphors, but she's a minefield.

It's Sometimes Better Not to Know

When you're already leaving, or you're just about to go,
When a reversal-revelation might just make my head explode,
I've loved the music, not the lyrics, since I first got radio.
So many times I've found it's sometimes better not to know.

Every Word and Every Deed

Your eyes and their winking were dearest distraction

From the fact that on your end their was no attraction,

Nor what seemed to follow from what followed

Shortly (and I do mean shortly) afterward.

It was in every word and every deed a fake.

You made faithless promises of faith,

Did your best to imitate good taste,

Did your best to imitate a person.

Together, we did our best imitations,

But this hate? This hate is real.

Sharing

I tell my stories so that I can laugh.

I wouldn't mind sharing my laugh,

But I'd prefer nobody share my life.

I wasted almost thirty years

Standing against the wall,

And now, poised to spend the next thirty

Standing against the blackboard,

I wonder if there's something

I should have done in the middle.

Playing the Part

I'm a pleasure-reader playing the part

Of an amateur critic who takes theory to heart.

I find the acting politic.

I find the theory makes me sick.

With those tests (and papers) passed,

I make my way to teaching class,

and play the teacher, though I'm a poet who

Just wants to spend his life in a classroom.

When sports are on,

I play a barbarian.

Sometimes I, sinner, even play a Christian,

Though I'm merely a deist with dearly loved friends.

All day, I play an actor,

But I'm really just a poet who

Wants to find a metaphor

The whole world can relate to.

I Come From

I come from Montana,

and I love Montana.

I come from friends whom I'm unworthy of,

Whom I admire, even love.

I come from two liberal parents,

and every political leaning in existence,

and a grand literary tradition,

Varying states of physical condition,

A rabid consumption of sports media

and television unsummarized on Wikipedia,

But why?

I am going to teach,

and I love to teach.

I am going up the socioeconomic ladder

Among people who pretend that doesn't matter.

I am headed for adulthood delayed

With the sense of humor for adulthood denied.

Perhaps I am going outside.

Though I still exist as a physical obstacle,

I am otherwise fading away,

But why?

Get Around

I just don't get around like I used to.
You don't mind if I expound, do you?
I was never Jim Thorpe and I was never Casanova,
But my career as a physical being's long over.

Besides, modern life's lived in the mind,
Which seemed for some years to have fit me just fine,
But it's not just man's legs that leave limping and lame.
My mind is by bad luck, or maybe time, tamed,

and I'd like it better if you didn't call me "the late,"
But against odds, it looks like I'm spoiled, past date.

Overpaid

I have to say I've overpaid

For us to go our separate ways.

I surely don't mind getting laid,

But if you'd come and I had stayed,

Uncounted memories we'd have made,

But that's just hope – a thing that fades.

I Will Never

I will never have what they have --
The relaxed impulsiveness, the escapades,
The easy smile, the history,
and they will never have what I have,
But if you don't know you're looking for it...

I will never hate being beaten
As much as I hate the mercy rule.

I will never be satisfied with myself,
Just as you will never be satisfied with myself.
You will never be the reason for my improvement,
Just the alarm clock that woke it up.

I will never purposely write of you,
But I always have a pen at hand,
and I do not always have purpose.

I will never be there for you.
It would only make you uncomfortable.

I Remember When

I remember when you knocked that stuff off the ledge.
The whole room looked like I had gone through with a sledge,
and you said "It's okay.  A messy house signifies
A full, truly-lived life," and you were half right.

I remember several days I called and you did not pick up the phone.
Those days were boring at the best; at worst, depressed alone.
You promised "when it's important, I'll always be there."
Should have known.  Deceivers are quickest with weak words like "care."

I remember when I said "that guy wants some ass,"
and you said, "don't worry.  He's just in my class.
We're only friends talking.  We're making some slides."
The next I saw him you two were talking incidentally, asides.

The Trailhead

I've found the trailhead to my life,
My new reason not to be lazy.
I halfway suspect that I'm going to cry
If not laugh as though all the way crazy.

For all the unpadded immediacy in it
My life's unfamiliar with tears,
Just as someone who won't plan the next forty minutes
Is surprised to want forty more years,

But I'm in the foothills.  I'll make the turn.
To not turn back, I'll teach and learn.

Thoughts of the End

When thoughts of the end have obscured the beginning,
When the temptation sauce slides right off of your sinning,
When you only stay 'cause you don't want to go,
When you don't like it much and you just can't say no,
That's when affection is not your affliction,
When infatuation becomes an addiction.

I Love Teaching

Give me two dozen suns and imagine the light
I'll be shining in corners of literate life.
Give me too dozen sponges.  What can I clean?
I'll let them absorb the whole world 'til it gleams.
Give me four dozen arms, and set them to reaching.
We'll hit all of the corners.  That's why I love teaching.

Don't Think I Knew

Until just this hour, I don't think I knew
Why exactly I keep being drawn back to you.

It isn't your features, though they're set just right.
It isn't your form, though that surely does excite.

Your greatest attraction:  seeming nearly half-ripe
For my honest assessment of culture and life.

There are others besides you.
They don't look the way you do.

Friends and Acquaintences Vie

Programs and friends and acquaintances vie
For my ears and my eyes and my hands and my mind.
Though I'm not omniscient enough to regret,
It's likely I'm leaving some longings unmet.

The World Has Its Ways

The world has its ways of telling you "enough,"
and I have my ways of never hearing.
That's why my knees and heart make funny noises
When I try to use them anymore.
It wasn't that I didn't want to hear.
For the longest time, I thought I needed not to,
But I'm listening now.
It's easier for the first time, for a short time
When you just don't care.

Your Clothes, Your House, Your Hair

The way you work, your taking care

Of all your clothes, your house, your hair,

Tells of a dark core in your brain

Which thinks all people are the same,

But it isn't true.

My friends are little gods in human-suits.

Everyone else is created equal.

Derange Me

I'd warn you that you'll just derange me,

But I can't help that you'd like to change me.

I will warn you that as a rule

My friends will think you heartless, cruel,

For saying I could be improved upon,

But you're not wrong.

Sentinel

No sentinel's as good as friends

Against those who are past amends,

Or feeling your world's past its end,

Or that it's a sadistic test.

It's they who can protect us best

Against finiteness, emptiness.

She's Forgotten

She's forgotten how to manage time.

She's half deaf and three-quarters blind.

In school, she made low-average grades.

For her cooking, no one throws parades.

She moves as if she has the gout.

Her memory's in constant doubt.

Her beauty's twenty years past faded.

Her singing voice is overrated.

I hear her yards off when she breathes.

Never insult her in front of me.

Centuries of Troubadours

Some centuries of troubadours,

Minstrels and bards have closed the doors

To certain mindsets, certain thoughts,

Kept us from knowing what we ought.

They've used our ears to blind our eyes,

So we take foolishness for wise.

They don't need wool. They merely sing

Of sacrificing everything

For mere moments, flights of the heart,

and many call this scheming “art.”

Completed

It inspires art and song.

Its ups and downs string us along.

It makes for drama, blindness, mess,

But rarely prolonged happiness.

Romance lights, then burns, then ends;

Our life's completed by our friends.

I Hate My Body

I hate my body
For being weak,
Knowing fatigue,
For letting me
Be robbed by sleep
Of a quarter
Of my life.

To hell with rest.
Restitution!

Misjudging Strangers

We as people live in danger

Of hastily misjudging strangers.

meeting-moments don't go far

Toward knowing who they really are.

You might catch someone (not a jerk)

After bad news and long work.

Or so I'm told; or so they say,

But I know I am not that way.

Each acquaintance that I've got,

I know well if they're liked or not,

and I treat each one accordingly.

That's really all there is to me.

Home Lives

Ideas are raised, grow up in our minds.

Perhaps they have depressing home lives.

We mistreat or overburden them.

Most of them sink, unremembered, in problems,

But there's a moment when a newborn idea

Is all its mother-mind can see,

Is pure and strong as it can be,

Makes its very home's heart beat,

So awfully young to live life's peak.

We Always Do

We did the same thing we always do.

I tried to talk, and tried to listen to you,

and I don't think either you or I got through.

I'm missing something. It has to be

Some secret or some mystery.

The other reason I could see:

You're even worse at this than me,

and that's as crazy as it seems.

Customer

I didn't have the nerve the first time.  I shouldn't now, I think,
But every repeat customer who looks like you deserves a wink.

I'm the only person on the floor prepared to offer this,
But I've written down my number here.  Please call for extra service.

Just tell me where to go, madam.  I excel the streets and halls.
I'm that kind of associate.  By request, I make house-calls.


Ring once for service.
Press two for English.
Scream if you want to go faster.
I love to satisfy the customer.

(Many an Awkward Silence) With You

I've shared many an awkward silence with you,
Which as far as my life goes, is not something new,
But it's strange how often in just two months' time
Our conversations have broken down like my meter and rhyme.

I figure I might ask "what the hell?" if you don't tell me about it,
But I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

You Stick Around

I've not looked at you long enough to share what I have found,
But I will share that I like it, that I hope you stick around.
I know some don't like auditions, and not knowing where they stand,
Don't like to wait to call it friendship.  You may prefer a faster brand.
I myself prefer the long road, so I won't blame you for going.
The recent met, I do not trust them yet, but I'm most the way to knowing.

I Stick Around

Between two different crowds

In the same house,

I stick around like a curse

Or a zombie who won't hail a hearse.

My life's a suspicion that I'm doing it wrong.

My life's secretly knowing I do not belong.

I fall out of the picture or get out of hand.

I'm not misunderstood. I just misunderstand.

Why I Write, Part x+157: Mental

I scatter my words like BP scatters oil.
I spill my guts here, without death's end to toil.
I spill ink like I'd spill water if I were the world's worst waiter.
I spill my brain's juices.  I'm a mental masturbator.

Sherlock's Mysteries

I write verse enough about you to make old professors weep
and leave the art's aficionados languishing in sleep,
But have your form, your words, your laugh endeared you most to me,
Or am I drawn to you as one of Sherlock's mysteries?
Are your charms as good as endless, like a wood's or foreign land's,
Or will infatuation weaken once I understand?
If you choose this very moment, and you bind me to your face
Will I marvel at my fortune or lament your lack of taste?
Of the labyrinthine puzzles that our science can unfurl,
None are near as complex as what draws me to a girl.

Twice-Treasured Creature

How abnormal I find you, my twice-treasured creature!
How can beauty be basic and more than its features?
How I want to travel your form 'til I learn
All of its ranges and fields and blind turns,

But I'd most like to find your mind's entrances, exits,
and assail them with love's winds and rains, weather's kiss.
Since the best part of you won't admit fingertips,
I'll explore with my words once I've knocked with my lips.