I Could Use Metaphors

Sometimes being single can suck.
I could use metaphors in describing my luck.
I have an old offensive coordinator.
The ladies always tell him "see you later."
Of course, he wishes the girls would stay there
Because he's too old to be too smart to care.

Or...

Want to drink off a week of frustration
(Your friend can't go to the bar.)
Or just take a drive on the highway
(There's no money or gas in the car.)
Or dance with a beautiful woman
(That's too bad, 'cause she's got a date.)
Or sit around, and maybe watch baseball?
(You're too early, or eight months too late.)
Or maybe I'll just write a poem.
(I'm all out of meter and rhyme.)
What's the best way to ruin good weekends?
(A little bad news at a time.)

Today is the Day, or Thursday, Mar. 29

Today is the day mighty Thor has made.
Let us be bad.  Act like boys in it.
Today is the day that the floor is laid.
Pour a smooth slab of your choice in it.
Today is the game many more have played.
Let us play Madden.  Make noise in it.
Today is the day that Al Gore gets laid.
Let's not be sad he employs women.
Today is the day many more get paid.
Let's not be bad boys.  Just give a tip.
Today is one day there are laws.  Obey.
Don't make so much noise at soirees, you twit.
Today is the day that the Lord has made.
Let us be glad and rejoice in it.

Anachronus

I don't mind a girl who's not built for the long haul.
Just call me Anachronus: not built for any time at all.
Too short and I only think of what we could have missed,
But go too long, I'll reach a point where I regret we ever kissed.
The morning doesn't move me. Fact is, I hardly want to stir,
But I just can't stay up late the way I used to anymore.
My youth was pretty awkward. I was advanced, and kids are cruel,
But I haven't really grown up. I still hate to follow rules.
My poetry's old-fashioned in the sense that it is rhymed,
But, uncomfortable with meter, I'm unsuited for old times.
In ancient times my unhumanism comes in handy,
But my body falls apart like I'm some modern city dandy.
I'm too sinful for the garden and too lazy for the fall,
But I keep my mind so occupied that anytime's a ball.

Why I Write, Part x+47: I Have a Feeling...

It's that feeling I get when I forget what to write,
Know I won't remember 'cause it's too late at night,
and get just tired enough to really wonder where I'm going.
My response to that feeling is: just write anything.

Fiery, Pt. 2

In my mind I invent your whole life, at a glance,
But I was right about how you love, read and dance,
Right about how much I'd give for a romance,
and right not to waste my time chasing a chance.

My doom was foretold by the hue of your hair.
I find body and mind are both cause to stare,
But a mutual glance ignites mutual glares,
and, hand to my glands, there's not anything there.

I just attract chaos. It's a mutual attraction.
You're a mayhem commercial, a brilliant distraction,
But you can't date an actor and get any traction.
Still, you can me if you'd like some empty action.

Kisses Never Come in Pairs

You're in my starting lineup of muses,
and in my top five or ten favorite excuses
To think in rhyme, or let my mind drift.
To see you makes my spirit lift.

The first time I met you, we hit it off right,
But we came up lame on the base-paths that night.
For my two steps forward, you take one back,
and I'm too clumsy to kiss like that.

I'm intent stealing signs that you make hard to read.
Your hellos are unspecial, goodbyes mostly sweet.
When you blew that kiss, you were way up there.
Since when can kisses climb down stairs?

That night you sat beside me for dinner
My mind was as forward as I am a sinner
So those inches of distance were too far to bear.
Why can't first kisses come in chairs?

Well it turns out they can, though it's kind of a stretch
To go across my body to make that catch,
But what a beauty to ensnare.
A kiss like that makes people stare.

I still smile around you. Away, I don't frown.
I don't hate my life just 'cause you're not around
Or don't answer my phone calls, or laugh at my hair.
My kisses never come in pairs.

Fear

I once felt returning to college was brave.
I made it a mantra: “I won't be afraid.”
Well, irony courted is irony raised.
I fear I can only keep missing those days.
In school I found comfort in class and myself
To the point I feared leaving to do something else.
My subconscious took action by putting things off,
So my stay will be four years, not three like I thought.
Though that didn't solve much, it worried me so
That now I'm as fearful to stay as to go,
and now that my haven's been poisoned with doubt
I'm faced with the fear that the world will find out.
My finances could quickly bring school to an end,
So I hide from my parents. I hide from my friends,
Most important to hide from? That must be the truth.
To think that I caused this? An unhealing wound.
Fearing past, fearing present, why not fear future too?
Is it wrong to want women years younger than you?
I'm attracted to freshman; what about girls I teach?
Am I some kind of pervert, the worst kind of leach?
I feel, I suspect, when commencement draws near
The one thing I won't be afraid of is fear.

I Can Use Haiku

I can use haiku.
It jump-starts my poetic
Thinking in three lines.

Haiku For Two

I can't write haiku
For two.  I can hardly fit
One whole thought in it!

Haiku For You, Pt. 2

I could write haiku
For you.  But why be silly?
Like I have a chance!

Haiku For You

I won't write haiku
For you.  You're worth more work, and
Yet you deserve less.

I Don't Do Haiku, Pt. 2

I don't do haiku.
There's nothing to gain by it,
Not in this language.

Event

Today there's a blue moon, a momentous event:
You let your guard down for two tenths of a second.
What little you showed was there for all the world to see:
I recognized a paralyzing fear, though not of me;
What it was, I couldn't say.  You didn't notice I was there.
I couldn't ask what you're afraid of, and you couldn't tell I cared.

Why I Write, Part x+46: Just Because I Can

My muse brings me metaphors; I supply rhymes.
As a pair, we might strike anywhere, anytime,

But why do we do it?  Which motives are there?
To do it so often should prove that we care
For either the process, results or rewards,
But which of those things do we really work towards?

I don't write for money It's not to get rich;
I'd find more of that in a sidewalk or ditch.
And what of that cousin of money, the fame?
Well, I don't spread my poetry; thus goes my name.

To stay superficial, do I do it for fun?
I let it distract me when there's work to be done.
Do I write to show off, or to prove I'm a man?
If pressed, I'd have to guess I do it just because I can.

Sonnot x+8: Of Lakes and Libraries, Wings and Words

Your words fairly flutter, so friendly and light.
Without any effort, they seem to take flight.
Wings might be sufficient to buoy my day,
But without weight beneath them, they just float away.

As a muse, you know words must betray the heart's sin.
My muse, you're a lake, and I wish to dive in.
Such acts, pure and righteous, they cool passion first.
Jumping in with mouth open gives rest to my thirst,

But to drink you unfiltered may then leave me sick.
The honeymoon portion of life is too quick.
The waves of your drama stir me up and down,
and such a poor swimmer, I'm likely to drown.

So instead I'm content to just sit here, read eyes.
I'm loyal, attentive.  I wear friendship's disguise.
Your eyes are whole libraries.  Poems and art
Tell a story where two of us, living, shall part.

Why I Write, Part x+45: Poetry is Everywhere

Praise as incentive can't nearly touch
Explaining why I have written so much.
I may tend to treat some pleasant behaviors
As a comforting mix of addiction and savior.

Might my serotonin be slightly amiss?
I suppose, but it won't account for this
Unhealthy rate at which produce.
Therefore it's natural that I deduce

My brain must have more than one thing out of place.
People all over write of some pretty face,
But I tend to view this model with doubt.
I do it too, but I also write out

Into the world's treasure (That's everything else).
In addition I write poems trained toward myself.
My brain thinks there's poetry nigh everywhere.
Everything's a metaphor for everything there.

Life's a metaphor for football.  Reversed, it might be true.
Wind scatters leaves out to the world as better teachers do.
The act of writing can compare to any other act.
The nights are lit by memories; new lands unclothed by maps.

A person who is muse enough can be like any thing:
Their bodies lakes, eyes libraries, their words unburdened wings,
But no less inspiration do I find in all the outside world.
God's in movies.  Cliffs are bookshelves.  I hardly need a girl.

More verse must always flow from my believing thus,
For it becomes the map and flashlight which I use to suss
Out some buried truth long forgot throughout the world,
Or, in failing that, another chance to win a girl.

Why I Write, Part x+44: A Blueprint

A sentence's diagram, to risk sounding trite
Is a blueprint for everything poets can write.
A poet who enters mundane grammar class
May take from a professor an old treasure map.
You see and think “what if boredom could kill?”
But I see all the optional slots I could fill
With adverbial phrases of any construction
Or adjectives acting with primeval suction
To draw readers deeper into the verse, where
I hit them with prepositional phrases.  There,
In language's depths, the sentence labyrinth,
The roughly-mapped chaos beneath the blueprints,
Half cavern, half roach motel, I find such rhymes
As to feed my addiction through most trying times.

Why I Write, Part x+43: My Process

I use drug metaphors, for I find them quite apt.
I write to escape. With my mind so enwrapped
I ignore what's around me, pursue the unreal,
Lose the time, the environment, discomforts I feel,
and stop anything aiming toward social success.
I'm indifferent to all sorts of mayhem and mess.
When I write, I must certainly lose self-awareness,
Because I sound like Shawn Spencer describing my process.
It's all about messages, a muse from above,
With some obscure reference to give it a shove,
Or I think of a friend, or some person I read,
Associate freely, put a hand to my head
and I'm off to the races. How my words cover ground!
But an organized process? You should check Lost & Found.

Cold to the Touch

When you know her, she's more than the sum of her stats
Her schooling, her parents, and other such facts.
I think she is older than the sum of her years.
She's cautious in love and reasoned in fear.
Though she's not yet in her beauty's full flower
She already cultivates knowledge for power.
It would be wrong to say her heart's cooled,
But she doesn't let passion make her its fool.
To point out her youth is a truthful insult
To this shockingly-halfway-to-perfect adult,
Though when anybody tries to tell her as much
Her denial is frank, rather cold to the touch.

A Wiser Animal

Let the muses now sing me the story of how
A fool of a man became a wiser animal.
For years I dated in a mindset like this:
I'd meet, and I'd talk, and I'd fill out a checklist
Choosing where she's a hit and why she's a miss,
Let the math decide if I'd cut bait or persist.
I tallied up and summed the parts. Why would the whole be more?
Yet, somehow, such a mind makes lovers unholier than whores.
The effect was awful, unwholesome, sanitary.
How does a rough-cut, big-eating, hairy beast like me
Trade in his lizard brain for future-focused humanity?
Who forgets to screw because they're on their way to marry?
And how can you learn when all you do is think,
Shut out Father Time and Mother Instinct,
and drift through a sea of ideas? I say you can't.
Let your gut lead you back to hard, dirty land.
Forget your mind above, the future and the past.
Think lower. You'll be beast enough to know the holy act.

Why I Write, Part x+42: I'm a Poet. I Like Thinking.

I'm a poet.  I like thinking.  I can't stop.  I think too much, for too long.
When that happens I think myself in knots, out of square, and all wrong.
I write the wrong people the wrong things the wrong way in the wrong tense.
It's hard to make good poetry if you don't even make good sense.

To Stop Myself

Since I met you in November, there was little I could do
To stop myself from writing, talking, thinking about you,
But when I made a joke, rather cruel, at your expense
I laughed hard enough to realize that I'm alright with just friends.

Why I Write, Part x+41: Repeat

Now it's time I told a story that you kindly won't repeat.
I knew a boy who threw a baseball near two-hundred feet,
A four-tool player, second batter, center field,
'Til he hurt his hand, and never played, and never healed.

I also knew a wide receiver like a magnet to a ball
Who let himself go, lost his legs. He ain't suitin' up this fall.
The kid who never needed pens or slide rules to do math
Had a couple of concussions. Now he's maggin' concrete paths.

I knew a kid out of high school, had the right stats, headed someplace,
Missed a few too many classes. How quick interns get replaced!
Now, if you can believe it, all those boys made just one man.
The only reason he's still moving is he never made a plan.

Myself, I find that I can learn from the tales of those before.
When I found I could write poems, I wrote near four hundred more.
'Cause that man was kind to tell me one pure thing I'm sure I know:
That when the Lord hands you a skill, you make sure you don't let go.

I Know a Song For That

It twists a knife into my back to see life knock you flat.
It makes me want to tell you I know a song for that,
But the knife that twists when I see you in a fix
Twists again: that song I grew up with came out when you were six.

You and I can't keep time, were born out of step,
With only timeless commonalities left.
Such is the life for a harmless old perve
Whose weakling restraint is a match for his nerve.

Why I Write, Part x+40: Elephants in the Room

I swore up and down I'd stop writing to you,
But I saw your face. You whispered. What else could I do?
My mind and my muse are conniving old finks.
I suppose it's like when someone tells you not to think
About elephants. What else can you do?
The elephant in this room, my headroom, is you.

Oh, Technology

Oh, technology, you young one, ficklest of friends,
Though you may speed impatient men to certain ends,
They would be rather foolish to rely upon you.
You say "no sound" or "no signal." Then what would they do?

Rounding the Bases

I've hit on a new plan for rounding the bases:
Find a girl who is turned on by charity cases.
What I lack in the typical poet's eroticism
I make up for in typical poet's neuroticism,
and once my Saint sees me as something to fix,
That could be enough to get me in the mix.

Why I Write, Part x+39: Deadlines and Schedules

When I write, my mind swims in a stimulant haze.
To stop makes a guest of an old, dread malaise
Which husbands my weakness and raises my fears,
(To which I've lost lovers and jobs -- why, whole years!)
So to deadlines and schedules and counts I aspire,
Which, when met, raise my spirits the higher,

But when my pen does not cut true
Those consequences double, too.
So instead I pledge to turn my art
To other matters than the heart,
In hopes that writing something more
Will stop my needing to keep score.

It Would End

I can't help but sit and imagine how sadly
It would all end with someone I wanted so badly.
You'd probe and you'd test.  You'd shove and you'd shunt
'til you realized I'd give you whatever you want.
At that point, my life as a free man would end,
So it's best if, instead, I just call you "my friend."

I Dance

My life, it circles all around;
I dance with my own death.
I deal with self-made challenges;
Take years to catch my breath.

I build a new facade around
A one-room same-old-same
That's filled with few improvements
and flimsy, outward change.

I feel that I've been marking time
'Til some unfathomed end,
But now I wonder, once it's reached,
How quickly shall I mend?

But Not

You challenge both my minds;
Play games, but not just games.
Desire to learn and to kiss
Is the same, but not the same.

I've drawn you in halfway,
Impressed but not impressed,
and hinted at the truth;
Confessed, but not confessed.

Darwinian Proving Ground

My life is a series of searches for things I've forgotten,
Lost, broken, or left out to grow stale or rotten.
As long as I have those, I have a reason to keep moving
Upfield on this chessboard, this Darwinian proving
Ground.  I put myself in bad places for the fun of getting out.
I'm addicted to chasing those moments of doubt.

Sonnot x+7: Shag-Coated, Steel-Framed Teddy Bear

You invited me, made me your guest,
So I'll make myself at home, and be honest.
I'd been at this table for years before you came.
At one point I was even ahead in the game.

Life dealt me all the right cards, a four-leaf clover
and that one kind of girl: the hard-to-get-over.
Now loss has me hung over.  It changed me oddly.
My pain is modernity leaving the body.

You were lust at first sight, but I didn't make plans,
and desire for you won't change me as a man,
But I make you laugh, and you make me smile.
If you like that foundation, we should build for a while.

I'll be strong when you're weak.  When you need, I'll be there.
I'll be your shag-coated, steel-framed teddy bear.

Stupid but Urgent

I made hints and declarations, gave you second chances.
I lived for your laughter, subsisted on glances.
I guess it's no wonder I'm such a cracked mess.
Something stupid but urgent is bound to cause stress.

It's Personal

I have been known, I suppose, to stay out until sunrise,
Squint out my path home under older, judging eyes,
and beg rides from pretty girls, or anyone handy
After too many drinks of St. Patrick's Day candy,

So I can only look forward to future days, when
I'm not stupid enough that I do it again,
But now is not the future, and today is not that day.
Once I find my guilty pleasures, I'm not one to walk away.

I know right and wrong; I do both anyway.
I won't stop running risks, or playing with fire,
So you know it's personal when I say
You no longer burn me with my own desires.

To Winter, In Memoriam

Sunrise early, sunrise fast,
You show us winter will not last.
Saints V. and Patrick lead the spring
To green the hearts of growing things,

But greeting springtime with such haste
Puts winter's beauties all to waste.
The colder days in colder climes
Take me back to hallowed times:

A child's short, crisp days of waiting
When trees are trimmed and breath is baiting,
Days of ritual and song.
Yes, winter's fourth moves years along.

I still find winter feeds my hopes.
The morning glint off snow-slicked slopes,
The mounting up, the sliding down...
Ah, the grass is always greener when it's brown!

To a Friend, Last Seen Ten Years Ago, In Jest

How laughing twisted life can get!
If when we parted, you had bet
That I'd be out of shape now, and you'd be dead
Then I'd have retorted, “You're wrong in the head,”

So it's rather a fright
To see, in hindsight,
That you should have.
We'd both be right.

To a Friend, Last Seen Ten Years Ago, In Memoriam

Each year, I find less in the memory
That I contemplate beneath your tree.
I am not who I promised I'd be.
It took nine years to learn what you taught me
In one day: we are all rare and brittle,
Polished and stained , lacquer chipping a little;
That identity is merely a token,
To stand in for our deeds and the words we have spoken,
and that we are destined, made to be broken;
By life I'm cracked, by instinct ruled,
My stone heart yearns for sculptor's tools.
With those last lessons, you were gone,
and I am the fool who ever hangs on,
Bloody and sore for persisting so long.
I abuse myself, but the greater wrong
Would be to loose your memory, forget
Who you were, and worst of all, let
The time and nature of your end be a stain
Upon a fruitful friendship fraught with gain.
While it's true that I, surprised at you, have rather dropped the ball,
So that in nine years your tree has grown so much, and I have not at all,
Unless you were revived, I would not go without
Your memory, the missing, and the doubt.
Though it's not for my sake, and it's no good to you,
I will always remember. What else can I do?

They Don't Tell You

If life's a race, they don't tell you
How long it is at the start.
If life's a journey, there's too much running,
and it's pretty hard on the heart.
If life is a poem, then I need an editor
To make a few dozen corrections.
If life is a project, I'm your typical man
Who didn't read the directions.
If life is a game-show, we all win the money
Over the lifespan of the goat.
If life's always making you cry like this,
I'll go build myself a boat.
If life is something that's holy,
It's safest to live like a nun,
But if you always keep yourself cloistered,
You'll never have any fun.

Looking Away

Your lips, if not their words, seemed quite inviting,
So I got myself an early start at unrequiting.
Meeting your gaze, and then looking away
Was challenging cardio, to quicken my day,

But no longer.  Those nasty lies I told myself
About you, even as I learned the nasty little truth
Are my oldest trick for getting over someone.  They help,
But part of me misses missing you.

Never Met in Nature

Your orb's orange is a stranger,
A hue I'd never met in nature.
It blends seamlessly with yellow,
Which is itself a friendly fellow,

But I really find your beauty's root
Next to the expanse of blue.
It missed no spots in coloring the sky.
Its deep mystery recalls Hawaii.

On sea-cliffs there, you see it low and high.
This moon-rise on a crisp, early winter night
Is most uncommon here.  I see it shake
My mind, my soul, my prayers awake.

Why I Write, Part x+38: The Muse Throws to Me

When my mind is open, the Muse throws to me.
If I'm in the right spot, then I'll probably see,
Put my hands up, and write it, and tuck it away,
and then I'm half-finished with making the play.

I still have to run with it, take it upfield,
See what my sweat mixed with brainstorms will yield.
Then I post it online, for the sake of my stalkers.
The metaphor says that I'm waiting for blockers.

Rule 32.5

Do you cry out for someone, make unheard declarations?
Are you running from someone who stomps aspirations?
Have a memory best forgotten, but that just keeps sticking
Or a life that seems to get you down and then start kicking?

Just shout.  Yell, and someone will hear your scream.
Misery loves company, and tragedy likes ice cream.
Take a trip out for window-shopping and just-looking,
Or back home for memories and friends' mammas' cooking,

Or you could stay in, play music.  Let's dance a few measures,
'Cause desperate times call for simple pleasures.

The Face of Youth

It is best that Shakespeare's "ashes of youth,"
Were wrote describing him, if not the truth,
For if this was not the tune of old Will's song,
Then I should say the Bard had had it wrong.

The face of youth is marked by haughty reds, or brilliant gold,
Or perhaps by the browns and blacks of forests' nights,
and from behind these beards hot eyes look to mate or fight.
There and thus do men grow old.  They gray about the face.

They grow stiff and cold more quickly than the female of the race,
But no beards do women grow.
Though they learn tales and grow more sage,
This growth speaks only of improvement, not of age.

Obstacle

What is it about him?  It can't be the hairdo.
Is that goofbag hipster nonsense what she's into?
Does his poetry rhyme the way sunsets do?

Or maybe he's got a brilliant mind.
Maybe he learns ceaselessly.  The facts he finds
In different fields, into patterns he winds.

Or perhaps he finds patterns of a different ilk,
humorous.  From every situation, a laugh he can milk.
(I've heard her laugh, too, and it sounded like silk).

What makes him an obstacle?  He's just a guy
Who does his fingertip push-ups one at a time,
The same as everyone else does, right?

Well I do.  It's not my fault she can't see.
Why bother chase her, when she should be after me?

The Alternative is Slowly Falling for Someone Who Annoyed You

I see you on the sidewalk; I move to the street.
I don't walk through the day looking to meet
Strangers.  I say who needs them?
I won't smile or snarl 'til you give me a reason,

But I've been known to make them up,
At least for a woman I can't see enough of.
I imagine their intelligence, their wit stands above
Others, and say every word of praise but "love."

But now I say "Spangler, you moron, don't be so nice.
Girls already have all the sugar and spice,
So show them a poem.  Make them laugh.  Make them leave.
Keep them off balance, unsure what to believe.

Most of all, don't treat them as friends.
Don't become someone on whom they depend.
The desire to change you is what draws them in,
So make them reach out.  Don't be there when

They're in crisis.  They see you as less of a man.
It sounds misogynist, wrong, but this plan
Has been getting jerks laid since the world began.
You can slowly get nicer, once she's in hand."

Lent

Your mouth says one thing,
Your body says, "get bent."
You smile, but your eyes don't see me,
So I gave you up for lent.

Write you the poet's proxy
For waving my arms in the air,
Or just look at your new picture,
Say something about your hair?

My heart says "now!"
My brain says "don't."
I swore I wouldn't,
So I won't.

The Friend Zone

Two schools of thought have made themselves known:
While some men, unless reaching home
Would turn down a friend, and be alone,
Others are content to hang out in the friend zone.

Life the second way is more evolved, more enlightened,
and I'll be in her life long after those others flee frightened,
But the lizard inside of me still hates to see
Everyone getting a taste but me.

Move an Inch

Far be it from me
To reference romantic comedies,
But if you've ever seen
One, you know how the main character
Runs into one girl, and all manner of trouble,
Blows his life up, and goes through the rubble
Just to get her.
Yet, when it's almost over,
When they're about to kiss,
It's the girl who moves the last inch.

Well, the movie is like God's embrace, the Holy Spirit.
I only have to move an inch, and I'll receive it.

Why I Write, Part x+37: All the Words I'm Holding Back

All the words I'm holding back have made my tongue grow fat,
Too much I'd say, but leave unsaid, to shake a senate at,
So I write to her poetry, words enough to choke her,
Though if I ever did her justice, that would make her mediocre.