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.