The Visceral Joy of Making MADD's Job a Little Bit Harder

I'm blasting the lyrics and bumping the bass,

Letting cool air and speed sweep my tingling face,

Head and limbs out the window, derelict at the wheel

Of my sweeping-turn, rolling-stop blotto-mobile.

Static Electric Character

I've heard people suppose that I found religion,

That I burnt up my sins in the fires of conversion,

But I found God in a moment of teenage desperation;

I just sometimes lose his number.

A friend of mine assumes that I just found a mission,

But I've always been driven by a thing I keep my head in.

In fact, the one I have now is even the same one.

I just got a little better at it.

You might think that I got older and smarter,

Or that I found something more to live for,

Or even that I had one, and now I'm trying harder,

and not a word of all of those is right.

I just got a sense of humor about my bad judgment.

Your Memory's Alive

When I'm out on my rounds, I know your memory's alive.

It's not that I aim to go past it when I drive,

But I've been by where I last saw you a couple times,

and that's not even the way I think about the restaurant

That my memories of you seem insistent to haunt.

I suppose that's what my mind needs; I guess it's what I want.

Exhuming Societies' Bones

I know that four-eyed nerd-dom's not like Indiana Jones,

But there's still something thrilling about exhuming societies' bones,

Bringing new honor to their temples and new footsteps to their roads

and bringing life to ancient livers' humbler abodes.

Still, I wonder if it's right, disturbing ancient tombs,

Just to find out how the ancients decorated rooms.

Everybody's Doing It: Second Thoughts in the Art of Saying “No”

They keep telling me that everybody's doing it,

and I ought to go along.

They say I don't want to be the last one to get it,

Something I never did want.

I see it happening everywhere around me.

Though I'm not the following kind,

I still sometimes get the sneaking misgiving

That I'm being left behind.

Two Trains Leave the Station

If I leave Crazytown at eighty miles an hour

Head for Hollywood,

Stop for a drink in Distraction Junction,

Get dinner in Doubtsville,

and rent a room in Regrets River,

How long until I collide with my conscience?

And where do I look if I can't find the answer?

Stay Behind

I don't want to leave behind the classroom,

Or being in the dumber half of the room,

Nor hundred-poem months on the regular

Or being able to start writing a novel in November,

and of course I'll miss the people. I will be a mess,

But I will leave nevertheless,

Though some of those things may not stay behind.

Cockroach Little

The sky is falling in pieces

Big as houses,

Hard as bruises.

That happens sometimes.

When the sky falls, everyplace light

Is a busy highway,

Is a shooting range,

Is a slaughterhouse.

When the sky falls, I hide in the dark.

Risk/Risk

There's no easy and hard; there's no black and white.

There are risks, and then other risks. That's the beauty of life.

There's risk taken for granted, when we risk things forsook.

Then life asks us to risk things we can't overlook.

There are risks that we take 'cause we crave the reward.

There are risks that we take 'cause we're a little bit bored.

Those are the risks that make your blood awaken,

and then there are risks that just cannot be taken.

Fluid

Relationships are fluid.

We all know about the blood,

The tears and sweat and spit,

and perhaps a few other things,

But relationships can be watery,

Taking the shape of whatever

First holds them together,

Until something pokes a hole in it,

and then they're gone.

Sometimes, though, relationships are non-Newtonian–

Just plain bizarre.

December Is the Fastest Month

December is the fastest month,

Though one of the longest.

Its days press, one against the other,

Perhaps to conserve their heat,

and they run by in a pack,

Perhaps to get out of the cold,

Though they are warmed by tradition

and food and family feasting.

Perhaps December is so fast,

Simply because it's easiest to miss.

...Said Montana to Anyone Who Would Listen

I have been my peoples' mother and their romance and their whore,

and now I am their battle ground as their words wage civil war

Between the first of my two children, the work and industry

Who have sweated, who have taken, and above all, needed me,

and the second of my children. They admire and they love

Me, but not my other child, whom they think they're above,

Because they live in leisure and engage me in their sport,

and in fairness, the older has done nothing to the younger's favor court,

But there's a new kid in the family at whom both his elders shout.

The Californians want to change me. Old and New West say “get out.”

...Thought the Student of the Teacher

What a sorry little man they sent to supervise my class.

His mouth is twice as windy 'cause the fat blocks up his ass.

He thinks his jokes are funny, but they never seem to land.

He went to college, and found learning, but no way to understand

That he's just because he knows things doesn't mean that he's unique,

That knowing things we don't care about won't bring him what he seeks,

and that have of what he thinks he knows seems faulty anyway.

I'd flirt with him to see him squirm, but I think he might be gay.

A House Is Made Home

Every part of a house is made home by some sport.

At homes, driveways become basketball courts.

Starting from one end, the yard is a diamond.

If you start from the other, it becomes a gridiron.

The garage door's second fold can crossbar a hockey cage.

The den, when folks are gone, is a dodgeball...shooting range?

The porch-rails are the faces on which little climbers climb,

The living room and couches are terrain where cats hunts mice.

Any room that's got a wall in it becomes a handball court.

They say home is where the heart is; I say home's where we keep score.

A White Christmas/Unwinter's Day/BZN to FLA

Leaving again like we always do,

Two more airports to drag luggage through.

It might be tiresome, but to stay would be wrong.

It's easier just to go along.

Twelve more hours to go see the sun and my mom.

Almost a year is just over too long,

Though after two weeks, it may feel barely enough.

Still, family's tame-ish–it's the packing that's rough.

It's not that I don't love my grandfolks at all.

I'd just rather see them in summer, is all.

White Christmas wastes the winter when it comes at the beach,

At the price of skin sun-seared and eyeballs sun-bleaced.

I was stoked just for packing. Last night, I didn't sleep.

To my backside with all of the snow and the sleet,

Which, for feasting and family, I know leave behind.

To the whole Christmas Spirit my brother seems blind.

Punchbowls

“My people” come as ghosts, as memories, and friends;

The punchbowls at reunions taste of vague acquaintences

Faces and names that don't match up, like socks in a drawer.

That I can't even remember why I remember anymore,

So I treasure the first three groups, try to entertain the rest,

and let Facebook assume that we're all BFFs.

Pitcher-Plant Fantasy

There was a time when you were real to me,

A time before this pitcher-plant fantasy

That I can't seem to climb my way out of,

As I have out of our discontinuous partnership.

Alone, you were merely fantastic.

Together, we were fiercely cooperative,

Building that fantasy, my favorite story to tell.

Forgetting that isn't going so well.

You [ . . . ] and I

The distance between you [ . . . ] and I is inches and fathoms and electric,

A product of intention and happenstance and the mind's tricks.

You are a baby dragon, a red-haired, green-eyed monster,

A tiny Godzilla of men's hearts,

With a child's innocence of what might be crimes,

and I am a young man in physical decline.

We must be the punch-line to a poem

Or the set-up to a bad joke.

Why I Write, Part x+213: No Rest for the Wicked

If there's no rest for the wicked, then surely none for those who write,

In whose heart a thousand characters reside,

and they have certainly sinned together in my heart,

Because I haven't bothered to keep them apart,

For their coming together serves my writing the best,

So the sins of my heart I write out on their breasts.

Walking Out Of Babylon

I have to admit, and I still have to hide

That my glance is drawn to your breasts.

I'm walking out of Babylon at a mountaineer's stride–

One step for every three breaths.

I'm walking to someplace smaller than demons' eyes

If not any smaller than their stomachs.

If it's one-seventh of my dreams, it will be better.

If they let one-seventh of my mind in, I'll write letters.

Why I Write, Part x+212: Never Cared For Chemistry

I am a contradiction in conflicting glass-ware,

A nerd who loves to experiment, but never cared

For chemistry. Sure, I love to mix things –

Flammable chemicals and metaphors, as long as I'm doing

It in the land of Who Knows What Will Happen?

There's no point in doing when it's doing again.

The Graduate's Cure for Postmodernism

The same old stories

Mean what they meant before

They were memories.

The Three-Year-Old's Cure for Postmodernism

Shiny shiny go machine

Takes me to butterfly fields

Of green and magic.

The Five-Year-Old's Cure for Postmodernism

So what if the world

Is telling me what to be?

I'll just plug my ears.

The Doctor's Cure for Postmodernism

No sense living by

A philosophy for your

Terminal patients.

The Cartoon Supervillain's Cure for Postmodernism

Can you really call

Progress toward the end of

All things “progress?” Sure.

The Teenager's Cure for Postmodernism

Do or do not. There

Is no time to think about

Why you're doing it.

The Transient's Cure for Postmodernism

Straight streets, rational

Space, but not all who wander,

The lost, make progress.

The Angry Girlfriend's Cure for Postmodernism

If it means nothing,

and it's not going somewhere,

Just break up with it.

The Angry Boyfriend's Cure for Postmodernism

You think way too much

About things that don't matter.

In fact, just shut up.

The Zombie's Cure for Postmodernism

Consume everything

You can get your hands or teeth

On–so act normal.

The Sailor-On-Shore-Leave's Cure for Postmodernism

Take life for granted

Every day for two weeks. It

Should clear up by then.

The Postmodern Cure for Postmodernism

Should I talk about

Simulacra of doctors

Or progress toward health?

The Absurdest Cure for Postmodernism

This light tastes salty.

The British are Coming Soon!

Bet it all on black.

The Pop Historian's Cure for Postmodernism

The Romans had a

Postmodern-ish period.

It ended. Wait, what?

The Zen Buddhist's and/or Montana Weather Forecaster's Cure for Postmodernism

If you ignore it

It will probably go away–

Or maybe you will.

The Corny Motivational Poster's Cure for Postmodernism (As Reinterpreted by Carlos Santana)

Be the 'you' you want

To see in the world; watch it

Change to suit you mood.

The Corny Motivational Poster's Cure for Postmodernism

Be the small-scale change

You want to see in the world.

Progress needn't be huge.

The Puritan Cure for Postmodernism

Keep working. If you

See yourself progress, who cares

What some critic said?

The Pragmatist's Cure for Postmodernism

Treat words like they mean

Something, unless the other way

Is more comfortable.

The Antisocial Cure for Postmodernism

Walk forests alone.

Pretend trees are real, because

Who's here to argue?

A Mythbuster's Cure for Postmodernism

In an empty world

I needn't reject your truth

To insert my own.

The Teacher's Cure for Postmodernism

Water your students.

Cajole them to create more.

Cherish the results.

The Bittersweet Fire of Pride

I had only ever seen your sooty side,

Cold, coal-black and abrasive, it rubbed off,

and we thus remained inert, too close for chemistry.

Then, months later, I saw you burn. Your blaze of glory

Was everything I thought it could be.

You gave. You spent yourself. You were uplifting,

Inspiring, gratifying, and mediocre.

I had two reasons to cry, and I might have,

If they weren't so different as we are the same.

The Old Home Remedy for Postmodernism

Bottom of the ninth.

Bases are loaded. Two outs.

The three-two fastball...

A Golden Ghost

A golden ghost crosses in front of me,

As stately and fleeting as a memory,

and I know that she's still not truly gone,

If only because she's who my mind landed on,

But it can't really be her, dressed in red and black,

Because the departed never really come back.

Why I Write, Part x+211: Because I Can't Draw Very Well

I am not groupings of symbols on a page,

Though my words could thus be mistaken at this stage.

My words, they come closer, but they still are not me.

Those called “readers” and “editors” might disagree,

But I am a face that nature and eyesight have drawn

On some strange ideas, and the place where they're spawned.

Saying Yes to the Art of Saying “No”

I am well aware of my weakness;

I have an awakened ignorance for appearance.

I have an awakened acceptance that I am bizarre;

I am an enlightened alternative to normal;

I've already been demeaning, desperate and pathetic.

Maybe I was never all the way there.

Maybe I will never come part the way back.

Are you coming or not?

The Statute of Limitations and the Art of Saying “No”

There are plenty of things that I'm not going to do,

Many of which are welded to my to-don't list

Because they're liable to t-bone my morals

At eleventy-five miles a tangent

Or they're incompatible with my entire lifestyle,

Or just because I've seen what happens when they happen,

and some things that I am not permanently closed to,

But as the current transient resident of the present moment,

I simply don't think they're the thing to do.

My Personal World, Part 17: Ten Words

It takes forty bars to get stuck in your head.

Those are memories ears don't forget,

But sometimes it only takes ten words to know

That a new song I hear echoes ten years ago,

Hitting bittersweet chords, a new graduate's theme,

Two songs nothing alike but they bring hindsight-dreams.

They both make me feel young. They both make me feel old.

They alter time's flow in my personal world.

The Mental Beachcomber

Combing the same beach over and over

With a malfunctioning mental detector,

The sand in my shoes and the sun in my eyes

Pries my mind from a certain kind of tension

Brought on by a persistent misapprehension

That I really ought to be enjoying this.

Getting Angry/Getting Over/Being Over

The death of a friend is the breakup from hell.

First, there's the getting angry part.

Then, there's the getting over part.

When you're done with those, an extra treat–

There's a getting over being over part.

I suppose it's because the dead are not like girlfriends.

Dead friends are not like living friends.

They're easier to remember, and harder to recall.

I Ain't Afraid

I ain't afraid of your unsavory reputation.

I think that kind of talk is all that some people can do.

I ain't afraid that you're a little unapproachable.

Fire's beautiful and dangerous, and I played with that, too.

I ain't afraid to make a strong commitment.

I think the first between us that would break it would be you.

I ain't afraid that you're unfaithful and deceiving.

I assume that you are human, so I assume that all that's true.

I'm afraid that if I trust this once, and you reward it,

That my common sense will notice and say he and I are through.

The Species of Lies in the Fairy Tale Genus, Classified By Size

A prince has the resources to print posters

and an army to conduct a womanhunt for him,

But instead he tries a slipper on a kingdom of feet

and out of a kingdom, only one of them fit?

And that's the only way he could recognize

A woman who supposedly meant so much to him?

And how come every washed-up ballplayer

Has to teach his girlfriend how to hit?

And how come he has to do it with his arms around her

and one hand on her hip?

I never believed the big lie in the fairy tale.

The little lies outed it.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 7: Purple Mountains' Majesty

I've seen purple mountains' majesty

Above the burnt-out plains,

But for a while things look different.

Well, if we get our rain.

Those plains are all greened over.

My eyes think they feel like mold.

My heart thinks they feel like clover.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 6: That Rain They Called For

Yes, I have ever seen the rain

Coming down on a sunny day.

It's true about Montana; just wait

Five minutes and the weather'll change,

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike,

and I'm glad what they say is absolutely right,

and I'm certainly glad that it's raining.

Yeah, where I come from, rain is a good thing.

The Essential Difference Between a Hipster and a Poet

He awakes to accessories for all situations,

From self-aggrandizing introductions

To self-imposed, pretended isolation.

They are his armor, his pillow, and his hook,

From clothes to hair to carrying a “favorite” book,

and he has planned ahead of time for how they make him look.

I wake up every morning knowing my plans,

and what I'll actually do, and the difference.

I know exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing.

I know most of my mistakes before I make them,

and exactly how they make me look,

and never once thought it cause to stop.

An Internship of Two Decades

No matter how you push me, I'll continue to refuse

A life that follows from an internship of two decades watching tube,

This post-modern simulacrum of the state of family

As people that you sleep near, and eat near, and never see.

Instead, I choose a life of connections voluntary, real,

and for my second choice, if needed, I'd rather none at all.

My Past, Present and Future–Oversimplified

I have been a great fool –

Both a slave and an objector to rules.

I have been known to stare or drool.

I have been known to think I'm cool.

I might not be a lover or a fighter.

I might be a perpetual friend-slighter,

Which I'm writing off, since I'm probably a writer.

All I know for certain–I'm a certain kind of blighter.

I might find my home once I walk through the gate.

I might be signing myself up for a full plate.

I might find myself content in the situation I create.

I might be a holder for an ego, with a mouth to blow, inflate,

But all I want to be is late.

On The Way Into the Ballpark

I always get lost on the way into the ballpark,

Somewhere between the gravel and the saplings

and the stand that sells food for my heart

(Which, in fact, is a ticket to a baseball game).

At least, I get lost in the relative sense–

Is the car right or left of here? Could a foul ball hit it?

I do, of course, always find my way back again,

and I know where I am in the absolute sense–where I belong.

In that sense, it's anyplace else that I am lost.

The Visceral Petulance of Hunger

I have grown my stomach over-bloat.

I wear it 'round my middle, like a float,

Eating because I rather enjoy it,

Eating to fill a hole in the moment.

I have grown the stomach in my eyes.

I crave constant progress when I write.

I shop constantly for food for thought, 'cause wrong or right,

I insist on putting down a thousand words a night.

I have grown the stomach in my mind.

My tongue sits on my teeth's-edge, well-wet with appetite,

and if the teeth don't turn up anything to bite,

The tongue just might.

May You Live In Interesting Times

I head into the woods alone
Except, of course, for my cellphone,
Which takes both calls and internet.
On these things is my downtime spent,
On nature and technology.
The strangest times yet known, are these.

Why I Write, Part x+210: I've Praised Deadlines

In the past, I've praised deadlines

As inspiration full, most fine,

So now it's time that I come clean–

In writing my new novel teen,

I have stumbled, failed right through

A pair of deadlines, one and two,

and now that my I've-gone-seventy-two-hours-without-sleep-before-

and-I'll-do-it-again-if-I-have-to deadline approaches,

I wonder what the cause for hope is,

But I'll write to be right, to keep moving along,

Or else, forced to write, and in verse, say “I'm wrong.

This Is Not An Intervention

You, sir, are not a drunk. You are a hurricane.

Your copious wind comes with fumes.

In all the stories I've heard (and drunks love to tell stories)

There is no man more sopping than you.

You, just getting started, word-slurring, knee-walking,

Cry confessions of love in your beer.

When you really get going, you sing over Karaoke

So loud that the front row can't hear.

Edgar Allen Poe was just just a drunk,

and a rabid one at that,

and Hunter S. Thompson was a drunk

Who would start before dropping the hat,

But you are the John Facenda of the three-day bender.

You are the Alpha Lush.

Some people get too drunk to hold their own hair back.

You, sir, stay too drunk to flush.

It Takes All Kinds

There are all kinds of people who do all kinds of things

Who asked me to join them, sculpt my past.

There are scofflaws who encourage me to take

What my parents would not let me have.

There are slackers who ask for my expertise

and direct it toward disrupting class.

There are lead singers of bands I've never actually seen

Who tell me when it's love, to wait in line.

There are young men who introduce young women, who urge me

To both pursue and ignore the fine.

There are a lot of screw-ups in my past,

But mostly mine.

Hope Springs Eternal/Boys of Summer/The Fall Classic

It is a little white whale

Marked with a great red scar,

Timeless, unbroken, infinite,

Yet intimately accessible,

Chased not by one Ahab,

But thousands of them,

Some of whom are spectacular

In that they are lesser failures

In this insane pursuit

Wrapped in all of Spring's beauty,

Lighted by summer.

See you in the fall.

A Month of Summer

A month of summer's drained away

With hardly any time to write,

Not to mention a little less baseball

Than I would probably like.

It isn't that I ever miss the summer.

I never mind to see it go.

It just bothers me that life sprung a leak somewhere

and it took me this long to know.

Nine Inches - Five ounces

Red mountain ridges

Break the cool, white expanses –

A conflated desert fantasy,

Long devoid of mud's grace.

I can't quite stare hard enough at one place

To see how towering legends of men

Could drink themselves to early ends

In pursuit of such a tiny world.

It fits so fully in the palm of my hand,

Though when I spin it, I do feel it land.

Poor Grammar

I so rarely see poor grammar.

It's not that I only read good writing.

I see awkward constructions.

I see random capitalizations

and random uncapitalizations.

I see repetitive usages.

I see mistaken usages.

I see usage that makes me want to cry,

and the state of modern punctuation–

It's like a dot printer went all R2D2,

But I rarely see poor grammar.

I do see a lot of young drivers

Shifting dialects without a clutch.

I guess shifting the problem around

In abstract, terminological space

Only helps a teacher so much.

I Do My Best

I do my best not to look at people I don't know

Because I don't really like them,

But in the process, I end up doing my very best

Not to form unkind opinions.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” the man said.

“Look not, and thou shalt judge not,”

says the delusion in my head.

“I'd be a hypocrite if I expected points for effort,”

I know silently to myself.

My personal opinions make a point of not caring

For today's softest notions of “feelings” and “trying,”

and for so many reasons, they remain personal opinions,

Meaning that I keep them to myself.

Had to Go

You said one of us had to go,

and so I left by the high road.

I thought better than to mention

The senseless, pointless undercutting,

The headaches you were always getting

and my original prediction

That this very thing would happen.

Okay, so I mentioned all those things.

So, by the low road, I am going.

Advice/Contradiction

The advice “they” give “you” is full of contradiction.

“Honesty is the best policy,” suggests a full confession,

But if “it's easier to give you forgiveness than permission,”

Then “you”re better off hiding your intentions,

But personally, I've always been under the impression

That it's best to just forget advice; remember situation.

Why I Write, Part x+209: I Love Words

I love words that are their own opposites,

That contradict their own meanings.

“To cleave” means both to cut and to cling,

But my favorite is “nebulous,” hard to define,

Which I just did, in hardly even trying,

Besides which, that one's fun to say.

It's this writer's holy grail.

My Personal World, Part 16: Enough Times in a Day

If you listen to a song enough times in a day

It starts to mean what happens, not what the lyrics say,

and becomes less a song than footsteps' cadence on a journey,

Which is why I proofread the end of my novel to Mat Kearney

and the middle of it to Carrie Underwood.

Just don't ask me why I never listen to anything good.

Why I Write, Part x+208: Her Smile

Her smile is in everything I write,

Most obviously when the words are bright,

But also, maybe especially, in the sad stuff,

When the memories are too much or not enough.

In truth, behind every smile is just a mouth;

Behind the smiles of the dead, a pool in which to drown,

But even in deepest despair, I remember her greatest talent:

Pulling a smiling tarp over her heart's pool of sadness,

and as my writing brings satisfaction at the end,

I may even have surpassed her, in that one respect.

Why I Write, Part x+207: It Makes No Difference

I think I know what's really in a name.

As long as they're not all the same,

They make no difference either way.

Now, relevance is in irrelevance seen–

In my head, I call all my protagonists “he.”

I'm certain this is a deficiency.

The Out-Of-Nowhere

The out-of-nowhere can be anything,

A curse, a gift, a greeting

Or fifteen minutes on a swing.

The out-of-nowhere can be a happy accident–

The teacher who's all about his content

Suddenly spends a summer missing his students.

The out-of-nowhere

Can be everywhere–

Like when I forget the stars are there

Until I can't help but stare.

My Tenth Reunion

The teenager is too consumed with himself,

and below that, his reputation, his appearance

To ever really be impressed,

To ever really stop broadcasting long enough

To take things in, to receive any messages,

So as my tenth reunion approaches

I can't help but be curious

About who I never noticed that I didn't notice.

it Happens

Out of cash? it happens.

Out of ideas? it happens.

Late out the door? it happens.

Technology-related delay? it happens.

Forgotten appointment? it happens.

Lost my stuff? it happens.

Lost my way? it happens.

Lost my mind? it happens.

Lost out? it happens.

and by “it,” I mean...

Colloquial Metaphor

Idiom is transmitted culturally

Serving to introduce personal mystery.

The expressions we use are like masks that we say –

They may not say anything about us anyway.

The ones that annoy me to fraying ear-ends

Are generally the favorites of my favorite friends,

(Like “holding together body and soul,”

Which confers something spiritual on the material,)

While I learn most of my favorite expressions

From small-minded jerks I'd like to teach lessons.

Quicksand, Prison and the Void

Schedules, with their gridiron bars,

Are a progressive prison.

Without the fear or the cruelty,

They find ways to keep you from everything

and everyone that means anything

Or more.

Money is the guard,

But schedules aren't the problem.

The name “writer's block” could hardly be less apt.

How can it be a block when there's no matter to it?

Writer's block is utterly dark and utterly empty.

You are utterly free to reach into it,

Unlimited from exploring as far as you would like,

Only to find that there is nothing,

and that you are falling.

Writer's block is not the problem.

My memory is no sinking void,

But there's a certain sinking in it.

It is quicksand. I can grasp at it,

Pick up handfuls and handfuls of it.

I just can't use it for anything.

My memory is what keeps me from writing.

The Chemical Properties of a Breakup

I might be vinegar,
Which, while a little sour
Is mostly harmless.
I'm mostly okay with this,
Most of the time, although
There are places vinegar shouldn't go.
Then again, you might be bleach,
and that stuff's bad for everybody.

Menus

I know no jealousy or guilt

For things molded, bought or built,

But half the thoughts I give to food

Leave me feeling rather rude.

The starving kids in Africa

Haunt my mind less than this thought–

Some things I'd rather pass than eat

Are other peoples' favorite treats,

So menus, to my eyes, look like

Lists of tasty things to slight.

Contempt and Consumption

In all genres of art, from sculpture to rap

There's a hand-built, wood-grain floor under two tons of crap.

Are contempt and consumption a hermitage for hypocrites?

I see their relationship as being more like friends with benefits.

When fed up with the way we live, distraction is compelling.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I'll start buying what you're selling.

Architectural Vision

I'm one-half contractor,

One-half Sherlock Holmes–

I can't see things built

Without seeing their bones.

I see physical truths,

Framing holding them up

Clothed in decorative lies,

Thin, cheap, pretty enough.

“Architectural vision's”

Illusion through which I see.

There's no more joy left

In the man-made for me.

The Visceral Regret of Parenthood

There is no market for dreams.

The world might take a dozen of them,

But no chance it'll cough up the dime,

So if I put some of my dreams down

Like footstools, so others can stand,

So that some might reach their own,

That trade sounds more than fair, and yet...

That trade still cuts like a knife to the gut.

My Race Against the Calendar

I want to burn off all my bad ideas

In some intellectual kiln,

and I want to write at least seven more novels

Before my muse is killed,

and I want to write a documentary

About the political history of tobacco

Called The All-American Snuff Film,

and I want to teach so well someday

That my students remember me.

There's so much I want to make my brain do.

I've only got two dozen years.

Nobody Ever Leaves Right On Time

Sometimes people arrive right on time.

Nobody ever leaves right on time.

Lovers always overstay their welcome.

I don't know if we wanted to see rock bottom,

But we sure waited until we hit.

I actually felt better about our time after it.

Our relationship had a dead cat bounce.

Practice in the Art of Saying “No”

My mind is at war with itself, piece by piece.

Part of me learned what it saw on TV,

That depression's material. Buy; away it will go.

I may not believe. I can't change that I know.

Another part of me grew up past coins,

and holds its desire less in pockets than loins.

The rest of me, the conscious, must fight both those two,

But it's hard, 'cause wanting is what people do.

Whichever

Either I'm reading about baseball

Or I'm listening to music. Whichever.

Either I wrote that poem about you

Or it's about someone else. Whichever.

Either this poem is about ecstasy

Or it's about misery. Whichever.

Either you did something to make me doubt you,

Or I've just been busy. Whichever.

Either it's not a priority

Or I'm just exhausted. Whichever.

It seems like I say “whichever” a lot,

When I should be saying “or both.”

Why I Write, Part x+206: Splinters

Life scrapes us, and we only survive

As our blood tastes the splinters of a hundred other lives

(It's like the woman sings–

I will carry

You with me–)

In my pen,

Until I write them out again,

Return them to the people who were once in my life,

Or at least the ones who are reading when I write.

Technique in the Art of Saying “No”

To those who know well how to go

To the things our culture calls “excellent,”

My words here may seem petulant,

But every single brush's stroke

In the art of saying “no”

Is the science of not caring what others think.

Inspiration in the Art of Saying “No”

Reticent, unhelpful, rude:

You criticize my attitude.

Why be this way? I'll take a stab:

Out of all the things we have

Time is the most ephemeral

and the only indestructible,

But you spend mine like money,

Eat it up like it was candy,

and burn through it like kindling.

That just ain't my thing.

All Curves and Billows

Powered by sunlight and passion and caprice

I have never seen you move from A to B.

Instead, all curves and billows,

You simply wind and flow,

and the world is content to follow.

You are not my favorite kind of person:

People I know.

You are not my least favorite kind of person:

People I don't know.

Instead, you are the difficult kind of person:

Someone I would like to know.

I Wasn't Listening, Pt. 2

An incomplete list of what's wrong:

1. I have a listening problem.

2. You are dead and gone.

An incomplete list of what I didn't hear:
1. Your fear.
2. Your despair.
3. You couldn't find escape anywhere.

4. Your silence.

An incomplete list of what it meant:
1. Someone.
2. Anyone!
3. I'm almost done.

An incomplete list of my reactions:
Then: Nothing.
Since: No learning.

There's silence out there I'm still not hearing.

I Wasn't Listening, Pt. 1

I wasn't listening, and now you're upset.

I wasn't listening. You're playing depressed.

I wasn't listening. That's probably wrong.

My ears are all red, you've been talking so long.

You won't find apologies you've asked for here.

My trouble with listening: you've talked off my ear.

Awash in an Ocean of Faces

Our culture, awash in an ocean of faces,

Brings pasts to the shore in the strangest of places,

and seeing the face of someone I knew

Is supposed to recall those times past. I assume.

My truth is, a face calls just a person to mind.

It seems that some watch doesn't tick in my mind.

A Prayer's Prayer

Some prayers are for wants and some prayers are for needs.

Prayers might be for gratitude, new strength, or screeds.

Some people's prayers are all put together,

Room temperature, cloudless, no matter the weather.

Some people pray from a prism of tears,

Though I haven't done so in over ten years.

All sorts of people pray all sorts of ways.

I'm the only one I know who uses road rage.

Put On Humanity

So many hours wasted arguing between

The good face and the evil one put on humanity,

Which is just as good as ground beef. You learn this on your own:

A person can't gain sustenance from humankind alone,

Which goes bad when left out too long in wrong environments.

(There are none as wrong as this one, completely human-sent).

Imitation Summer

It has been called a pill,

and reputed to grow to the size of a beach ball

(If not the one in front of me, at least its ilk).

I swaddle in in my scored, scarred, stony hands,

Examine first with touch before I read the words

SOLID CORK & RUBBER CENTER

SYNTHETIC LEATHER COVER.

My nose tells me that it smells like imitation summer,

Faux Americana that fits in the palm of your hand...or...

Or maybe in my pocket.

One Melody

You'd be surprised how many things

One melody can mean,

The mundane things, the obvious,

The things we've never seen,

Interpretations driven by

Affection, irony,

and this snoring revelation:

We're not who we're told to be,

So the joy-chords on the radio

Are distorted by TV,

Because I'm not as joyous as

Cartoons said I should be.

Time Spent Searching

I savor time spent searching

When I don't make it into a chore.

I always find what I'm looking for.

I am no Walter Sherman.

I am no Sherlock Holmes.

I don't always find what I started looking for,

But I always find something.

The Words You Know

You speak in terms of growth.

You speak in terms of progress.

You can only use the words you know

To describe what you think of my leaving.

You just assume I don't have a reason.

I have the one reason that never occurs to you.

One man's evolution is another man's decline.

You are only one man, and I am another.

Childish

We are too immature to be in the same room.

Our whole relationship is childish.

We always squabble like children.

We always squabble the way children paint.

We mix everything together into an ugly mess

Until no matter what else you put in,

It starts to look worse and worse,

Or you can't tell the difference at all.

To be honest, I stopped looking hard.

Hawkeyed Focus

I find your hawkeyed focus strange.

Given your focus on what was

and what might someday be,

Where'd you find the gaze to glare at me?

When I say I've had it,

I guess it means I don't have it.

Find some other stone to bleed.

I'm not in a donating mood.

By a Dam

A river is not the same thing as a man.

I am not made weaker by a dam.

If life is flow from wake to sleep,

Unmoving moments bring relief,

But still momentum plays a part.

Where there's no stop, there's no restart,

and after interludes from go,

Man might forget just why he flows.

One Man's/Another Man's

One man's playground is another man's sky.

One man's religion is another man's lie.

One man's hellhole is another man's lobby.

One man's work is another man's hobby.

One mans' payola is another's peyote.

One man's three wasted hours are another's movie.

I gotta say, from one man to another,

We might not be related, but we disagree like brothers.

Evaluated

For some reason, people think genius

Is more worthy of praise than study and practice.

To be evaluated by others is scary,

Am I a Mozart or a Salieri?

I say I can't be either one

As an amateur with professional pretension.

Where You Eat

I wouldn't say I'm risking anything.

You might say “I don't want to risk your friendship,”

But I wouldn't say we're friends,

and of course, I'm no friend of work.

The problem is that I don't see the reward,

Or the appeal of the guaranteed awkward.

Ascertain Your Priorities

Our culture is electromagnetic.

It comes in waves,

and if you tune in to the signals

To ascertain your priorities

You will spend all your time to pamper

Your genitals and your bank account,

In sum and essence, your appearances.

If you ask our humor, the “funny-cause-it's-true,”

It will say the same thing, too.

If it isn't that, then it's family,

But personally,

I wish more people had the creativity

To invent bizarre priorities.

The Retrospective

They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty.

I say hindsight is right on the money.

Everything that happened went exactly your way,

Exactly the way you wanted it to,

Exactly the way that it should have gone.

Who cares that it's already done?

It's not a matter of who can prove otherwise,

But a matter of the fact that nobody bothers.

Writers live their lives for the retrospective,

For the leftovers that taste even better.

Running In Place

Technically, it was I who did the leaving.

I couldn't take all the running in place,

Couldn't take you wanting to run away.

Whatever “us” was

(and for a while, it was fun,)

Lives an afterhalflife as a ghost of a memory,

Decaying and moving further away

Without ever actually going anywhere.

As our anniversary approaches,

I might move closer to the memory,

But make no mistake,

I didn't kill a lifetime in a parallel universe

Waiting to come back to you.

Spangled With Dandelions

I crave the long grass, spangled with dandelions,

Away from Sunday's sunburned, misguided beauticians,

Free from the confines of rectangles and squares,

Where the round, rolling toes of the foothills

and pyramids beyond all Egypt's comprehension

Replace the knee-grinding right angles of stairs.

The thought of these things, and their closeness, tantalizes.

I know that even though I haven't started leaving,

I'm already most of the way there.

The New Masculinity

The old heroes have grayed,

Died and been replaced,

As has the archnemesis,

Rendered politically useless.

The new hero only fights the evil

That lives within his own soul.

The new masculinity, manliless

Is barely strong enough to defeat itself.

A Waste of Gas

I like to drive around at night,

Speakers a little up,

Windows all the way down,

and I have no idea why.

It looks kind of suspicious,

It's a waste of gas,

and the size of my tank

Limits how long it lasts,

But it's mostly harmless

With no one else there.

It's freeing sometimes, knowing

That no one else cares.

...Said the Semi-Professional Expert on Doing Everything Wrong

It's not that I'm enough to have a chance.

It's not that I'm dumb enough to think

That I have a chance.

It's not like I don't know I'm wasting my time

Thinking about it.

It's not like it's a pleasant way to pass the time.

It's just that I've got the time,

and you're more interesting than the rest.

I Know You/I Didn't

It seems strange to say that I know you from high school,

Because I didn't know you in high school.

You were someone I admired from afar, afraid to approach

and dumb enough to know better than to try,

and now that we have been formally introduced

I know how right I was, and I know how wrong I was.

It seems strange to say that I know you from high school

Because even college has been a while,

and it seems strange to say that I still know you.

I've Changed

People from my youth don't know me,
Or they don't know me the same way.
It's not that I've changed.
I'm the same person from underneath
A new, thick layer of scars
and facial hair and back fat
Of which I am not ashamed
and two layers of stories
One of which I am not ashamed.
This is the moss I have collected
Because I stopped moving all the time,
Because I'm not afraid of my future
Because I'm not afraid of my past,
Because I'm not afraid of who I am.

On a Pedestal

I don't think I know any heroes.
The people I know are dynamic.
They don't live on a pedestal.
They need room to move about their world.

I think I do know the hypocrites,
People who judge and demand,
Who put their own selves on a pedestal,
Where they die and grow still,
Not made out of marble,
Only ready to crumble.

A Pessimist's Pittsburgh Pirates

The old baseball club in the 'Burgh

That for years struggled hitting the curve

Started 2012 fast,

and the pace couldn't last,

But their fanbase, it seems, hasn't learned.