I Guess the Honeymoon Is Over

I might have asked you to lift a finger,

Or to lay one down, and let it linger.

I could have asked you to tell me what's wrong.

I might have asked your help so I could follow along.

I might have asked you to dance with me, out in the street.

I could have asked you to to say where you want to eat.

I could have asked you to do your best

To remind me why you're different from the rest,

But I just asked for my freedom from you.

It was just one more thing you weren't willing to do.

My Irene

You were a breeze in life's blizzard,

A moment in memory's eternity,

A perishable, cherishable challenge,

A whole relationship unspoken.

I have every right to soon forget.

I've even have half a mind to let

My anger burn through all that's left,

Leave where you swelled my breast a cleft,

Or just to detest,

But I haven't yet.

The Next Step

Human life is out of order

In every sense of the phrase.

It has sequence, in the loosest sense;

Theme doesn't rule over our days.

We aren't separate pieces assembled.

We do not come in a kit,

Nor with an instruction booklet.

We are not, can not be, completed.

We are not as simple as that,

But if you are willing to admit

That you're no more than an Erector set

Mistakenly manufactured of fluid and flesh,

Then feel free to say you're “taking the next step,”

But I never want to hear it again.

Flexibility

I have been to you wall and editor,

Cliff Notes and coat rack and smartecarte.

I can be an entertainer or a hammer.

I am the toolbag who would become toolbox.

You have returned more than the thought

As teacher and manager and nurse,

As audience and muse and producer.

We have been to each other second parents,

Feeding and clothing one the other's heart,

We have both filled needs of happenstance,

But we missed the father-daughter dance.

We have not traced the mortal step,

“The next step,” “the final step,”

Which, in my experience, is no step up,

Which, as I know, is not final or meaningful,

But love is flexible.

Why I Write, Part x+238: Survival of the Fittest

I do not need to be known or called.

I am neither my name nor a rapper, after all.

I have an entire drawer full of names.

They're disposable. Though different,

That makes them the same.

Marshall is probably Shady sometimes,

But I've never even felt Sarah Valentine.

I do not need approval or love.

I am not my source of funding.

I do not, in fact, need anything

That can easily be found in a wallet.

My species has managed to persist

Through grinding poverty,

Through indecent exposure,

Through deliberate obstruction.

My rough crossings are marked for me.

My hands are light and my right foot heavy

With the knowledge that they shall pass.

Chronological Conundrum

You are impeccable

In your watching and reading.

Your words are always worth hearing.

You are interesting,

But I didn't find that out

Until I was already interested.

I don't know how you managed it.

Get Crackin'

Life is a familiar mystery,

A woman's body language,

A foreign tongue I haven't used in ten years,

A complicated technical jargon,

A substitution cypher.

I can read it, but I don't know what it means.

Why I Write, Part x+237: My Own Hypocrisy

A poet finds a reliable refuge in audacity,

Which is liable to become refuge in hypocrisy,

Comfort in the things he does with his pen, between the sheets,

But hypocrisy is the most human of honesties.

No matter how many times I drew inspiration from mediocrity,

Only to rail against life's banality,

Only to rail against heaven and earth,

I always believed in the work.

I suppose the poet is a jerk.

Those Things They Told Me

They told me school would make me a well-rounded person,

and they were right.

When I came back to college four years ago,

I was shaped something like a letter V or a letter Y,

and now I'm kind of a round guy.

They told me that my writing was a waste of time,

and they were right,

Because no matter how many times a few people liked it,

No matter how much of my own joy made an audience irrelevant,

No matter how many times I haven't broken down publicly,

Criminally

(and believe me, I would have liked...),

They won't be convinced otherwise.

They told me that substitute teaching

Would be a valuable experience.

It has been an experience –

Where I learned to teach unplanned,

Unsuspecting and underprepared,

Without rapport or relationships,

Without anything the professors told me

Was the essential, was the base–

and I learned that I'll still be okay.

So I have a few things to say, or at least to vent–

Neither truth nor its speakers are prophets heaven-sent.

I suspect some lie, blind, into truth, on accident,

Or that they told me some things they didn't believe themselves.

(There's a taste of the things I've been wanting to tell.)

Island

You tell me “no man is an island.”

That's an interesting idea,

and one that brings you some comfort,

Which you'll no doubt continue to preach.

You insist that that I'll have to come crawling back,

To seek contact and company,

But the man who doesn't need to be believed

Doesn't need to be seen,

Which must no doubt be frightening.

How would you get leverage on him?

Why I Write, Part x+236: Until My Head Gives In

I am not a sword or a pen.

I am the head of a battering ram,

A legion of foregone writers behind me,

Too many to count or stop or read,

and if they should stumble over debris,

Perhaps the precise prison of our economy,

Our precisely pathological love of money,

Then, by their momentum, on I shall carry,

Until my head gives in.

The Few, the Crowd, and the Priest

An old man traced by step by step

Long life behind and life still left

Through dusty streets bespecked with crowds,

Most bowed and humble. Fewer, proud,

Of colors bold and raiment new

Stopped to talk. Others could not pass through.

Others milled about. At last,

The old man found his own way past.

He bumped a proud man. Once he'd gone first,

Some followed. The people blocked had half dispersed

When the proud man drawled, “well, excuse me.”

His tone threatened, if sarcastically,

The, pretense dropped, “what's wrong with you.”

Said the oldster, “others needed through.”

Said the proud, “and I should mind the last, the least?”

Then he saw the oldster's clothes. “A priest?

You think you're above me, holy man?

My need for labor feeds this land.

My money's real. False, futile platitudes

Would leave this city unbathed, nude,

Unsheltered on unmaintained streets,

But I should mind to you, the least,

The fool who would make peasants king.

Your words lack both in legs and wings.”

The priest said, “I'm just tired, old.

You our labor, not our lives control.

In want of home, in want of rest,

We seek return to each our nests,

and in the moment, I brushed past.

Those few inches ope'd a way at last.

None of our best moments, I'd admit.

I'm half-ready to be done with it.”

“Well, I'm not,” said the merchant next.”

“I want you whipped for disrespect,”

He ordered the re-gath'ring throng.

Their murmured cry: “let him go on.”

Go on he did, though not away.

“I'm tired, yes, most tired of the way

Your kind use money as a leash

and tell us that it makes us free.

Without it, we would work to live.

Instead, we work for what you give.

We could be free, could be unlead.

Instead, we just pull you ahead.

You feed us, in the strictest sense,

A barest pittance, recompense

For years of work which you do not–

Then we're judged by what we've got.

How much time would we regain

If work was free, from coin unchained?”

The crowed, enrapt at hearing this,

Cried “burn this man! This man's a witch!”

Show Me How to Show Myself

It is not a matter of following all the steps,

But a way of stepping off the path into greener grass.

It is not a matter of preparation,

But a way of being comfortable unprepared.

It is not a matter of knowing what to do,

But a way of stringing mistakes together with style.

It is not a matter of putting the pieces together,

But a way of being whole, despite defect, despite flaw,

Despite profound empty places in one life's experience of the world,

Of painstakingly placing my list shred of sanity

Into my little, black book of madness–to close it again,

So I can show the world what is left.

Substitute Teacher

The differences between teacher and substitute

Are in hiring committees and line of sight.

The teacher sees an expanse of potential, pitfalls and progress.

The substitute sees the gamut of genuine human emotions –

Relief, slight excitement, and crushing boredom.

I don't know what the hiring committee saw.

All Dressed Up for the Crystal Ball

You couldn't have known better than to ask a poet

What he sees when he looks at you.

You should have, but you couldn't.

Even from back here in the present

I can see that you're the kind of beautiful

That will attract a long line of people

Who will never even notice your kindness, your brilliance,

The joy that shares the atmosphere with you,

and I want to find a way to warn you

Without telling you,

Because knowing ahead of time

Just drops the heart an extra story

and ends in the same place.

Going Home (A Poem-in-Monologue)

“Hey buddy, do they not make gas pedals in Minnesota?

Seriously, you're just extra brake-pedaly, aren't you?

Man, I get enough of that shit in my day,

So just make your right turn, just creeeeeep through the intersection.

There we go. Now we're movin'.

Hell yeah! Turn it up! Sing that song!

And why you gots to be walkin' RIGHT where I'm tryin to drive?

Find the damn sidewalk! Don't make me use my horn on you.

You mess with the Taurus, you get the horn!

You're makin' me miss that light up there!

Ugh! Red light. Come on, green light, green light.

Fuckin' go, fuckin' go, fuckin' go, fuckin' go,

TURNTURNTURNTURNTURN

and he slides in safe at home! Just beats the garage door.

Baby, I'm so glad to see you. I missed you today.”

That Demon Expectation

You can't expect me to give in to these demands.

You know I'd sooner say “no” out of hand.

You can't push this unreason on a reasonable man.

You have to know exactly where I stand,

But you don't stop coming at me.

You can't expect me to sit here and take this.

You can't expect me not to think it.

You can't expect me to sit here and listen,

If that's really what you're saying,

But that's exactly what you're saying you expect.

I should have known that this would happen. Off my toes,

I'm sorry I let you think me exposed.

I'm half to blame if I keep asking where this goes,

But now I can't help following my nose.

I think I know what stinks.

One Wing Broken

I remember when I thought I had talent.

...

Anyway, I remember liking to pretend.

There's a certain innocence

To believing that you're good at things.

I still remember who took mine.

No matter how high I manage to get,

I will never fly the same way again.

Why I Write, Part x+235: Litosophical Conundrum?

Inspiration blows in on the breeze and the dolors.

You might say my muse wraps herself in many colors.

It's impossible to predict a poem.

So I frequently find myself facing philosophical conundrums,

Choices which I'm always in a rush to make.

Is it better to try a (presumed) creative take

On a topic I find trite, almost feloniously overdone,

Or not to write one?

Why I Write, Part x+234: Physisophical Conundrum

Dear every single solitary woman,

You are a physisophical conundrum.

I'm not trying to be a misogyn.

It isn't really you I'm blaming.

I find many of you pleasant, utterly.

To saw the old cliché, it's not you, it's me.

It's not that you're A pos, it's that I'm AB.

I am the universal Mr. Wrong.

I like my sin too much to date a Christian,

and God too much to date girls who don't believe in one.

Most of all, the lifestyle I'm craving...

This lifestyle I'm creating...

What I'm saying...

Is that I won't have the energy for a relationship that's work,

and I don't want you to wear yourselves out on a jerk,

...so consider me married to my pen?

Happy Ending

You said you still wanted to be friends,

But we're not.

I'm not sure we ever were.

Relationships are all give and take,

But friendship gives and reluctantly accepts.

You were mostly good at the taking.

We were.

I don't think I know how to pine for you.

I only know how to miss you,

Though I am relieved that it is over.

I guess I know this as the perfect ending.

Nothing was lost.

Doubtful/Forgettable

I was doubting my mind and my talents,

Doubting my mission and myself.

I was doubting my decision

To get up in the morning,

and you gave me a tiny reason

To doubt that humanity is evil.

It was but a little pinhole

In a wet blanket of a day,

But fear not, I did notice–

and soon enough, I will forget.

On This Site in 1897 (pt. 2)

Nothing important happened today.

Nothing interesting happened today.

Nothing redeeming happened today.

Nothing even made me smile,

Except my own suspicious nature

As a possible pathological liar.

I would say that today was worthless,

But if I have another day not like this...

Even the ugliest bridges have purpose.

Slightly Out of Time

I can't say it's wrong, but it doesn't feel right,

Like rushing out to hear church sermons in the middle of the night.

It ought to be sad if it isn't quite funny

Like a beggar who haggles when people give him money.

Like hearing summer's anthem when I wake to frosts of fall,

Even though it shouldn't, to see you here, now, appals.

A Room Full of Ghosts

I can't tell if it's the year, or if it's just tonight,

But the corners keep coming, too fast and too blind.

I don't have the heart and can't summon the mind

To tell if I'm wrong or I'm lost or I'm right

In this pacing and plotting and leaving behind.

I just can't help but see, and then can't help but smile

All these ghosts at my elbow, in the corner of my eye.

Degrees of Time Wasted

We are walking massacres,

Wading a sea of assassinated hours,

Slain unremembered, for no discernible reasons.

Whim, fancy, and animal instinct

Aren't really made for mourning.

Then, there are the hours spend on secret passions,

Misunderstood as more masochistic murder

Of little pieces of our own lives.

I would not trade those hours for anything.

Degrees of Indecision

One unheralded struggle of the unimpressive life

Is finding the best ways not to decide.

Procrastination is usually the easiest way,

Deciding tomorrow—to deliberate.

If I'm feeling fairly certain no presented choice is right

I choose something else entirely—to drink, perhaps, to write,

But there are times it feels like all the world I want to choose and can't,

That my own personality is out of my hands.

Why I Write, Part x+233: Adam, Karl and Harold Were Wrong

If I had a reason, I did not write

Because I thought it was needed,

Or because I thought there was money in it;

I am not dancing fool, but a poet.

If there had been a reason,

It was not because of the tradition,

Though I may have been aware of one.

No, I wrote, hoping you would smile,

and in hope that I would see,

and if I had succeeded,

It would have been worth my while.

Why I Write, Part x+232: Yes, No, or Option C

Those who let authority push reason from their head

Give choices that are narrow, or a line to walk instead,

But every two-choice question has a third – it's true or false or flight.

I know where all the corners are. I don't mind more time to write.

Not a Riddle

What would you call me?

I don't see myself as angry.

It's true that I get angry.

Most people have a berserk button,

But I have at least three,

Which are not equivalent morally.

What kind of person does that make me?

The Self-Destructive X-Phile's Tale

My whole life is an X-File.

You ought to visit my mind,

Home to a shadowy syndicate of conspirators

Bent on my eventual destruction,

Where I can only flash my badge and my gun

and watch the unthinkable happen.

Acquaintances' Faces (They Blur Together)

There are so many ways to become acquainted

With a person's face.

Of course, there's the regular way,

and strangely I seem to practice it regularly.

Of course, there's also the TV,

and various other celebrity-smeared screens,

Though where the average see an actor,

This writer sees only the character,

(and perhaps others that look much like each other).

The number–and similarity–of faces keeps building.

The world grows less like many faces and more like a gradation,

To the point that I recognize everyone,

With no idea how I remember them.

Schrodinger’s Coin

Sometimes I just get up and go

Where I want. If I don't know,

I let the universe decide–

A green light means I drive on by,

But if it's red, I'll stop instead–

Unless I don't like where I'm led.

If I don't like the cosmos' choice,

It galvanizes my own voice,

So even if I ditch fate's lead,

It still helps in deciding me.

From Ann to Anna

She's old enough to be my mother.

She's young enough to be my daughter.

She's pretty enough to have other friends,

Successful career women, popular men,

People who have something to offer,

and that doesn't seem to stop her.

We have little in common. Experience,

References, fly fast–and right by each our heads,

and if one of those people who says

That guys and girls can't be friends

Tries to file a complaint against her

I will bury him. In “paperwork.”

Why I Write, Part x+231: I Exhale

Most people speak words.

Few exhale them,

But they are as much a part of me

As digestion is.

I could stop them as easily

As my heartbeat,

Words mounting words

Following words

Followed by words,

Most saying nothing.

When I have something to say,

I will tell you,

Unless I forget.

(I'll probably forget.)

Keeping Your Eyes Out

The human race is fourteen billion eyes.

How many are just looking?

The human race is seven billion tongues.

How many ask the right questions?

If you can't put your face to your problems,

Then put your head down.

If you can put somebody else's face to them,

Walk away,

and if you still haven't found the answer,

Stop looking.

Even if your doctor says indifference isn't right for you,

Learn to love solutions from afar.

Treat them like an internet boyfriend.

Only then will they be eager to meet you.

Footsore and Floating Free

The soles of my feet were sore

From the time I spent walking away–

Away from their definitions,

Away from their expectations,

Away, in short, from everyone,

But though I walked ever away,

I hadn't found the way to walk apart.

The fronts of my eyes were sore

From the time I spent looking–

Looking for a way out,

Looking for a way over,

Looking for the answers,

But though I looked until my eyes

Stopped searching to vibrate between hiding places,

I did very little finding

Until I stopped.

The top of my head is sore,

From walking the world upside down,

From all the ideas I keep scraping off it,

But it's not the only part of my head that hurts–

My brow aches in concentration;

My cheeks burn with laughter.

Intellectual Whiplash

First, fourscore and seven years ago...

Then it was a dark and stormy night...

Next, life is a single dragon doing the locomotion...

Afterward, thirty-two feet per second per second...

One minute I see the bright smile

Of a successful student I've worked with for years...

The next, I see a recent graduate

Looking six-months-on-meth rough...

Finally, trying to write...

Marching Orders

There is no other creature quite like belief,

Who burns all the brighter for his unnecessity.

The average day teems with don'ts and with dos

That are hand-me-downs someone was told to tell you.

Most are done (or not done) and there's nary a question,

But we all have a few that it's best no one mentions.

Ink Meets Instinct

It was hardly worthy of note.

I was most of the way through

A book I mostly disagreed with.

I will never forget that moment,

Because all I needed to know,

All I needed to get out of it,

Is that normal is abnormal.

My whole life, I had been trying to fit

Something I should have been trying to fight.

What relief! I finally knew I knew, that night.

Why I Write, Part x+230: Note to Self

In ten years, you'll be near forty, and a poet, you will not.

They peak before they're thirty. They burn up the fuel they've got,

But the writing keeps you running. You'll need to keep it strong,

Because I've seen you go without it. You collapse. It don't take long.

I've set you up to shift your focus, to be the man that you once wished.

The poems that I've written have made you a novelist.

So don't change, and no excuses. Don't tell me you're snakebitten.

I've left you notes for several books; I want to see them written.

Time Capsule

You are only eighteen, with the patience of the young.

Your five books to write by twenty-five are never getting done.

You have years in your near future that you hardly will enjoy

Except the times you're drinking like a man or acting like a boy,

You'll soon find dissatisfaction with your choices and your goals.

Your planning and your future will collapse, leaving a hole,

But don't panic – it's a hole you'll fill with things and want and need,

and the things you don't write now will be your future writing's seeds.

On The Human Soul

I'm not sure that I am human.

I'm not sure I have a soul.

Where I'm supposed to have a heart

I feel a gonad or a hole.

I sure act like I'm a wild beast.

I eat. I drink. I rut.

If I'm not thinking with my brain,

Then I'm, at highest, with my gut.

I laugh out loud when I see people fall,

Out louder when they fart,

and yet, in between my most of times,

I'm capable of art.

Intoxicating

You make me want to shout from the rooftops.

You make me want to shout the world down.

You make me want to hit that.

You make me want to hit the next person I see.

You make me want to make friends and promises.

You make me want to sing and dance,

and as hard as I've tried to deny,

You've even made me want to cry.

You certainly make me want to drink–

You don't just make me want to drink.

You make me want to be every kind of drunk I know.

I Ride the Rollercoaster, Pt. 2

Modern life might make me seasick–

No stroll down tranquil paths is this,

But a challenge to balance so many extremes

By pushing and pulling on distant mechanisms,

Our actions, or losses, regrets

In this land of hours and instants.

What horror brands into the brain

Is soothed by a salve of time,
Only to be replaced.

Time is Magic

Time waves its wand

and nonsense turns into science,

Mystery turns into familiarity,

Impossible into interesting into inevitable.

Time turned our sweet into savory into sickening.

What was breathtaking became beautiful and then bust,

But time always has a redeeming third act,

Turning present into absent into silent,

Present into passing into past.

Why I Write, Part x+229: The Best of a Bad Breakup

She wondered how much time she could ask for

Without actually having to ask.

She wondered how fast the tears would have to come,

How much standing water left at the bottom of her beers,

Before it was more than just sprinkling.

She told me it was her or the writing.

She may have been reasonable,

But she wasn't going to be with me my whole life.

An Equal and Opposite Reaction

You're a ten below the neck

and an eleven above it.

My reaction to you is visceral.

It begins in my stomach.

Why do you turn me into an animal,

When you're a perfect example of humanity?

The Most Interesting Wall Clock in the World

Sometime between o'dark thirty and suninmyeyes

I heard a ruckus on my front porch.

I heard something messing with the door.

Two cats were fighting. One of them was losing.

The owner is suing.

Sometime between toohot o'clock and beer thirty

My boss called me to talk about his new hiring policies

Which will mean eighty-hour weeks or no more work,

and I couldn't decide which would be worse.

Sometime between beer o'clock and o'dark thirty

(It was just after salad), my girl told me

That it's over.

She stayed just long enough to eat what she'd ordered

and to box the leftovers

and to walk out on the check,

But when the sun rose that morning,

The reds were as radical, the oranges as orgasmic as ever.

Everyday Communion

After taking the pitcher, he gave thanks and said,

“Take this and divide it among you.

For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the field

Until the I have cleansed my spirit of spirits.”

And he took pizza, gave thanks and broke it,

and gave it to them, saying,

“This is my wallet given for you;

Do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after the sunrise

He took the coffee pot, saying,

“This brew is the new day in a cup,

Which is poured out before you,”

But when he left, none came after him.

Godspeed and Good Sailing

They call this listlessness,

But I am definitely sailing off-kilter.

I have done well, done good.

I have prayed for guidance,

But I know not what to tell my Navigator.

I see a row of rogue waves behind,

Bitterest gales to either side,

and, as is our ultimate human truth,

I cannot see ahead at all.

Why I Write, Part x+228: The Poem Less Written

So I was procrastinating.

I had trouble remembering.

I guess I did less writing

Than the other thing.

What's wrong with me?

Although, speaking honestly,

That poem was probably

Several different varieties

Of animal feces.

Phantom

Just beyond my vision

I do not quite see dancing

A brain-haunting phantom,

The other half of an idea,

Half-sent to torment me,

Taunting tantalizingly,

Raising the pale of my neck hair,

Not because of its nature.

How could I lose something that's right there?

Blaming the Victim

As much as I hate to say it–

As much as I just hate it–

It is not your fault.

Science has yet to figure out

Where you catch it,

But you've still got it:

A terminal case

Of terrible taste.

The Threshold

When the DEA came for the drug pushers,

I believed they were a more necessary evil

Than violent dealers who buy from tyrant leaders.

When the SWAT teams came for the anarchists,

I thought that government is best which governs least–

As long as it still does actually govern.

When the TSA came for the fingernail clippers,

I figured that's what the night before the flight out is for.

When the NSA came with its drone strikes,

I felt that being all pudgy and fleshy

Might actually be good for my health

In the face of a missile's guidance systems,

But once even the once freedom-loving state of Montana

Passed a primary seatbelt law,

Then even I knew that government had grown out of control.

The Pretensions of the Vampyre

The vampire is just a fool who speaks of forever.

There is only so much candle. There is only so much flame.

Some live a Fourth-of-July life, exploding,

Making themselves robust and memorable.

They live long after they die, inside other minds.

The vampire takes another route altogether,

Simmering out its days as a pale ember,

Mortgaging a present of pallor

For a future of squalor.

Is that which has neither humanity nor consequence

Still a thing, still a life?

The vampire is a coward, tasting many deaths,

All of them its own.

It's Just One of Those Days (pt. 5: Just Get Away)

When it rains it pours.

It pours my time out.

It poors my bank account.

It pours gasoline on my soul.

By drips and drops,

It runs out of control.

I duck more trouble, but none flies past.

Life hits me, and I swing back.

All know now's hard and fast,

That humans were not built to last,

and soon I find me on the ground,

As down are reaching hands of friends,

But all I need is left alone.

I can't truly get up except on my own.

It's Just One of Those Days (pt. 4: Friend Ending)

When it rains it pours.

It pours my time out.

It poors my bank account.

It pours gasoline on my soul.

By drips and drops,

It runs out of control,

and I fight to try to bring it back under,

Though it seems I've no fight left to muster

But a little help from my friends–all I need,

Or so some have led me to believe.

It's Just One of Those Days (pt. 3: The Getaway)

When it rains it pours.

It pours my time out.

It poors my bank account.

It pours gasoline on my soul.

By drips and drops,

It runs out of control,

But I just fight and fight.

I'll get even if I can't get right,

Hopes and plans and rage alight,

But further back I slide and slide,

My mood grows further black from white

'Til I come unclean out the other side.

It's Just One of Those Days (pt. 2: Zen Ending)

When it rains it pours.

It pours my time out.

It poors my bank account.

It pours gasoline on my soul.

By drips and drops,

It runs out of control.

This day of a thousand drops

Might start to wear a hole

In my patience, even my mind,

But I know this too shall pass in time.

It's Just One of Those Days (pt. 1: It Just Won't Go Away)

When it rains it pours.

It pours my time out.

It poors my bank account.

It pours gasoline on my soul.

By drips and drops,

It runs out of control.

I can keep my head down.

I can put my hands up.

That won't make it stop,

So tell me “keep your head up.”

It's not your neck,

Or your day of a thousand cuts.

Know Your Enemy

Ignorance is not a pet to raise

Or something to in others praise.

Seek in enemies the truth,

For victory becomes your proof.

Know what he blames on his late mornings.

Know what keeps him up, head swarming.

Ignorance is only bliss because it might

Get you killed and sent to paradise.

Self-Portrait of the Author as a Jerk

What's done is done,

Probably so many times,

and done for so long

That it cannot be recalled,

Immemorial and irreversible,

and sometimes it's of little use,

Irreversible and irrelevant,

and so it was with me

When I realized that passion for identity

Is for black power and gay pride,

An oh-shit bar for teenage's bumpy ride,

and that every time I write

On the subject is a tiny crime,

Though it appears that ship has sailed

To the Unincarcerated Lands

Until the next time I write one,

and inevitably get away with it,

Too privileged to prosecute

For crimes of misapplied privilege.

Self-Portrait of the Author as Linoleum Tile

I speak out loudly enough

As bodies and bodies

Pass by and pass by.

Eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes,

Invited and assailed by other sights,

Pass by and pass by,

Perhaps looking, perhaps unlooking,

Responding or not responding

As I speak out loudly enough,

and I sit, and grow harder and darker;
I grow older and perhaps even colder

As bodies and bodies

Pass by and pass by,

and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes,

Invited and assailed by other sights,

Pass by and pass by,

Perhaps looking, perhaps unlooking,

Responding or not responding

As I speak out loudly enough.

Someday, I will be overlaid,

By someone newer and lighter replaced.

The new will speak out loudly enough

As bodies and bodies

Pass by and pass by,

and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes,

Invited and assailed by other sights,

Pass by and pass by,

Perhaps looking, perhaps unlooking,

Responding or not responding.

If one great mind ever stands atop me,

It will have been enough.

The Tree, the Snake, and the Rope

“I see creation, destruction, more balanced than just.”

“I see inner peace for those patient enough.”

“I see a father who and protects.

“I see a mother whose love lacks regrets.”

“I see concern for the sick and the poor.”

“I see forgiveness, from now, evermore.”

“I see justice of rule. I see rapture.”

“I see power and beauty no image can capture.”

Death By Chocolate

Her dad did tell me not to come anymore,

But she never said “don't bring chocolates to my door,”

and so I arrived, breathing short, feet unsteady,

Wiping hands on my pockets so the box won't get sweaty,

Heart beating like the bass drum in a speed metal song,

My thoughts molasses-mired, and yet racing along,

Driven toward you by the needs I perceive,

But a hospital crash cart's what I really need.

Things People Say

You know what annoys me just about every day?

When people say I can't have my cake and eat it.

If I tell the kid at the counter I'll have a cheeseburger,

He'd expect me to chow down once completed.

I know someone whose favorite team is the Dolphins.

He shouts “fins up!” as a rallying cry,

Which makes no sense. A real Dolphin who assumed that position

Would do so because it had died.

Of the things people say, and the no sense they make,

My most hated is “chewing the fat,”

Which sounds gross enough on its own, but remember,

It means “talking,” on top of that.

A Lie Like No Other

She said she would love me forever,

Which turned out to be more a lie than the other,

and I figured that that's just her,

That she is just a liar,

But then there were others, so many others,

So that now I know that's just how people are.

That was one explanation. Now, here, another:

For years, people have miscast the heart.

It's an imagination, less tethered than the first.

A Certain Effect

The sight of your face has a certain effect.

My mind lacks any thoughts now, that I can detect.

When pushed anywhere near me, your very breath

Keeps my breath inside, rather scares it to death.

When I'm anywhere near you, I can't help but smile

Like a dog's mouth stays open after running a while,

and you come to me asking if I'm glad to see you?

In view of the facts, I guess I wonder, too.

My New Hobby

I just discovered my secret lifetime hobby:

Putting question to everything people think of me.

Physically, I'm fat, with track-runner speed

To chase down who tagged me, or cars, if I need.

I lift more than you'd think, though my joints hate my hustle.

I am more and I'm less than the sum of my muscle.

My behavior's like my surface. I stay up–and in–all night.

What kind of goateed athlete likes his football, loves to write,

and who, who's written novels, who can do, would love to teach?

It's fair to say my practices are thoroughly unpreached.

To Err Is Human

I will walk away and wait, or pick, prod, poke, plot.

I will laze and lounge, or exert until it really hurts.

I will be zen, and I will be overdriven, whichever is worse.

I prefer to fill out forms by spending three months on the first,

But I'll swear up a storm as I'm driving to church.

I am an adaptable chameleon riding a rainbow of self-destruction.

I am a mule of a man–I think of my way, not solutions.

I spent the first twenty years of my life chasing girls. Unfit,

I started young, I retired late, and I never got good at it.

My adventures in laughing at my own mistakes continue.

That is why I am still alive.

My Grand Social Experiment

What if I looked back more than a decade

For more than a second?

I might realize that I was in the middle

Of my grandest social experiment,

Meaning I was experimenting with being social,

and it was actually going well.

The experiment yielded positive results,

Except when it didn't.

I might realize I'm still messed up from it.

Addictive Behavior

I have never once felt a need for it,

But never been able to stop for long.

I wish I could hold back, wish I could hold it in,

Wish I could hold my head up against it,

But my head always falls back,

and I always stretch out, yawning again,

and as I drift into unwelcome oblivion

I regret the placement of a comma I won't remember

When I come back to the land of the living.

That Third Decade

What kind of self-respecting decade

Passes in a second?

It would have to be the desperate search–

Both wearing slog and wild ride.

First you were gone,

and then I was gone.

We all disappeared, in our own ways,

On our own ways

Only to come back as somebody different,

But you are still gone,

and I came back all wrong.

I'm not sure if the problem fell off or latched on.

I needed retroperspective to notice it at all,

Though it's impossible for anyone else to miss.

The Man in the Moon

This rising crescent, enwrapped in fall's gold

Is a celestial bowl not deep enough to hold

The past and its people, younger women and men,

and the ways I spent decades of short years with them,

The chasing, stargazing, the rolling in grass,

Hoping they would, knowing they couldn't last.

Those moments were free, without tether or cost.

As they drip from fall's moon, I just hope they aren't lost.

This rising crescent, enwrapped in fall's gold

Is a celestial bowl, just deep enough to hold

A present profaning its past, and the hope

That as autumns roll down my unyouthful life's slope,

Those leaf-colored winds blow me more than just chaff

But are not strong enough to suck out my last laugh.

Not Maiden, Nor Mother, Nor Crone (Watching the World Die)

If to err is human, then I am superhuman,

But if humanity is found in empathy,

Then I am something altogether alien.

I never did learn how age should feel.

I never learned to ride a lifecycle.

I cannot get on now, as a child.

I do not persist under any illusions.

I know I was not born to rule.

I will not grow up or do anything cool.

I could not pedal on to parenthood.

My conscience would not permit it.

I see why they choose this life for themselves:

It is a choice in the absence of choice.

They lack the skills to survive anyway else,

But how could they teach this to their kids?

Yet, though I am all curmudgeon,

I am no elder.

I give no wisdom. Only knowledge. Only this:

Sentience and hive minds are incompatible.

Pride in one's country will not prevent its fall.

Alive, Not Moving; Sentient, Not Human

As a physical phenomenon

I'm unsightly but robust.

As an intellect, I'm frustrating.

I bring the Philistines disgust.

I have known spiritual experience,

But my heart is filled with scree.

I am the sum of the emotions

That people vomit onto me.

Poet Vision

I see people as things that go bump in the day.

Anything that there is, I see some other way.

I see monsters on top of the bed,

My whole life, being told that it's all in my head.

I see hidden facts in patterns, and hidden facts as recipes.

I see a massive earth-hive slaving to support economies,

and we, the harried, eunuch workers, with our hands over our eyes.

One of the two of us is wrong, and neither way would me surprise.

Time is Money

They say that time is money,

But I only value one,

and the more that they repeat it,

The more I'd like to run.

They say that time is money.

I hope they're almost done.

They say “time is money.”

I say:

Time should be insulted.

Fresh/Rotten

It is fresh.

It sticks to me, and collects grit

Because it is new pain, wet pain,

and though I only wear it

It is yet open.

It colors me.

It is dried.

Long ago, it stuck to me,

Until it festered, rotted, became old,

and as it is long stitched together,

So are it and I bound together.

It is part of me.

Why I Write, Part x+227: I Took Off the Glasses

My eyes grew to poet-size, a gift

That reveals what the world forgot,

That catches some of the glimpses

That time has failed to keep up with.

I need to wear prose-colored glasses

Just to bring me back to normal.

I used to believe that my life's struggle

Would be getting other people to see,

But now, it's just to stop pretending I don't

–Or to start.

As Sad as an Illiterate Librarian

You're concerned with all things

Small enough to escape the clutches

Of the intellect, the spirit, and relevance.

I don't want to say that you're petty,

But your preoccupations

Are the world's procrastinations.

I guess nobody ever taught you

That all news is local news

That all politics is local politics,

That celebrity is its own punishment,

That a clean home marks the life unlived.

You would remedy your lack of education

By enforcing it on everyone else.

Know that in saying this, I am sorry for you,

Though sorrier for them.

Responses

It always happens when things were going so well.

There is always one response.

I walk away.

There are two different responses.

Either he looks at me with disdain,

Or he asks if he made me angry.

And I wonder how I could say yes

When I don't have any right to say,

When I can't rightly claim the space,

When I don't even want to be left alone

As much as I just want to leave alone.

There is always one response.

I always curse the day,

With the same words, said the same way,

and I wish that he would go.

Then I would stay.

Penny

They say a penny saved's a penny earned,

But what if a penny spent

Is a memory made, a lesson learned

Or a new way to see old friends?

Diamonds

If diamonds are a girl's best friend,

I think that's kind of sad.

I'm a crazy, ugly, poet-man

With better friends than that.

Love With Occasions of Hate

I hear some measure love with occasions of hate,

So hear me say now that I can not relate.

I don't measure music by absence of beats.

I don't call a thing cold 'cause I'm sure it has heat.

How to keep a thing that big, that dark, silent?

A man lesser than me might well end up violent.

I'm sure it's one of many paths to dysfunctionality

and no way at all to be happy.

Ants Deserting One By One

I admit that I've been living to work

In support of Economy, queen of our culture.

I resolve to tell those to say I should love it

To take this job, and where to shove it.

I seek the strength to create my own rewards

Or search for something better to aim for,

Because to fly toward a bulls-eye of a different color

Or to forsake TV's hormone-soaked shows for a drummer

Will ensure that we spend more of our day out of line,

Ants who desert marching orders for minds.

For the Idealists

I feel a little sorry for the idealists

Trying to fix the world through politics.

Correcting a culture where the value of people

Is assessed by their value to an inhuman, inanimate economy

By prohibiting a particularly pernicious chemical

Or permitting ten percent of the population rights (and misery) marital

Is akin to putting half a band-aid on a bullet wound,

But it's not their fault. No one made the right tools.

Written From the Safe Corner

I didn't do what I said I would do.

I couldn't risk leaving my safe corner.

I didn't ask for an extension, either.

Would you have me face a hell-world

With both talking and people in it?

So, I left my life incomplete.

My doorknob was hung up too high,

and my will wasn't long enough to reach it.

There's no amount of money you could pay me

To show myself to the world in full sunlight.

I offer no other excuses for that.

The world doesn't know right the words for them,

Only its itises and osises,

But I'm not sick, not really.

I just feel even smaller than usual today.

Evening Shadows

These minutes are hardly minutes.

They seem less minute

As they stretch like evening shadows,

Though they are in fact flat and thin,

and they darken my path ahead of me,

Blackening my stoop, disguising

The frightening height of it,

Marked not in steps, but in drops,

A gathering of free falls from everything safe,

Because that's how the world is

When you are tiny.

Happily Ever Before

I wasn't exactly looking for more

Than my past, my happily-ever-before,

But those first few months with you were the best.

Sadly, they did not serve as mold for the rest,

Which suffered from being more trouble for less worth,

To the point that, after years, I gave my single life rebirth,

and last I saw you, we parted in distrust and hate.

Some might call it the dark side of fate,

But I say if I made time move backward, not advance,

We could sell our story as a Hollywood romance.

That Music/Those Movies

It's safe to say that if you weren't so kindly,

I would never have heard that music, seen those movies.

As far as the music goes, I don't like the sound.

The movies bore me 'til my head wanders all around,

Though I try to keep it steady for as long as I am able.

Boring songs and boring stories aren't truly objectionable.

I do object to the implication that infatuation

Is a sing of anything other than full anatomical function,

Or characterizing a slow personal and interpersonal decline

As “happily ever after.” That's intentionally blind.

Psyche Pressed Pause (pt. 2)

Psyche pressed pause on the stopwatch in me,

So that I barely hear and I barely see

Ten years of music that doesn't all irritate me,

and maybe even one or two half dozen movies,

People I know growing up, spreading out, getting married.

Would I give those things up to get back to used-to me?

I might trade it all but the stories.

Psyche Pressed Pause (pt. 1)

Regardless of, and to hell with, your physical laws,

I know that some years ago Psyche pressed pause,

and I still live in the year it was done.

To me, internets aren't serious, but anonymous and fun.

People always recommend music that isn't out yet,

and this whole messy drama makes me wish I could get

A Killian's Red that was brewed overseas,

More of the music I grew up with, a ticket back to the years

That I was trained to live in, that I memorized and know,

Although I would settle for the remote.

Where Does the Time Go?

Times between tasks are thin,

Like a needle,

and some might say we feel them

More than they hurt us,

But transitions target arteries.

They need one small hole to take hold,

and they will bleed your life away

By drips and drops and seconds.

You can never put those back in.

The Soft Underbelly of a Misanthrope Pessimist

I like the long summers, as long as I keep writing.

I like books with laughing or thinking or fighting.

I like teaching English, for the content and the people,

and my mornings with Magda Searus and cold cereal.

For a misanthrope pessimist, I like a whole lot of things,

Except the endings.

The Creepiest Poem I Ever Wrote (Jon Spangler ft. Uncle Sam)

I want you to stay in.

I want you to relax.

I want you to settle in.

I want you with your defenses down.

I want this to take a while.

I want you to remember this

For the rest of your life.

I want you to wake up tomorrow

and wonder if it really happened.

I want you to grin and bear it.

I want you to remember

That I'm not doing this to hurt you.

That's just why I'm enjoying it.

Money Talks

I have heard that money talks.

It's true. I have heard the buck's breathy beckoning.

It told me that family is a resource,

That I have a network–not friends,

But stepping stones and stair treads,

That my time is only worth

What I invest in the economy,

That my life is only worth

What I invest in the economy,

That should sell my very soul

To become a “contributing member of society.”

When money talks, all reason walks,

But I run.

The Beat Goes On

I remember the first time I sunk my teeth

Into sarcasm's sharply syncopated beat

and someone else's self-esteem,

and I will never forget coming up with drips

Of unripe laughter and fresh blood on my lips.

There is no rehab for that remorse,

Nor detox for that devil's delight.

I Never Made Lists This Long When Mom Asked

Today, I learned that I'm a communist.

Today I learned that first name, last name, and shoe size

Are the new name, rank, and serial number.

Today I learned that I really and truly have no social compass.

Today I learned what the hell an axolotl is,

At least kind of.

Today I discovered a new side of learning:

An accident I don't bother to avoid.

Original Sin: It's Not Just For Gardeners Anymore

I was just tossing a baseball to myself

and trying not to think about the physics,

Just minding my own business,

Which is easily the newest,

Saddest,

and most tranquil of my hobbies,

When an old acquaintance interrupted me.

Walking away with a friend, she described me,

Incorrectly,

and I whispered “that asshole,” affectionately,

But the Doctrine of Original Sin is with me.

I am actually right,

and an asshole.

Always and Never

It doesn't matter if I taught them

For a few weeks, or for years on end.

I will always remember when.

I'll always wave, say “hi” to them,

and they can always provoke a reaction,

But even if I did rub off on them.

They will never by my students.

They will be their own.

The Poet Is (pt. 4)

A poet is someone who can create

Half a dozen private, solitaire games.

A poet is someone who cranks the volume

On the stereo in his hooptie

So loud that everyone on the block

Can hear the Zac Brown Band rock.

A poet is someone who writes a question of words

That would be a statement to all others.

A poet is someone who is unafraid

To be frightened by the mundane.

Corporate Leadership Seminar in 10 Lines or Less

Leadership is not about fear.

Leadership is not about shame.

Leadership is sacrifice.

Leadership does not hesitate

To sacrifice anyone or anything

To advance and to profit.

Leadership is about dressing sacrifice

In necklaces of pretty lies,

But it's okay for me to be honest,

Because leadership is not an example.

Reunion Reduction

I see less of these people whom I know.

I know less of these people whom I see.

I have tasted a reduction of reunions –

Each of them seems to mean more to me.

Each of them seems more meaningless.

Subject-Subject Agreement

I have heard it argued that love knows no object,

That it will not stop for distance,

That it will not stop for money,

That it will not stop for time.

I would agree that love knows no objects.

It makes subjects out of all those acquainted with it.

Why They Don't Let Poets Be Scientists

Scientists see a call for research.
Scientists see something to publish.
Scientists see a jurisdictional dispute
Between the arachnologists and entomologists.
Scientists see a reason to argue.

I see tiny things dancing
Around a tiny maypole
Inside a tiny fence.

Fall in Montana, Pt. 2: Unseen

It arrives a pleasant surprise. It leaves unseen.

With hindsight, we may know where it came from.

The clever may even know what it is made from,

But it cannot be summoned or commanded,

Nor can it be stored and kept on hand,

Because a cool breeze is happiness,

and happiness is a cool breeze.

Coincidence Sucks

Your hair was looking its usual self.

Translated: It looked good,

and you walked with that swagger I've no doubt you learned

In a kinder, gentler hood.

and I even recognized your shirt.

I've seen you wear it before.

Then, suddenly you turned around

and it wasn't you anymore.

On This Site In 1897

It looked like it could have rained today,

But it held off.

The manager looked like she'd hire me right away,

But she held off.

The guy in front of me on the road today

Looked like he might actually use the gas pedal,

But he held off.

I think I would have liked a beer or eight,

But I held off.

It was a crazy day today.

Nothing happened.

A Poem About Nothing

I ate the same breakfast as last morning.

I ate the same breakfast as every morning,

and I felt nothing.

I ate the same lunch as nevery afternoon.

I tried a new place for lunch today.

I still felt nothing.

I had my first job interview in months.

It seemed like an exciting opportunity,

Like I could go to some exciting places.

It seemed like it went pretty well.

It certainly went somewhere.

I still felt nothing.

I went to the restroom. In the stall

Was written “don't piss it all away.”

I felt that it was pretty deep

For men's room graffiti, anyway.

Belief

I am a man of appetite,

But I believe I have forgotten hunger.

I am a man in want,

But I believe I have outgrown greed.

I would tell you

That I think you're something to look at,

But I don't believe I'll be taking you home.

I believed the officer when he told me

That I don't ever want to do drugs,

That I don't ever want to be half-alive.

I believe the officer was half right.