Transference

Art was teaching me up,

When life taught me down.

People just teach me around and around.

I don't know what to do,

and I don't know where to go.

I don't even know what I don't even know.

There's only one thing I believe is true:

I'd bet it all that I need you,

and I'll act, I'll pretend, I'll play

At being even less okay,

If it means I can stay.

A Whole Lotta Nothin'

First, I heard what you said,

and soon I knew what I wanted,

But soon, I learned what we had,

Which was a game, and a delusion,

and a whole lot of nothin'.

Then you stopped playing,

But I can live without the delusion

Because you never gave me more.

Because You Don't

I don't really know him,

But why would I?

I don't want to meet him,

But why would I?

You didn't introduce him,

But why would you?

I don't need to meet him,

But why would I?

I can't hate him for him,

But why would I?

I hate him because you don't.

Movie Pitch as Movie Title: Laconic Tagline

Today's stories are not told,
They are ordered.
You have a choice of four endings
(Light, dark, green, or extra crispy)
Between white-bread leading actors,
The same old sideplots
and some stale, withered toppings for color.
The modern movie is not written,
It is assembled, like a value meal,
Every bit as healthful and unique.

I Am Jon Richard's Associate Member of the Human Race Card

I have a good fake smile
and a subpar genuine smile,
But how can you say they're different while,
Each one is the same smile,
Just like the sociopath's smile,
Which is rated as the worst, by a mile,
But even when my days are fertile,
My grin is practiced, if not in guile.

Inhuman Magnetism

From the outside, it seems inexplicable

How I can go from social

To irritable, irascible, and back to amiable,

From “my favorite place in the world,”

To “when can I get out of this hole?”

In the time it takes a mossy stone not to roll.

Am I the sociopath, peripatetic and blissful?

I once got a magnet near my MP3s,

and it wouldn't play any track past the “B”s.

I have known a mind such as these.

I play annoyed, aggravated, angry.

Contentment could get me down to the “C”s,

But the patron deity of dysfunctional I'd displease.

I Know, Pt. 2

I know.

I know, 'cause I figured it out.

I know.

You might have gone out of your way to hide it.

I know.

I know by the way you went out of the way.

I know.

I know you've realized that I know.

I know.

I know you're trying to convince me otherwise.

I know.

I don't know why you're trying to change my mind,

But I know.

A Letter to No One

Dear Pretty-on-the-Outside,

I would like to apologize for my previous letter,

Which was cruel, arrogant, offensive,

and not entirely serious.

If I mean it, it usually gets meaner.

I would probably be sorrier,

If I was now certain you have a personality.

Sincerely,

Still-Fairly-Sure

P.S. Maybe.

As Separate Springs Turn To Separate Summers

I have seen you before,

But rarely this beautiful.

I have seen you before,

But rarely this happy.

I have seen you before,

With others just like him.

I've seen more than enough

To know it won't last long.

I'm glad you're happy now,

But not as glad as when he's gone.

Man/Island/Sand

I am a man.

I am an island.

I am as sand,

Too gritty to be trod upon for long,

Unbreakable against the ocean,

The waves of fluid opinion.

I am a man.

I am an island.

I am as sand.

I Know

I know.

I know how to figure it out.

I know.

You might go out of your way to hide.

I know.

I know by the way you go out of the way.

I know.

I know you're certain that I don't know.

I know.

I know how to let you think otherwise.

I know.

I don't know why I let you think otherwise,

But I know.

Growing Apart the Newfangled Way

I don't think I hate you,

(I hate to think of who you were,

Only to learn anew what's since occurred.

I certainly hate the thought of how I thought of you,

But my urge to publicly rejoice being shot of you

Disappeared...as faithless friends are wont to do.)

'Cause I no longer need you.

(I remember when I once did,

Alone in a two-way desertion you directed.

I've since sailed back toward friendship, and landed.

It's one thing to be an island, and another to be stranded.)

On occasion, I crave you.

(Though my thoughts are content to remain elsewhere,

When I see you in other women, I stare.

Some of what you were imprinted on my basest lizard mind,

and though I know well to leave old flames behind,

To fuel of the same sort I'll never be blind.)

I miss the things we used to do,

(We can start where it's obvious,

Because that was always the most delicious.

I miss when my misbegotten urges felt realistic,

When temptation and desire were accomplished,

and even rewarded before they were punished.)

But I don't think I miss you.

(Because through no act of violence,

She no longer exists.

Nobody else can have the woman who got away,

Only the shadow since cast by her change.)

Wicked Cool

I'm a writer, a poet, always carrying my poetic license,

But I pretend to be cool, fool some people sometimes.

When I admit it, people I know say I'm fine.

I've a mirror, so I know that. Cool's not so quickly defined,

So let's ask the mirror. Come, you know half the lines!

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who's the fairest of them all?”

Then the mirror is heard to howl,
“What's fair elsewhere, here is foul,

So I don't know, but you'll do for now.”

But You Wanna Justify

Am I the only one whose day is literally dripping irony,

So it's too funny to be angry, but I'm too angry to be funny,

One of those days when somebody gets ink on my ink-pen,

When I want to devise some cruel linguistic experiment

Like nodding vigorously and telling a student he can't get a drink,

The kind that makes you uncomfortable, instead of making you think?

An Instant and An Eternity

For someone with no short-term memory,

Five years are an instant and an eternity

In which to make even obvious changes.

I am not what I used to be,

Even if I am exactly who I always was.

I must creatively clothe my personality,

To show the world someone who looks different.

For someone with no short-term memory,

Five years are an instant and an eternity

In which to make even obvious changes.

For someone with no short-term memory,

I was once more than the sum of my parts,

But now the sum of my parts is much less,

and I feel like nothing at all, and I must change,

Just to be something, even if it is something else.

For someone with no short-term memory,

Two weeks are an instant and an eternity

From which changes now bear down on me,

Though I could not be more unfeeling.

I have yet to catch myself savoring;

Perhaps I will also forget to miss the old same.

The Spiritual Significance of the Blood-Brain Barrier

Four fifths of the time, I tell it what to do and where to go,

But what I want is not always the will of us both.

There is something confusing about my body,

Which is somehow different, separate from my brain, from me.

It knows only five words total, “that hurts,” and then “I want it.”

There are occasions and locations where it on its own responded,

and though I want to treat you like somebody who is someone,

Me and this thing I ride have a difference of opinion.

Red Light/Green Light

I don't see traffic

As a little army of oversized ants marching,

Though it is,

Nor as the fires of industry,

Parceled out into moments and pieces,

Though that's what it be.

No, that line of cars making its way

Is no more or less than a series of breaks

Eagerly waiting to drain my day

From the thousand cuts of a thousand short waits.

The Flying Dutchman

The world is full of strange stories,

So many theories thrown aside,

But little is new that is not ancient.

Little is dead but not waiting to return.

Now hallowed minds are hollow caves

In which strange wisdom hibernates.

In a time when the old gods are new-age,

When Genesis and exogenesis both strain into view

I still managed to pick something not on the menu.

Every Other Time Around, Pt. 2

Words from old favorite tales come out of hiding.

The leaves empty their woodworks in the retelling.

Those words are secrets I kept from myself,

Self-kindness in self delusion, neither wanting nor needing

Another source from which to hear the same old things,

Echoes of convention and prejudice from a favorite character

Who I can now only wish didn't sound like my mother.

Has life truly left me mere handfuls of syllables

Away from changing my mind about any work of literature?

Fireside Pop Psychology

You have one year of incomplete data,

and one brain to process it.

Yet, I find that my breath is baited

As I do nothing but sit and wait

To hear the conclusions of your study.

To fear what you think of me

Is no more or less than to fear my own shadow,

and perhaps in three or four years, I will learn better.

Why I Write, Part x+247: Centralia, PA

I have everything I'd need:

Enough disappointments to anger feed,

A collector's set of extreme beliefs,

and a one-hundred kilogram payload,

But I will not explode.

My disappointment, my anger, runs slow,

and so I am used to the long, hot burn.

I'm getting used to using my words.

I'm learning, and soon the world will learn.

The Great Seal of the University of Hard Knocks

I'm an expert on infatuation. I have a black belt in breakups,

But you want to know what I know about romance.

I think you'd be better off hunting wabbits

With an ear hat, a shotgun, and a speech impediment,

Because all I know is what I've heard in songs,

That it tastes sweet at first, and burns as you go along,

So as far as I can tell, romance is rum.

Why I Write, Part x+246: Recalculating!

I'm told everyone needs structure and discipline.

I've seen the pews full of people seeking direction,

But I like opening something that doesn't come with instructions.

It's a risk that I take, to get lost when I'm writing.

They don't make a pen with a GPS built in.

Sometimes, the words tell me where I should be going.

Otherwise, I stay lost. There's nothing else to be done.

Why I Write, Part x+245: The Two Thousand Stare-Downs That Changed Me

I am the ranger, the immortal, the elite.

I run toward other writers' greatest fear:

The blank page, which I can only see

As the moment of infinite possibility,

So I can't help myself from charging in, with glee,

and if it's the hard part, it's all downhill from here.

The Changing of the Mind

I used to idealize you.

I used to idolize you.

I used to fetishize you.

I used to hate you

With all the fire

Of a bad, poorly timed,

Inconveniently located

Infection.

I used to wonder if you'd changed.

I used to wonder where you went.

Now I just wonder where the time went.

I wonder at my old spending habits.

Spelled Correctly

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But you're wearing the wrong color dress.

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But my shrink said I should try to be honest.

I wish I could call you a sorceress,

But I couldn't stand being that sexist.

I wish I could call you a sorceress.

It would probably be for the best.

I wish I could call you a sorceress.

I could, if I liked you less.

Why I Write, Part x+244: A Man Without a Demographic

I don't know how to write for the young ones.

I remember when life was all excitement and exclamation,

Except the parts that were disinterest and depression,

But it changed before I finally learned how to live.

I don't know how to write for the old.

I don't know everything they know,

Nor even know most of what I don't.

I don't know how to write for the broken,

Despite recent, bitter experience.

It is not enough just to understand–

If I knew, I'd no longer be among them.

I don't know why to write for the healthy.

By cultural definition, they don't like to read.

I don't know how to write to privilege,

Despite my sex and my skin,

Nor how to write for the privileged,

Whom I've always thought I was fighting.

Don't Touch That Dial

It isn't my advertising money.

They aren't my royalty checks,

Nor my reputation with the FCC.

I'm not the kind to make records spin.

I've never been a market researcher,

Nor a DJ, nor much of a musician.

Still, I think you should know

That your radio station's motto

Seems to have been “lottery odds

and bingo-night payoffs.”

Short Circuit

They built me with a charisma switch

On the back of my neck.

I don't get the highest output,

But it will turn on.

There's a problem with overheating

Up and down the circuit breaker,

Especially if I leave it on too long,

Which sadly has to be most of the time

When there are more people

Everywhere, every day,

and I only know like one of them,

and she's talking to somebody else.

This world is not built to accommodate introverts.

I'd call the repairman in to fix it,

But I don't feel like talking on the phone today.

The Other Side of Gossip

I talked myself into you,

and then back out again

Without your permission,

But you only showed me reasons

To make the first decision,

But today somebody we both knew

Told me about things I didn't think you'd do,

So I think I was right the first time I saw you,

But that the second way was right too.

Why They Don't Let Poets Write For The Wall Street Journal

The first and best is beer money,
But needing a place to drink,
Most people come up with rent money.
That's the traditional order, I think.
Either kind could be lottery money
If it's your lucky day,
But if the first kind is charity money,
It leaves some folks enraged.
The term "salary" once meant "salt money."
The Romans invented that word.
I was shocked when I learned "spending money"
Is a noun, and not just a verb.
There's hard money and there's soft money
If you're into politics.
There's dirty money and there's blood money.
Just remember to launder it.
I don't read The Wall Street Journal.
I don't read the Financial Times.
I only read The Economist once,

So I'm always started to find–

The United States is only one country,

But it's clear that they mint all manner of money.

They make money to buy

Anything that you like

As long as it's not time.

The Sound of Seven Billion Snowflakes Not Falling

There are no people who like failure,

Only different efforts to resist it.

There are no people who like failure,

Only people who try to change failures.

There are no people who like failure,

Only the people who hate it

and those who are used to it.

There are no people who like failure,

Only numerous, various, spurious, specious

Definitions of success.

Anecdotal Proof of Chemical Imbalance in the Human Brain, Pt. 2

I perceive my life to consist

Mostly of moments of dread

and wondering where a day went,

and very little of actually living it.

For the past twenty years

I have been led to believe

That I am medically self-destructive.

All I know is that I don't quite work.

Animal Ignorance

I know that you are not an object;

I know that I am more than desires,

Ninety-nine percent of the time,

But when animal ignorance builds me a tower,

Then you take the form of a fruit or a flower,

and the heat of my gaze pierces deep through the truth,

'Til the world becomes only desire and you.

Then, I remember I have better things to do.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People–For Your Health

There is no meaning of life.

There is sometimes meaning in life.

Nobody has meaning in life.

Nobody finds meaning in life.

The lucky make meaning in life–

Perhaps they're less lucky than good,

But if you're not so good or so lucky,

Decide what you want to be

Or what you think you really are

and just be that.

If no one will pay you, do it for free.

Don't ever say you don't have time for it.

Nobody has time in their lives.

Nobody finds time in their lives.

The lucky make time in their lives–

Perhaps they're less lucky than good.

Some of them save time with TiVo.

Some of them don't watch television.

Some of them haven't even seen a movie

Since the freaking nineteen-eighties.

Some of them don't sleep so much.

Some of them are very out of touch

With gossipy, unnecessary trivia.

Sure, everyone talks about those things.

Sure, those conversations take time,

But by far the best way to save time

Is to spend less money.

If you don't need it to live or be you,

Don't buy it.

If you don't need it to live or be you,

Don't do it.

If you don't spend it to live or be you,

Don't make it,

and the candle burns slower at both ends.

An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms, Pt. 4: Parsing the List

Athletes, aesthetes, artists

and the average viewer

Think of words as less than whole.

They prefer the language of symbols,

But I love plain old language, too,

and they would be–will be my tattoos.

From spelled-out spells I draw my strength.

My skin my leaf, I'll write at length.

Superior State of an Inferior Being

My body is just transportation–

A bike, a ride, a rickshaw for King Brain.

The body has cruising altitude, a governor.

It can rise so high, and just so fast, and then no more;

To each pursuit, a Super Bowl,

Which one must hope can fill the hole

In ambition, ego, in the soul,

Because there's nowhere else to go

(I've not been, but read and told; I know),

But upon the brain, that's not imposed.

There's one more poem to compose;

There's one more novel to comprose;

There's one more thing to learn, to know.

I cannot finish ere I go.

Why I Write, Part x+243: The Writing Process/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms pt. 3

People preconceive prewriting

As cogitation, notation, organization,

But it ought to begin with inspiration,

and then proceed to trepidation

(Because they are not good ideas

Until they start to make me nervous).

Once I embark upon perspiration,

I am no longer prewriting, but writing;

That part is always worth the waiting.

A Complete List of Rules to Live By/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms Pt. 2

A Complete List of Reasons to Live/An Incomplete List of Tattoo Brainstorms pt. 1

Lower purposes are history;

Higher planes are a mystery;

Problems and purpose come in threes.

I must remember that while I'm here

Inspiration, Perspiration, Exhilaration;

Adrenaline, Victory, Ecstasy

Are all I need.

Not Quite Nostalgia

I don't show any symptoms. I don't pine; I don't weep;

I don't start sentences and then stop suddenly.

I don't mind if you're mating. I don't care if I'm missed.

I now truly believe I was ready for this.

I don't easily recall now all the things we used to do.

To be honest, I'm too sober to be having thoughts of you,

But the hamster in my wheelhouse won't stop turning.

Pay on Delivery

The money's not the price, but the time spent working.

They want me to sign for it, too, so I'm waiting.

With that extra time wasted, I payed twice for shipping,

Which explains the great fountain of cussing and swearing.

It finally gets here. I throw it on the couch, 'cause there's no fire.

When I finally go to open it, the object of my ire

Is actually kind of cool.

Why I Write, Part x+242: The One-Winged Carrier Pigeon

I have doubts,

More doubts than talent, really.

I'm held back by an old life injury.

I need to see people, to do things,

To make a living,

Such as it is.

I need practice.

I need to work on my voice.

I need to work on my characterization.

I need to learn what the heck I'm doing.

But if I don't do it,

Then who?

Winter in Montana, Pt. 2

The first snow of winter

Is always a limp thing.

It is uncertain, non-committal,

Half rain, just Jack Frost's spittle.

It is redeemed by the first real snow,

Which is not interrupted, which grows

Into fluffy, downy ground pillows,

So that when Jack Frost's full fist is upon

Us, we might be cushioned.

How Could You Say That?

I'm seeing the exact same world

Through a completely different set of eyes.

Asking “how could you think that way?”

Is to question this foreign eyesight,

and an addiction I've found more insidious

Than sex, substances, digital media

and sleep, but one which I am trying

To avoid, or at least now decrying.

(And sometimes, the question is warranted.)

Why I Write, Part x+241: An Act of Creation

Thus spake God unto the angels:

“Okay, what we're gonna do here

Is take a grizzly bear, and shrink it down,

and make it really, really like English,”

The results of the experiment, after nearly thirty years:

For starters, I always wear a beard.

I'm well-insulated for cold weather,

and I always want to shut myself in and write all winter.

Grow a Pair

A new pair of glasses

For the new academic –

They don't hide themselves (the frames are thicker).

They do enwide themselves (the lenses are bigger).

They do not represent a new look,

Just a little black White Flag to the book,

Just the perfect transition

From a closet full of sporting goods and skeletons.

Every Other Time Around

The first time is open-to-close,

A slow, straight, sequential slog through prose,

and most exciting, as it traces the unknown,

But once you're done,

You're free to start in the middle, or jump

From the first fruitful phrase to the next one,

and just generally read whatever story you want,

and that's the beginning of the real fun.

Nine Tenths

I didn't make it, but I polished it.

I didn't build it, but I furnished it.

I didn't forge it, but I sharpened it.

I didn't draw it, but I framed it.

I didn't earn it, but I saved it.

I didn't grab it, but I protected it.

I didn't write it, but I revised it.

I don't deserve it, but I want to keep it anyway.

Second Visit to the Optician

It is a special day,

A day when I stop seeing the world,

and start seeing into it,

See the beautiful more beautiful

and even see the ugly uglier.

It seems that something within me

Makes the world more of what it is than it is,

But it is not inside of me,

Only just outside, and bound to fade.

Then the world becomes the world again.

The Other Other 99%

I know about one percent of people I see in a day.

The ninety-nine percent make me want to get away,

Away from the traffic (blah blah break pedal blah),

Away from the long arm of civil law,

One percent as a precaution,

Ninety-nine percent to keep myself sane.

Soon enough, I will likely be gone,

Out of the fire into somebody else's fire.

New Favorite

It usually takes a dozen sightings

Before I'm actually glad to see someone.

It could be what I hear. It could be what I see,

But something in you caught something in me,

and I suppose I have to pick someone,

So you are my favorite new person,

For today.

Enjoy.....?

The One True Path

I insist on paths less traveled. You don't disguise you're bothered.

You push a family and career, push “breadwinner,” and “father.”

You speak normal, and average, and orthodoxy.

You'd have me live like the sitcoms you watch on TV,

But that life's not for everyone; that's why not everybody lives it.

For me, normal waits in line, not on the pedestal you give it.

Your benevolent pushing me into the “right way to live”

Ignores that I don't believe that such a thing exists.

I understand that it's your care for me that's leaving us both sore,

But I won't tolerate any more.

All Roads Lead Away, Pt. 2

We outlaw behavior it disgusts us to see,

The lifestyles of those we ourselves would hate to be,

Not out of jealousy, not out of spite,

But out of desire to improve peoples' lives.

What, to the outlaw, feels a rejection

Is in fact, in the lawgiver, Freudian projection.

The failure's understanding, the lack of stomach, lack of guts

To digest that one's disgustings are another person's wants,

So the best approach to justice isn't pushing tolerance,

But to build the mental fortitude of libertarians.

All Roads Lead Away, Pt. 1

Disgust at the words that ignorance leaks

Lead to cries to broaden the laws on hate speech.

Concern for the people less fortunate than they

Power voters behind welfare, medicare, medicaid.

Good intentions are said to pave the road to hell.

Clearly they pave some out of Liberty as well.

Greg House Would Dig It, Pt. 3: People Don't Change

It's a source of more amusement than fright that my body

Is an empty shell, cracked open at the knees.

I will always come back to football

No matter what's wrong with the NFL,

Be it dull gameplay or the (completely nonexistent) morals

Of the irredeemable, despicable quarterback

On the team I guess I still like,

and I take a break every once in a while,

But canceled or not, I still watch the X-Files.

I am always the same person that I have always been.

A complete list of the ways I have changed:

Why I Write, Part x+240: Questionable Motives

I know there's a line between self-reliant

and just being defiant,

But I have never seen it for myself.

I'm a basement-dweller

Who knows lightening by the thunder,

and so I'm left to wonder–

Do I write because they can't stop me,

Or because they keep trying?

Definitions in The Art of Saying “No”

The Art of Saying “No” is cultural.

It is not petty party political.

It's not liberal vs. conservative.

It's loving the economy vs. tolerating it.

The Art of Saying “No” is acknowledging

That the very definition

Of the word “civilization”

Is a prejudice against sane and healthy ways of living.

The Art of Saying “No”

Is having the stones

To believe, or even know

That the world isn't what we were taught,

May not be what we thought,

and should stop caring what we've got.

Me and Your Shadow

The cremated lack for crosses,

and it's been years since I saw your tree,

But in many ways, I still live in your shadow.

Everyone I know sees me darkened by it

Every day wondering if, sometimes,

The unforgettable is meant to be forgotten.

Bloody Washington

What a maze is Washington,

Where I once spent a year

and nearly lost myself in the bargain.

They can write themselves a tax code

Longer than the Silk Road,

and they struggle with the simple yet–

Give me liberty; don't give me debt.

Why I Write, Part x+239: As An Alternative to Being Busy (a Poem-in-Dialog)

“How do you keep writing in today's world,

When there are so many people to see

and so many ways to make money?

I barely have time to floss my teeth.”

“Well, I've had many false friends.

I've seen false mahogany.

They make false teeth.

But I have never, ever known

A false sense of satisfaction,

A false sense of accomplishment.

It's non-transferable and genuine."

Walking Ghost

I know all the best corners.

I know how to be unseen and unheard.

An incomplete list of the best places to hide:

1. In plain sight.

I am the unfriendly ghost,

The one who walks away

To haunt emptier places,

Forgotten but not gone.

By the People/For the People

They promised government

By the people, for the people,

and then they changed delivery services,

So now they deliver

Government by bossy people

For the judgmental,

Which might be more than I deserve,

But is so much more than I'd like.