The Matrix/The Time Farm

They tell you to gather your seconds

Into bundles of thirty-odd thousand,

Tell you you're lucky to pawn them off wholesale,

Tell you it's a marvel of modern convenience

That you have the option to buy them back retail,

Tell you that time's highest potential is money,

But when you're out of dollars and cents

You can usually go back to work.

When you're out of minutes, hours and seconds,

There just simply aren't any more.

Court Date, a Poem-in-Trialogue

“Would you please tell the court if you are or you aren't

Guilty of stealing the claimant's whole heart?”

“Your honor, it's true that this man saw me smile,

Which I do when I'm working, at home, or on trial.

He says that we met, but I just cleared his table.

I try to make ends meet, as close as I'm able.”

“See? This man leaves his heart next to napkins on trays.

If my client did take it, she's hardly to blame.”

To an Ingenue, a Belated Apology

If somebody burned, we ask who lit the flame;

If the victim is guilty, we still assign blame.

We're both blameless of meeting, of place and of time;

Backed by grave consequence was our presence required.

You're at very least guilty of having poor taste,

Thinking beautiful thoughts about this ugly face.

You're guilty of kind and destructive intentions;

I of kindnesses legion but not worth a mention.

I'm guilty of knowing your aims from the first.

You're guilty of thinking me best, which is worse,

and I, the smart, the detached, the mature one

Am guilty of seeing you as a test of professionalism

Instead of as a person.

The Procrastinator's Predicament

Measured in years, the year's first month

Comes it at a little over one twelfth.

So does the year slip by in fractions unnoticed

By my heard, though I know in my head

That tasks with most of their twelfths still ahead

Would be easier with that first twelfth completed.

The Middle Path

I'm an imperfect, improvable person,

The kind who doesn't scare babies on purpose

But is rather amused that it happens just the same –

a lackluster sinner, to give it a name.

Between godly and ghastly, I take the middle path.

I don't know where it is going, or how long it can last,

But I do know that, trapped between sinning and striving,

My recourse has been to become rather boring.

Why I Write, Part x+255: In Praise of Aid Yet Unreceived

How many move ahead in dread of the editor,

That sternest of depressing expression-doctors,

Who looks at your work down his long nose, a slide to hell

and pronounces the whole thing to be ailing, most unwell,

But the great ones stick that nose in, and not the whole face,

Work that narrow, ferocious funnel down from a remarkable brain

Which is pinpointing-finicky and always engaged.

7:23, or Spontaneous Generation Theory

She snapped into existence last night. 7:23.

I would not believe myself, had it not been right next to me.

She was hidden from my view, appearing 7:24,

But I assure you she'll not be fading from my vision anymore.

Rather, even when she's gone, she stays on my periphery.

Supernatural in origin, like a ghost does she haunt me,

In apparition and appearance a miracle made plain,

A wonder of the world that even science can't explain.

Half the Wheels and Twice the Fun

In America, our First Amendment and our first cars mean freedom

To cruise backroads to stop thinking about how to pay for them,

But abroad, all that steel becomes a cage, an albatross

With GPS, which won't let me explore or get lost.

Motorcycles mean freedom more pure and more rare,

Wind billowing clothes (though safe out of the hair.)

Why I Write, Part x+254: A Strange Kind of Strangeness

It has been said that I write poems because I am smart,

But I think this cannot be the reason, by far.

A youth's awkward, precocious intelligence

Plus the scorn of others and possible concussions

Equals an actor playing a genius on television.

It has been said that a poet must be a romantic,

and I won't say that such words have made me sick,

But I have two personal rules for my own verse:

“Write as much as I can,” and “romantic topics are worst.”

Even in my love poems, I come off as a jerk.

It has been said that I write because I cannot cope with life,

and of the reasons given, this is as close to being right

As any others given. The us'ual famous singer in the us'ual famous band

Is idiosyncratic. He is not a normal man,

But his misbehavior is a strangeness that the normal understand,

While I am alone in an unculture, most complete,

and yet also a wanna-be synesthete

Wishing I could see the sound of my own thoughts;

The pen and the poem come close as I've got.

Infinite Knowledge, No Will To Power, Thy Name Is...

A GPS could be named Bossy. An iPhone is named Siri.

Microsoft Word has been known to answer to Clippy.

Google has a personality well known to many of us,

For it's part. Google is that particular kind of of genius

That knows everything there is to know, on instant recall,

But is lacking in every form and shred of common sense at all,

and in any idea of what it should and should not say,

When it should and should not speak. Poindexter's Google's name.

Pondering the Philosophical Consequences of a Bak Mandi

I don't do culturally embedded topics, but for this:

I cannot up and change my every habit that exists.

I'm spoiled for choice, but they're rotten decisions:

To be miserable, or to reject the soul of a nation?

But how many of these reject parts of my own soul,

and how many of them are just sort of uncomfortable?

Sweet Brown on Romance (Extended Edition)

Acquaintance and money, as everyone knows,

Are easy to come, and they're easy to go,

and I am no petrostate; I've no energy

To be giving away to pursue things like these.

Nor do I desire to pay out my time–

The one thing of value, the one thing truly mine–

For that fleeting, fickle acquaintance

So commonly known to the world as romance.

More At Home Hunting White Whales

Football's the primitive art of controlling space and people.

I have a multitude's experience that taught me to manhandle.

There's precisely nothing in my past to help me handle you.

I don't know how to get closer, to study your truths,

Nor can I measure the lengths I must go to keep my distance,

Yet I find myself wishing the skills to do both at once.

My Dearest Arsenic

You went down quickly enough, and turned me to putty.

Though you were on occasions bitter,

You seemed only delightfully nutty.

You disguised yourself in everything I seek,

A perniciously perfected performance

So that I would make you mine and you would make me weak.

Thought you met my lips, you came from the hands of another.

Though in a way you'll be with me forever,

We can not, or will not, ever live together.

That Awkward Moment

It's the bright despair of landing on the perfect thing to say

For the first (it could eas'ly be the only) time today.

I could leave it on your Facebook, and the entire world could see

What an attentive friend I can be–or at least, that I can seem.

It was thoughtful to the point of being intelligent;

It was topical to the point of being relevant;

It was even complimentary and – (guess what?)

Totally inappropriate.

Why I Write, Part x+253: The (Im)Personality of Authorial Intent

My poems sometimes, but do not always, rhyme

In couplets or triads or alternating or mid-line.

They can be in iambs or in trochees or in abject lack of meter.

Their metaphors can stroke egos or kick those in the Peter,

But from 'assonate' to 'yarning,' whatever these lines do,

I wonder if you've realized that they are recording you.

Three Rounds with the Fourth Dimension

I feel like I've been in the octagon with time

After most of a month of the kind of days

That put content and intent both in a blender

With casualty and causality and eventuality

and inevitability and pre-existing instability,

Which is to say, “Vigilosomnia, it's been a helluva bout,”

But I will fight forever, or immediately tap out,

Whatever it takes to keep this week's hand off 'liquify'.”

Why I Write, Part x+252: Mirror Mirror, in the Dark

It's fashionable to wonder who people see

Every morning, every night, when they look in the mirror,

and to wonder who those people are in the dark,

But I've found philosophy the lightest of larks,

'Cause I won't look in the mirror, away from what I write,

and unlike using the mirror, it's not contingent upon light.

In fact, I'll happily stay at it long into the night,

Writing in pitch air tinted only by the screen's glow

and by the nuclear fire deep down in my bones,

and though to say so out loud seems dishonest, seems lame,

The man in the mirror and the dark–in all times–are the same.

The Scattershot Ballad of Classical Napalm

Deep in a distant fourth-dimension land

Was the first time that I played the passionate fan

Of a low-tuned, lack-talent teen garage band.

A couple years later, perhaps a touch brighter

In my eight year of being an unfinished-novel writer,

I thought up one plot to thrill me, and another to excite her,

A fiction-universe foundation, should I manage to write her.

When I was still near-to-beer-age (twenty three years, by name),

Some friends started a band, but their handle was lame.

I decided that should I ever want to form one of the same,

I'd have Classical Napalm set metal aflame.

Fresh off seeing my best character play baseball, where it led,

My worst unfinished novels cleared from my head,

I set work on semi-fictional teen years instead,

I reminisce, connection, and appellation all to bed,

and in fiction does Classical Napalm forge ahead.

Now a moment of noise, and raise your devil-fists

For a hard-rock/metal/punk band that doesn't exist.

All Hail Classical Napalm!

Compatibility Breeds Contempt

We might both sleep with lights on, you keeping fear at bay,

and I afraid of waking up blind to pen and page.

It's true that we are satisfied, 'gainst friends' and parents' wishes

With our figures and our forms, and find each other's delicious.

It's true that neither of us think of marriage

As a lace-white fairy-tale-layered icing-carriage.

It's a commitment to all time, every time, at any time,

But you use all your time to learn, and I to write,

Pursuits which we would never bear sacrificing.

We agree on all of these most important things,

and that's why I can't see us working.

Habit's Gilded Cage

Culture and convenience can ensnare us, bind us tight

To habits we don't care for, even practice we deride,

With which we keep on breathing; without, feel dissatisfied.

The grass is always greener-looking on the other side,

Though if you ever make it there, you'll struggle to survive.

Even if you spend every minute on the outside, all your life,

Using sticks to hunt, your hands to fish, and even leaves to wipe,

and though you thought it drudgery, you'd not trade for paradise.

We are so easily institutionalized.

The Life Cycle

Waking to eat,

Eating to walk,

Walking to work,

Working to leave,

Leaving for home,

Home to sleep,

Sleeping to wake

--

Waking to eat,

Eating to walk

Walking to work

Working to leave

Working to live

--

Living to work

Too Many Beginnings

I exist definitively, but indefinitely.

Apart from myself, there are strangers with me.

Migrating in all four of the known dimensions, I'm

Living, leaping from schedule to schedule all the time;

Ostensibly an outsider, under half a dozen roofs;

Staying light on my feet, light in the pack, and bearings-proof.

There is no other way to write it but the first.

The Girl of My Dreams, at the Beginning

Underneath that steely stone silence lie your passions.

Not holding your hiding against you is the challenge.

Radiant, your beauty bleaches memories of your mind, your thinking–

Exhilarating as your burning, blinding beauty is exhausting.

As quickly as recognition left us determined never to quit,

Love at first sight doesn't come close to covering it.

A Retrospective On the One I Was With

Like mattresses and pillows, I think you are boring–

The kind of boring that I miss in the morning,

The kind of boring that I didn't mind to return to,

The kind of boring that I don't mind falling asleep to.

Perhaps my memory of you is changed because you're gone–

The kind of gone that births unfounded speculation,

The kind of gone that is less apart and more away,

The kind of gone that can only be healed by airplane,

The kind of gone that cannot just be ignored,

But I can't afford an airline ticket to be bored.

Trippin' on a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

I want to sample effortless existence.

I want to be at the very molten core of it,

To sit as absolutely still as can be

and watch the whole world roil

As it floats past far above me.

I want to bring my eyes, and leave behind

Everything else that I've got.

I want to slide down to the end of my rope

To see if I'm tied in a knot.

I want to know everything and nothing.

I want to be everything and nothing.

I want your touch to be my last gift before departing,

But most of all, I want to be a millionaire.

The Way of the Tortoise

The last person to say “don't trust anyone over thirty”

Is probably fifty by now.

I could never imagine myself being over sixty.

To be honest, I still can't.

I can't imagine what life after writing might hold

That would be worth staying for.

Everyone I know is trying to get old,

But nobody ages on purpose.

You can't win this event, even doing as told.

Just pick a buddy and try to finish second.

The Hard Way

I see in a friend a look I recognize.

Young women used to see me with those eyes.

No man is perfect, though some feel so in a swoon.

There's no doubt my friend will have learn as much, and soon.

It's a lesson I've seen taught–okay, I taught–the hardest way.

I don't think guys are different now than I was in my day,

Though unless the girls have changed, they won't believe it if it's said,

So my silence I will keep for now; regrets may lie ahead.

Four-Way Stop

Too young to ask the right questions

Or read the map and find my direction,

I wouldn't listen when anyone told me

What I was going to be.

With some lessons unlearned, in my mold unset,

My mind moved as quick as it ever would get

Toward trying to couple–but alone, to define:

Who am I?

Finding answers built on foundations unsound

Or talents no longer possessed, broken down,

I had to take years to take stock, try to see:

What can I be?

In a world built for thinking in ways that I can't

Surrender is tempting, but even if I rise above that,

I still can't help wondering what's wrong with me.

Who should I be?

An Unfamiliar Ceiling

I'm lying here, where I suppose

I've wasted hours in repose,

Looking back o'er time uncut

(But really, I've been looking up.)

Mind not on miracles, mistakes,

But the wonder that I'm in this place

When the odds are I'd be somewhere else

(But really, I've been looking up.)

At the Altar

Your heart, this chance, I may fear losing,

But not like time.

First right or wrong, there's no hoarding

A second life.

People are not all that vie

For my passion.

I might worship, wander, laugh, and write,

Sans heart's distraction.

You think you're worth improvement,

and so do I.

You think you're worth improvement,

and so am I.

But when it comes to the ultimate sacrifice,

I demand perfection.

If God demands my writing time,

I'll change, begrudging.

Cold and Shallow

Since the very beginning,

and since this is not the end,

It is hard to tell where I'm going,

Or even just to tell where I am.

I know not of regiments, partake not in lines.

I am lazier, meanly flowing.

I am always moving on.

I would not think of marrying.

I make a terrible best friend.

Seriously, just ask the last one.

Dressing One Sleeve at a Time

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the beard.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the smile.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not the girl on my arm.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

If not her scent.

I am wearing the shirt from the picture,

Just as red for my heart on my sleeve.

The Consequence of Listening to Christmas Music in January

Nostalgia is joy with no timing.

Time for the past has passed.

I would be twelve hours early

By the path of the sun

(In a month when I'm not used to one),

If three weeks hadn't expired.

How could something so timeless

Be so precisely ill-timed?

Home Is Where the Stomach Is

Brave is thought a blessing; foolhardy a curse.

Quicksand and a rut both stick. I'm not sure which is worse.

I've gone a little more than just around the bend.

I'm down; I'm in it, up a creek, completely out of hand.

I am completely foreign in a completely foreign land.

I am the only stranger in a room full of friends.

On the other hand...

I'm eating dessert and watching a favorite movie.

Home is not something you ever fully leave.

Who Needs Mary Jane?

The last thing the world needs

Is a superhero without a cause;

The first thing I need is for it to be me.

I don't need very impressive powers.

I don't really need the one-name fame.

I don't even need the Hollywood ending;

In fact, I need to stop in the third act.

I just want the lights-dimmed part of the movie,

Where time draws out and the world turns against me.

I wish I wore my freak on the outside

So people would leave me alone.

Sigmund Freud's Excused Absence

With the same risk of falsehood, I could be kind,

and say you live on near the front of my mind.

I've no doubt that it would be more Christian

To say I took attendance in my life and you were missing,

That as life flows on, thoughts of you move upstream,

But I honestly believe that I'm as heartless as I seem,

Which I prove to be fact by believing that the truth

Is that I could find a thousand girls here just like you.