The Practice of Self-Denial as a Substitute for Social Skills

I was struck by your beauty the first time we met;
Revelation, the second, that no closer we'd get.
My thoughts of you might often stray to that place,
So I buffer with hours--and three feet of space,
and I finish our chats, lay off light-hearted humor
Far before the worst gossip might start any rumor,
For relationships fish with a deepening hook.
You were taken, once; now you're especially took.
So it's not really you that I write to extol,
But my virtue and power of gross self-control.

Giving Up the Ghost

I did not see you that day,

Did not properly follow up

After that fateful doctor's visit.

I will never again see you

As you were in your prime

When the sunshine in your eyes

Reflected in your smile—

When you were alive.

Now, you have grown life—

and death—inside of you.

I see you, unresisting captive,

Held, helpless hostage

To an impotent mass of cells.

I see you gather dust in hell.

Seeing you now haunts me,

A limp ghost in a lithe body.

I would rather not see you at all.

To Strikeouts and Fourth Downs

I have the grip of a gorilla.

I won't give the ball away.

The punt's a big momentum-killer.

Pitching to contact's a mistake.

My first tries undershot the glorious,

But no matter where I land

I won't settle for vicarious.

I will live my life firsthand.

Bulking Up: an Increase in Weakness?

Oh folly, accident of birth!
That which I need is not of Earth,
and even less of human matter—
I've loved the first, but not the latter.
When I seek holiness or pray
All this meat gets in the way,
Though it's a fact that I've been thinner
and just as much (or more) a sinner.

Forty-Six Less 2, or My Ego’s Id

What happened the old me, the word-feast, the poet’s poet seed,

The feel-good, for-self’s-sake sower of stories?

What happened to the spiteless fighter of bias, the truthteller?

What happened to having nothing better to do but to do better?

How was he replaced by this, his bitter, cynical mimic

Who would search to scorch, excoriate, scourge from the earth

The least, littlest fleeting flake of genuine feeling?

Am I so fast to escape the fate of those whose delight is proved a lie

That I see the human species as polluters incapable of truth?

Are my ducts just in denial, or is my heart making bile?

Red Cape, Wet Blanket

I have never for a second wished

To make-believe you don't exist.

What I have wished, oft, instead

Is to force-feed you, fill your head

With this liquid rage that builds

When with thoughts of you I'm filled,

So some space might be emptied out

For plans, for interests—even doubts,

For futures that I cannot know,

For something else inside to grow,

But I had time to self-survey.

It turns out I'm empty, anyway.

On JL Abiyoso, Wednesday, Mar. 4

I've seen it on hangers, on rack upon rack—
What industrial culture would pass off as black.
Man can't torture in more than a pretty-dark gray,
Which at night can be seen from some distance away
Unless, by bad fortune, the power goes out.
Nature beats manufacture, with no contest or doubt.

To Past Gaffes Once Tethered; By Concussions Unfettered

You disappeared, and you left me your ravings.

You vanished and left me with thoughts of the grave.

You left me at least an egg-carton of doubting

and a Costco-sized grief to write poems about.

It's been months since I wrote about you. You're less searing.

Is a dozen a magical number of years

Or have I just found it convenient forgetting?

You call Freud; I'll call Kreskin; we'll settle the bet.

I once worried what forgetting would make me. I'm seeing

That for better or worse, there's one possible 'me.'

They're Made Out of Meat

I know that humans are complicated.

Only the ignorant think that can be debated.

What to make of seven billion machines

Made of—and powered by—proteins?

They must be divinely inspired

and intricately wired,

Patterned and pitted and damaged and dimpled,

But they have some misconceptions that are relatively simple.

Most people don't even know to understand

The difference between their human

and their person.

To understand my human, get a masters in biology.

To understand my person, you ↓ scroll down ↓ and you read.

To a 1979 Honda CG, pt. 2

My love reflects only what's best of the sun,
and could be productive, though she's here just for fun.
My love has been known to roar like a lion,
and to pull me up stairs, without even tryin'.
My valentine comes off half pretty, half mean;
Moves in wide, sweeping arcs—oh, I love how she leans.
She moves predator-fast.  Give an inch, she takes miles
Quick enough I get scared every once in a while,
and though Jomblo is thought a pejorative name,
"I fell hard for my Honda," I admit without shame.

The Lost Boy

I no longer chase girls ‘round the field with a stick.

I grow—get in too deep, then get over it quick.

I went urban, then small-town, then back to the crowd.

I wear noise cancellation and turn it up loud.

My mind changes sometimes, and yet somehow I know

I’ll play the same tunes I loved lifetimes ago

While clothes, romance, game consoles collect dust or rot.

The ear can etch stones Cupid’s arrow cannot.

Prophecy, Preserved in Stone at Age Fifteen

Roses lose petals.
Violets do, too.
I'll still listen to metal
When I'm a hundred and two.

To My Closest Unvalentine, Separated Only By Fifteen Years

I will never miss reacting, like a human, to the cry

Of idiot Emotion, and just barely asking why.

I don't relish being wrong, as when I thought that we were matched.

I don't miss those two months when you were gone and I attached.

I'll never miss the worries, or gut-flurries, or the game,

But if pressed, I will admit that I do miss your old last name.

Sympathy and Empathy Have Empty, Shortened Memories

I know they’re in a better place.

I know there is a plan.

If we talked about this down the road,

I’m sure I’d understand.

When talking from the outside,

There’s an insight you don’t see:

If my friends are in a better place,

Then were does that leave me?

In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (an Incomplete List of Things That Don't Count)

Books whose covers say “Patterson,” reviews say “gripping;”

Stumbles that are only lurches, no tripping;

Rains I can't hear, except for from the roof dripping;

Bands that don't play music, 'cause I can only stand the drumming;

Singers who don't sing with words, but only scat and humming,

and breakups that I saw because they took so long in coming.

Moving Too Fast For Titles

I have a self-mocking confidence.
I do still aspire to competence,

Some of the time.

I can’t help but acknowledge a physical decline.
I can’t bring myself to the same, of the mind,
So when the earth and the circumstances align,
I ride, nearly run, past concern and lost time.
My heart rate, my breathing, my passions all climb.
My production, my intellect, respond in kind.
All in all, and in short, I come on too fast,

and I’m afraid I took all the fun out of it.

First World Problems

Canted over, I carve the curves,
Tires tracing the twister parts
Of a several-season-cycle semester abroad,
The epic apex of my extended adolescence,
and I am befuddled, and suddenly struck
By the enlightenment that, right or wrong,
Most of my life is the time of my life.

www.timemachinematch.com

I shouldn’t continue, but heck, I’ve begun.
Of my many ill-advised verses, here’s one,
Written to entertain, starting with me,
and perhaps as a shotgun boost for self-esteem,
and because I find writing incomparable fun.
I don’t mean to suggest things that oughtn’t be done,
But the more-than-ten-years-ago version of me
Would move worlds for the you that has just come to be,

and he would have a point.