Saturday, November 19, 2016

Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 3: Tiny Tim Would Dig It

Kind sir, have you chance for a stanza?
I'm only a couplet away
From a poem to upgrade my website,
and I'd sure like to get it today.
You see, it's been months since my last one,
and my mind's furnace has been left cold.
A career and a mind-bending hobby
Burns more than my skull-shed can hold,
But the fact is I felt much more healthy

When I wrote something every few hours...

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Kaepernick Limerick

There once was a baller called Kap
Who sat down with his hands in his lap
While his teammates did stand,
To the ire of fans.
That's his job, which I'd say is a snap.

Life is Loss

Life's no prison, but a holding pen.
So many enter, and pass out again,
and so we struggle to make friends.
On people one cannot truly depend.
I had hoped you'd stay until the end.
Heaven—and life's nature—forfend!

But not everyone holds the pedal down,
Blowing, over the limit, through town,
and so I had hope that I had found
Someone not so elsewhere-bound.
One day, I looked up and you weren't around.

In expecting that you'd wait,
There's a truth that I didn't anticipate,
Learning it only once it was too late:
Some don't just leave; they accelerate.

Decades, it took, to remove the gloss,
To learn that at life's core is loss;
All the world's a ride, and that's the cost.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

The New Creepiest Poem I Ever Wrote (ft. Uncle Sam and MC Friendzone)

I'm the destructively memorable song,
The cavalier uninvited. I just follow along.
I'm the thought you can't shake and you really can't share,
Chilling behind the back of your mind and sticking to your hair.
I'm that stomach-sinking sensation you get
When you notice forgetting not to to forget.
I'm that funny feeling that you're being followed home
And that existential certainty that you can't let someone know,
The split-second impression of "just to be nice"
And the hours of dread that implied "there's a price."
Just think of me as your respiration tax.

It's my job to ensure that you never relax.

Why I Write, Part x+266: Internal Rationalization of the Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant (ft. My Internal Critic)

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find
That if I'm writing with an audience in mind
I do it not to move, but rather to impress,
Because impressive or amusing is what I like best.
It's rare words (or anything else) make me feel.
As a reader, the thought of it doesn't appeal
As would meeting (or being) the Pathosless Bard.

Also, to move people's pretty damn hard.

Why I Write, Part x+265: Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find
That if I'm writing with an audience in mind
I do it not to move, but rather to impress,
And that I'm rarely if ever at my personal best.

800 Days of Summer

In the last five years of “play ball!”
My Pirates have learned to stand tall.
Though I should be thankful, I'm appalled
To note, as the last of them turns to fall,
That they've yet to win anything Major at all.

Big

I sometimes pay a climbing price
To see a man enrobed in white,
With a clipboard only half-listen
To my half of our scripted missive
In which we dispute stories that others may tell
To explain why I've entered what he thinks is hell.

It is not to be blamed on the size of my bones,
Nor on an imbalance among my hormones,
Changes in my metabolism out of my hands
Or a disorder of one of my much-maligned glands,
But when I still grew in my own native land,
Someone told me to “be the bigger man.”

Damn right. I did it.
Mission accomplished.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Horseshoes and Handgrenades

I want to play.
Let's play a game
Of horseshoes
and handgrenades.
Together, we'll be
Almost perfect.
We can get close,
Close together
and then you can
blow my life up.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Nineteen Eighty-Four Fifty One, Pt. 2

Do despair because Clinton climbs!
Do secede because Trump triumphs,
Because the new meaning of democracy
Is a choice between political suicide
Or political families,
Because we threw off a monarchy
To catch monarchy in disguise
Behind a flimsy mask of lies!
That was the risk of democracy
With roots in the original Greek:
That we, too, might elect a tyrant.
This, too, shall (come to) pass.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Lies My Devices Told Me, Pt. 3 (Or Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 2)

Check off that box,
and then go see a show!
Life's in schedules and lists,
What you make, where you go,
What you spend when you get there,
All the to-dos we all do,
Not subvocalized reasons
We have to push through.
It's the tangible clutter
That I purchase with time
That I could spend relaxing
My thoughts into rhyme.

A Love Anthem for the Vision-Seeker

Roses are blue.
Violets are red.
Help yourself to some mushrooms.
They're out in the shed.

A Love Anthem for the Survivalist

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
If the world ends tomorrow,
I hope I'm with you,

(Violets are blue.
Roses are red.
But if you're a zombie,
I'll aim for your head.)

Monday, January 25, 2016

Rose

I once had a student named Rose
Who liked to touch things with her nose.
She had no sense of smell,
In case you can't tell--
'Til it came back.  That's just how it goes.

I Don't Do Haiku (But I Do Miss Winter)

Hot chocolate, wrapped in
Hot porcelain, wrapped in cold
Hands, wrapped in time-fog.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Catalog Poem

Real silverware, polished well, how it shines!
Yours for the price of two twenty-nine.

Candy-apple-red dress, like you’d see in a store
For sixty-three dollars and seventy-four.

Electrical football, players buzz like a hive
For a low price of seventy-eight ninety-five.

Stiff, rough, unstonewashed, bark-like and blue:
Work jeans for only forty-five ninety-two.

Baker’s yeast: white-brown grains to make your bread leaven
Will only cost two dollars seventy-seven.

Rocking chair kneeling on your porch as it repents:
Fifty-five dollars and fifty-five cents.

Lincoln-logs (brown-painted, roughly-notched sticks)
Go for thirty-five dollars, and cents twenty-six.

Purple polka-dotted parachute pants, eighties fun:
Used, for a price of five ninety-one.

Pleated pants, sized for most, in the color of slate
Cost just under a hundred: ninety-nine ninety eight.

Towering, teetering entry-way tree
Of a coat rack for twenty-five seventy-three.

Hot rod of a holly-berry Harley,
Spokes straining the wind like a field of barley,
Shining pipes with wide mouths that holler
For the low price of twenty-five thousand dollars.