Cardboard Can't Hold Me

If descriptors are to label,

Then I am meant to test.

I find the lot confining,

A bit tight across the chest.

Though I can bend to fit inside

A box more small than me,

With the merest flex of muscle,

A light stretch will set me free.

Welcome to the 21st

What goes into ensuring that a couple first meets?

They must survive scarcity, and the cars in the streets.

The must arrive close together in all four dimensions,

and must together feel comfort and sexual tensions

Both soon enough on meeting, and so long that they don't leave.

Precision timing keeps defining the children they conceive.

So much rests on which moment they choose to reproduce,

For the merest change in the timing sets other genes loose.

I would be a different person if you changed a few mutations

In any of the offspring of one hundred generations,

and if anyone surrounding them behaved much differently,

Through coincidence it's likely that I'd never come to be.

I'm not just a byproduct of long-lost-to-time romances.

I'm accumulated fallout from forefathers' circumstances.

Self-Service Sisyphus

I am at my worst at peace.

My mind grows lukewarm and flabby in release.

I'm up to almost any task, if rushed.

Down the drain all distraction gets flushed.

Angry, I feel the road through my tires.

Verse flows through my mind as does data through wires.

Frustrated, I throw sticky ideas at the wall.

With a slight change in mood, I can sort through them all.

I can even carry them out when obsessed

Like a dog with a bone. I can sort out a mess

Of mixed metaphors, edit for grammar,

Or pound out some prose, use my pen as a hammer,

and otherwise find ways of getting things done.

I may even find that I'm having some fun,

But soon after I find I'm enjoying myself,

Complacency puts that me back on the shelf.

How did it take me so long to see

That the best of me brings out the worst of me?

Why I Write, Part x+273: It's Easier Not to be Wise

If I never stopped thinking, I'd avoid the road to hell.

If the devil's in the details, then salvation's there as well,

For all the talk of hands, the former finds my idle brain,

and the latter keep my mind at full steam, train a train.

My refuge from flesh is a life of the mind, meter and rhyme.

I can out-think my id, at least some of the time.

Not All Who Are Lost Have To Wander

I have cataloged my faults.

I can name my strengths if pressed,

All of that's not worth a warm spit of Crest.

The poet's curse is self-knowledge

and not a thing to do with it

Because he has no clue of where to fit.

I've been around the world, and learned

Only to want not to go back,

Because a foreigner who's lost is cut some slack.

Out Door or Window

Our lives are disjointed; any themes are just sutures.

No plan survives first contact with the future.

Life is never straightforward, but heaving and twisting.

There's no detailed map made to guide our existing.

Many times I've moved forward, expecting pleasant climes,

and I've even been right at least three or four times!

The unknown is a tunnel, and an oversized load.

Don't forget that it's also a sun-dappled road.

Incompatibly Compatible

The sight of you, the thought of you,

and all the time we spend

Transform my lips into an arch–

One with an upward bend.

We share a keen attraction

That cannot be denied,

But you're drawn to the parts of me

I think it's best to hide.

When I think something is a flaw,

That thought reflects my mind.

So what's reflected in the joy

You take in such a find?

I'm wondering how eye-to-eye

We'll ever truly see

When what I like least in myself

Are things you love in me.

To Someone Else's Honda CB

With envy's eyes, but not its heart

Nor any other sinful part

I look (endeavor not to gape)

Upon your lovely, classic shape.

Your pleasant note and cherry shine

I'd treasure well if they were mine.

I wonder how this same road feels

Under different tires and wheels,

But satisfied I'll never know

I give a thumbs-up as you go.

'Somewhere, There's A Man'

I can barely stand half of the things that you do.

I'm not in denial that I'm not enough for you,

Only that this constitutes some sort of flaw,

That to be over you violates natural law.

I'm through turning away and then agonizing.

I'm through getting angry and then apologizing.

I know that those who could love you number many,

But none of them are me.

Switchfoot Would Dig It

I have never been given a genuine mission,

Nor a visible model to mimic:

From myriad sources, conflicting generalities,

But nothing detailed or specific.

I'm not up to date on my internal systems,

Though I hear it's quite a series.

On my origins and my place in the world

I've heard conflicting theories.

I've no quest for an experience or object

Of which I've been deprived.

So many past misadventures I could

Have failed to avoid or survive.

In short, I lack any concrete idea

Of why I am alive.

Four-Dimensional Commute

We never start and never cease

Between admittance and release

Onto and off this highway-road

Down which we haul our psychic load.

So why, then, should I make this date

A special one to contemplate

The destination and the route

Of this prolonged 4D commute?

Nothing meaningful has changed

No friend's life ends. Mine's not re'ranged.

Tomorrow will match yesterday.

I've changed in neither mind nor way.

No new semester, nor change in season.

No hint of meaning-bearing reason,

and since I find this day's not better,

I shall not write another letter.

Why They Don't Let Poets Amend the Theory of Relativity

I sit, impatient, pen in hand,

But don't allow the tip to land,

Afraid to move or make a sound.

To move could hurry or drown out

The ticking tocking on the wall,

That dullest time machine of all,

But moved or still, I step alone

Into the arms of time unknown.