Thousands of Miles from Home, Where I Belong

I was odd in my time. I was odd in my place.

I'm perverse in my thinking and homely of face.

I've traversed the dark ocean now, only to find

That there's no place where people agree with my mind.

I'll be odd every time. I'll be odd any place.

It's a truth about me that I simply must face:

That I'll never shut up and I'll never give in,

and with that figured out, finding home can begin.

I'm still odd in this time. I'm still odd in this place,

and perverse in my thinking, and homely of face.

I've traversed the dark ocean now, only to see

Where I'm not meant to fit is the right fit for me.

It's Never “Never Be the Same”

I know few things are simple in Earth's broad complexity,

But I have never once stopped thinking that you're gone because of me.

I've crossed the ocean far enough that day has turned to night.

I'd cross the sorry stars if it would somehow put things right.

I learned about as much by leaving as I learned by losing you.

There's no mistake I cannot make, in anything I do.

Earth's hunger should have swallowed me, for you were always better,

and if I've gotten no worse since, I'm the same man, to the letter.

It seems you left me nothing in the lesson or the loss.

It seems as if my nature's one expanse I cannot cross.

Neither St. Valentine Nor OED Would Dig It

I don't find it in the hours of work I put in,

But in a single second, or its smaller fraction:

When I ease off the clutch and the gears quickly bite,

When I lean in a corner, take it almost too tight,

When a few right-wrist twists take me far as I can see.

When I hear the word “love,” that's what it means to me.

You Can Take It With You

To assume that time is borrowed

Had on me a strange effect.

I made myself so scarce that none

Could find me to collect.

Then this I learned in all those months

and years I spent adrift:

That time's not loaned, but borrowed,

and you don't return a gift.

Held By One Heel

You wouldn't even know me

If we met again today.

That burgeoning idealist

Was forever sent away.

Still more thoroughly destroyed

Was his forty-year life plan.

I simply laugh off accidents

That would kill a lesser man.

The pain that bothered me back then

Was less than today's “not that bad,”

But thinking of you aches in places

I thought I forgot that I had.