To an Ingenue, Who Still Has a Full Hand of Cards

I see myself in you:

Your slow smile, your aesthetic eye, your humor,

Your preference for substance, your hatred of rumor.

I see myself in you:

The quality of energy bursting out

Is like me after conquering some of my doubt

(But before my close encounter with burnout).

I see myself in you,

and I hope that you find better things to do

With the time and the talents given to you.

Cut It, Razor-Wit!

There is no humor without potential to offend.

There is no humor that's not means to an end.

Jesters use humor to amuse the whole court

and to render their princes a skeptic's report.

But I am no prince. I'm not even a jester,

and in me, an ego is well-known to fester,

So my humor oft aims to more frivolous ends:

Entertaining myself, or impressing new friends,

and some jokes that I spoke, without thought, to seem cool

Were both badly misaimed and quite needlessly cruel.

I wish that I reserved sharp words for those whose actions earned it.

I wish I wrote, and not told, that joke, 'cause then I'd simply burn it.

The Tumor's Tale

Enormous,

Amorphous,

Intruder,

Imposter,

Human virus in a human computer

Imposter,

Intruder,

Amorphous,

Enormous

Mass,

Malignance

Of occluded purpose

Managed to hijack

The body politic,

Make it flail forth and back,

Make it hesitate, agitate, vacillate, attack.

Intruder,

Imposter,

Enormous,

Amorphous

Tumor humorless

Has barely changed the body corpus,

But altered the thoughts it voices

So our oldest friends, loyal and closest,

These days scarce recognize us.

Friction!

Fission!

Delusion!

Derision!

As we hurtle headlong into Hindsight's decision,

The deranged danger deflects our direction, our attention,

Away from a years-delayed, much-needed excision.

Physician,

Heal our nation!

Unoriginal Sin, or The Fashion Victim

She never stood a chance

Against advertisements,

Not because of sexism

or Avenue Madison,

Her mom's shopping addiction

or Disnified fiction
(although they ain't helpin'!)

When Eve chafed against the collar,

Bit deep into the vice that called her,

and really made the serpent holler,

She started wishing Adam

Was, oh, three inches taller.

But Adam wished that Eve

Had lighter, softer, clearer skin

...and then the fix was in.

Beating the Odds (With a Cricket Bat)

The life plan my counselor once made with me

Was to eat and excrete, and then die.

If Mick Jagger can't get any girl reaction,

Then how in the hell can I

Expect to find meaning, do something worthwhile,

Or even know pleasure and joy?

Stand me next to my idols; take a gander, a glance.

I'm a puppet who looks up to boys.

Yet I saw more in five years than some see in whole lives.

I've done things that some folks never do.

Perhaps this impression I've carved of myself

Is too based on a setback or two,

But I'm still on my feet and I'm back on two wheels,

Back with vengeance and vigor and vim,

Writing poems and notes for a novel or two,

Bending volumes and words to my whim.

Yes, I'm beating my odds with a cricket bat's flat,

and I'm hitting all sixes and fours.

If an unpublished poet hits some of his marks,

What's to stop you from hitting all yours?

Two-By-Four (A Drive Through My Personal World)

Racing over night roads in a car that's not mine,

Smacked by musical two-by-fours in four-four time,

I think back fifty pounds ago—twenty-odd years.

I'm still moved by the same wants, the same lack of fears,

and even the music I play is the same.

So every new challenge I shrink from or tame,

The new people I meet in the places I see

Change the length of my story, but never change me,

and the night road I drive? It's a loop or a heart.

When the twists are all totaled, I end where I start.

Sincere Senor Salvador

Sincere Senor Salvador stands on oak staves

While biceps like baked hams hold wrists like his legs

and the fruits of his labors lap over his belt.

I would quite like to ask what he's seen, done, and felt.

What kind of life builds a body like that,

This unique statue in bone, muscle, and fat?

Not his match nor his like have I seen once before,

But his smile I'll cherish from now evermore.

What Broke the Electric Poet?

There once was a poet online

Whose writing was going just fine

'Til he started to teach,

Which did siphon and leach

Energy, inspiration, and time.

Because You Told Me Not To

As pens bleed my passion down surfaces blank,

I realize, for this, that I have you to thank.

How often you told me to stop, don't waste time

Putting ink to my thoughts, to my prose and to rhyme;

Ink not just on paper, but through skin as well,

To commemorate strength fire-tempered in hell.

Skin that covers a body that honed strength through sport,

Spurred on by discouragement. Still think I'm too short?
I my body relax, and muse fuel up, with beer.
You're there, of course, aiming to fill me with fear
That the first time I put twelve-ounce pump to my mouth
Addiction will drive me unerringly south.

I know that you'd have me give up on the ride,

No longer to lean as through corners I glide.

Once some new distraction paves new paths to joy,

Your nasally naysaying you swift employ,

But I write still; I ride still; still love sports and tattoos.

My mind buried in passions, it's kept off of you.

Why I Write, Part x+276: Petty Revenge

You told me I couldn't; that I'd quit, and thus fail.

This meter's the rhythm to which I shake my tail.

You told me my passion's a big waste of time.

Each new poem is my middle finger, in rhyme.

Every artist has critics, and each man enemies,

and they bite, and they suck, like mosquitoes or fleas.

But unlike the insects I'd rather avoid,

My critics I spite, pouring words in the void.

If I could, I'd leave all of them buried in those,

Under verses and rhyme, and a mountain of prose.

Why I Write, Part x+275: My Passion to Write Something Good

While my passion to just play with words

Is frequently delighted,

My passion to write something good

Remains yet unrequited.

The fact that my next project

Will forever be my best

Was once a fledgling theory

Longing deeply for a test.

I once struggled getting started,

and I wondered simply “how,”

But that young theory passed the test

O're two thousand times by now.

'Tween my works that are in progress

and those that simply are,

An apple and an orange grove

Are the closer pair by far.

There's no sense comparing my work,

A pig-farm's worth of turds,

And new, God-inspired concepts

Unsullied by my words.

4D Chess, No GPS

I fall through the minutes and hours of days

Which fly by as if I'm skydiving through haze,

And as the last seconds of youth hurry by,

Though no one knows how, I have figured out why.

There's nothing within them to which I'd hold on,

So I spend that time waiting, and wishing it gone.

I though I had dreams, plans, and things to wait for,

But that thought is so old, I don't know anymore.

I Spy

On the ground, I see less with the dimming of skies,

But there's much more to see if I just lift my eyes.

The space station is easy, and puts me on guard,

As the lights dim, to begin spotting stars.

Meteorites give me something to do

While the dim Milky Way slowly comes into view.

If I'm not Sirius about following Mars,

I could spend every night of my life counting stars.

As the sun rising ends my game of celestial I-spy

I recall that Venus is the brightest object in the new-moon sky.

To a 1979 Honda CG—After Parting

I miss your curves. Or rather, I miss ours,

The way we handled them together.

I feel the convection inside,

Feel jealousy's magma start to rise

When I see another man out for a ride

Leaning deep to one side. I miss sitting astride

Your steel and your gloss, and my own design.

What's Wrong?

My head aches when it might otherwise ache.

I feel ill when it's not a surprise.

Just when I think that the symptoms are known,

It adopts yet another disguise.

It might come anytime, any hour or day,

But always like a thief in the night;

Then it's one more day wasted avoiding the heat

and trying to shut out the light.

Break

I'm in a gleeful, giddy hurry.

There's too much innocent deviance

I still wish to accomplish,

and too few hours in an hour.

I feel my freedom looming like a gloomy, morning cloud.

It portends an end to the fun I intend—

The static electric pleasure of doing anything, many things

Well within the law, but just outside the rules.

Know Myself

To know thyself—that's a blessing or curse?

I know who I am, for both better and worse.

When my life circles back to a similar place

I find I repeat once-forgotten mistakes.

I've found character is immutable law

No matter how hard I try fixing a flaw.

Half the Width of a Hair (Between Death and Survivor's Guilt)

I have, in the decades that passed, failed to find

A way to accept or put out of my mind

Mistakes I made half of a lifetime ago

With those whom—if they'd lived—I would no longer know,

For I know that stood long between my fate and theirs

Was a wall made of down half the width of a hair.

I'm only alive because plans go awry,

Because Dave had the same sense of humor as I,

While they're not, because friends believed when they said “I'm okay,”

'Cause I knew I should call, but went on with my day,

Because they helped others instead of themselves,

Because years of professional help didn't help.

The only excuse that I can provide

To be damaged, distracted, and preoccupied

Is I've looked for so long and I've still yet to spy

The tiniest wisp of a good reason why.

Half a lifetime of searching, and still I don't see

Why it had to be them and had not to be me.

Trust But Verify?

It's not that I know folks' intentions

and choose to distrust them instead.

The tip of the tongue cannot tell you

What manner of state rules the head.

We're all writing poetry by flashlight,

But they won't have the lights when it's read—

and that goes for the upright and honest,

Merely misunderstood or misled.

What of those who would greet you like family,

and under their breath wish you dead?

They slither like snakes through the office,

But sleep unperturbed in their beds.

Why I Write, Part x+274: It Makes Everything Better

I'm not looking to get hitched, or even tie strings.

I've more passion for words than for almost all things.

There are so many things I don't want in my life

Save the minutes my mind's eye will live them, to write.

To love is just work. Dating's always a bore.

But romance of the mind lets my intellect soar:

No headfirst beginnings, nor heartbroken ends,

Just the sloppy wet kiss 'tween my pad and my pens.

We Can Drill Holes on Mars, but I Can't Even

The Hubble's great eye has got nothing on yours.

I stargaze, and daydream of giving you tours

Of binary stars, dancing eons as two;

Of black holes, with the power that draws me to you;

Of nebulae—new light, like you've given me;

Of every new world that the telescopes see;

Of taking a moonwalk to see the Earth rise,

Just us two hitchhiking on old Saturn V.

You're my sun—bringing light to my everyday tasks.

I would like to get close, but I can't even ask.

Aged to be Wild

Thought the matter departed, the mind's not erased.

I still ache to feel one ride's wind in my face.

I would bleed to lean into another turn banked.

I would burn to light fires, to blow through a whole tank.

Injury is no object. I'd endure any pain

To ride through at speed in between two clogged lanes.

For my footpegs I'm longing; for my handgrips I pine.

For them, I'd do all but wait any more time.

Intrusive Thoughts, Part 2: How to Bomb a Job Interview

My mirror adds ten pounds, but not ten years ahead.

In fact, at age ten, I thought now I'd be dead.

I'm not just too impatient to make five year plans;

(Do it)

I have found them torn up in reality's hands.

I'm not famous for striking out baseball stars.

I am not—and I won't be—the first man on Mars.

(C'mon.)

I'm no diplomat

(Do it.)

I don't spend my days authoring bestselling tomes,

Nor in teaching the youth to write things of their own.

(Do. It.)

I had each of these dreams, of these plans, hopes, and fears,

(What would happen?)

and each of them went bust in under five years.

(Everyone would notice you.)

So why speculate? I just started anew.

There's really no telling what else I could do.

(Everyone would know.)

Sure, there are a few things I might like to do,

But they're hardly worth thought, let alone telling you.

(You're just chicken.)

If there's one thing life's taught me, it's that time's current flows

Fast enough that a paddle won't change where you go.

As for me, I've always preferred wait-and-see.

(Bet you won't...)

There's no 4-D map drawn to show where I'll be,

But wherever I am, and wherever I go,

(Do it.)

I'm sure I'll survive. It's the one thing I know.