The Matrix/The Time Farm

They tell you to gather your seconds

Into bundles of thirty-odd thousand,

Tell you you're lucky to pawn them off wholesale,

Tell you it's a marvel of modern convenience

That you have the option to buy them back retail,

Tell you that time's highest potential is money,

But when you're out of dollars and cents

You can usually go back to work.

When you're out of minutes, hours and seconds,

There just simply aren't any more.

Court Date, a Poem-in-Trialogue

“Would you please tell the court if you are or you aren't

Guilty of stealing the claimant's whole heart?”

“Your honor, it's true that this man saw me smile,

Which I do when I'm working, at home, or on trial.

He says that we met, but I just cleared his table.

I try to make ends meet, as close as I'm able.”

“See? This man leaves his heart next to napkins on trays.

If my client did take it, she's hardly to blame.”

To an Ingenue, a Belated Apology

If somebody burned, we ask who lit the flame;

If the victim is guilty, we still assign blame.

We're both blameless of meeting, of place and of time;

Backed by grave consequence was our presence required.

You're at very least guilty of having poor taste,

Thinking beautiful thoughts about this ugly face.

You're guilty of kind and destructive intentions;

I of kindnesses legion but not worth a mention.

I'm guilty of knowing your aims from the first.

You're guilty of thinking me best, which is worse,

and I, the smart, the detached, the mature one

Am guilty of seeing you as a test of professionalism

Instead of as a person.

The Procrastinator's Predicament

Measured in years, the year's first month

Comes it at a little over one twelfth.

So does the year slip by in fractions unnoticed

By my heard, though I know in my head

That tasks with most of their twelfths still ahead

Would be easier with that first twelfth completed.

The Middle Path

I'm an imperfect, improvable person,

The kind who doesn't scare babies on purpose

But is rather amused that it happens just the same –

a lackluster sinner, to give it a name.

Between godly and ghastly, I take the middle path.

I don't know where it is going, or how long it can last,

But I do know that, trapped between sinning and striving,

My recourse has been to become rather boring.

Why I Write, Part x+255: In Praise of Aid Yet Unreceived

How many move ahead in dread of the editor,

That sternest of depressing expression-doctors,

Who looks at your work down his long nose, a slide to hell

and pronounces the whole thing to be ailing, most unwell,

But the great ones stick that nose in, and not the whole face,

Work that narrow, ferocious funnel down from a remarkable brain

Which is pinpointing-finicky and always engaged.

7:23, or Spontaneous Generation Theory

She snapped into existence last night. 7:23.

I would not believe myself, had it not been right next to me.

She was hidden from my view, appearing 7:24,

But I assure you she'll not be fading from my vision anymore.

Rather, even when she's gone, she stays on my periphery.

Supernatural in origin, like a ghost does she haunt me,

In apparition and appearance a miracle made plain,

A wonder of the world that even science can't explain.

Half the Wheels and Twice the Fun

In America, our First Amendment and our first cars mean freedom

To cruise backroads to stop thinking about how to pay for them,

But abroad, all that steel becomes a cage, an albatross

With GPS, which won't let me explore or get lost.

Motorcycles mean freedom more pure and more rare,

Wind billowing clothes (though safe out of the hair.)

Why I Write, Part x+254: A Strange Kind of Strangeness

It has been said that I write poems because I am smart,

But I think this cannot be the reason, by far.

A youth's awkward, precocious intelligence

Plus the scorn of others and possible concussions

Equals an actor playing a genius on television.

It has been said that a poet must be a romantic,

and I won't say that such words have made me sick,

But I have two personal rules for my own verse:

“Write as much as I can,” and “romantic topics are worst.”

Even in my love poems, I come off as a jerk.

It has been said that I write because I cannot cope with life,

and of the reasons given, this is as close to being right

As any others given. The us'ual famous singer in the us'ual famous band

Is idiosyncratic. He is not a normal man,

But his misbehavior is a strangeness that the normal understand,

While I am alone in an unculture, most complete,

and yet also a wanna-be synesthete

Wishing I could see the sound of my own thoughts;

The pen and the poem come close as I've got.

Infinite Knowledge, No Will To Power, Thy Name Is...

A GPS could be named Bossy. An iPhone is named Siri.

Microsoft Word has been known to answer to Clippy.

Google has a personality well known to many of us,

For it's part. Google is that particular kind of of genius

That knows everything there is to know, on instant recall,

But is lacking in every form and shred of common sense at all,

and in any idea of what it should and should not say,

When it should and should not speak. Poindexter's Google's name.

Pondering the Philosophical Consequences of a Bak Mandi

I don't do culturally embedded topics, but for this:

I cannot up and change my every habit that exists.

I'm spoiled for choice, but they're rotten decisions:

To be miserable, or to reject the soul of a nation?

But how many of these reject parts of my own soul,

and how many of them are just sort of uncomfortable?

Sweet Brown on Romance (Extended Edition)

Acquaintance and money, as everyone knows,

Are easy to come, and they're easy to go,

and I am no petrostate; I've no energy

To be giving away to pursue things like these.

Nor do I desire to pay out my time–

The one thing of value, the one thing truly mine–

For that fleeting, fickle acquaintance

So commonly known to the world as romance.

More At Home Hunting White Whales

Football's the primitive art of controlling space and people.

I have a multitude's experience that taught me to manhandle.

There's precisely nothing in my past to help me handle you.

I don't know how to get closer, to study your truths,

Nor can I measure the lengths I must go to keep my distance,

Yet I find myself wishing the skills to do both at once.

My Dearest Arsenic

You went down quickly enough, and turned me to putty.

Though you were on occasions bitter,

You seemed only delightfully nutty.

You disguised yourself in everything I seek,

A perniciously perfected performance

So that I would make you mine and you would make me weak.

Thought you met my lips, you came from the hands of another.

Though in a way you'll be with me forever,

We can not, or will not, ever live together.

That Awkward Moment

It's the bright despair of landing on the perfect thing to say

For the first (it could eas'ly be the only) time today.

I could leave it on your Facebook, and the entire world could see

What an attentive friend I can be–or at least, that I can seem.

It was thoughtful to the point of being intelligent;

It was topical to the point of being relevant;

It was even complimentary and – (guess what?)

Totally inappropriate.

Why I Write, Part x+253: The (Im)Personality of Authorial Intent

My poems sometimes, but do not always, rhyme

In couplets or triads or alternating or mid-line.

They can be in iambs or in trochees or in abject lack of meter.

Their metaphors can stroke egos or kick those in the Peter,

But from 'assonate' to 'yarning,' whatever these lines do,

I wonder if you've realized that they are recording you.

Three Rounds with the Fourth Dimension

I feel like I've been in the octagon with time

After most of a month of the kind of days

That put content and intent both in a blender

With casualty and causality and eventuality

and inevitability and pre-existing instability,

Which is to say, “Vigilosomnia, it's been a helluva bout,”

But I will fight forever, or immediately tap out,

Whatever it takes to keep this week's hand off 'liquify'.”