Don't Think I Knew

Until just this hour, I don't think I knew
Why exactly I keep being drawn back to you.

It isn't your features, though they're set just right.
It isn't your form, though that surely does excite.

Your greatest attraction:  seeming nearly half-ripe
For my honest assessment of culture and life.

There are others besides you.
They don't look the way you do.

Friends and Acquaintences Vie

Programs and friends and acquaintances vie
For my ears and my eyes and my hands and my mind.
Though I'm not omniscient enough to regret,
It's likely I'm leaving some longings unmet.

The World Has Its Ways

The world has its ways of telling you "enough,"
and I have my ways of never hearing.
That's why my knees and heart make funny noises
When I try to use them anymore.
It wasn't that I didn't want to hear.
For the longest time, I thought I needed not to,
But I'm listening now.
It's easier for the first time, for a short time
When you just don't care.

Your Clothes, Your House, Your Hair

The way you work, your taking care

Of all your clothes, your house, your hair,

Tells of a dark core in your brain

Which thinks all people are the same,

But it isn't true.

My friends are little gods in human-suits.

Everyone else is created equal.

Derange Me

I'd warn you that you'll just derange me,

But I can't help that you'd like to change me.

I will warn you that as a rule

My friends will think you heartless, cruel,

For saying I could be improved upon,

But you're not wrong.

Sentinel

No sentinel's as good as friends

Against those who are past amends,

Or feeling your world's past its end,

Or that it's a sadistic test.

It's they who can protect us best

Against finiteness, emptiness.

She's Forgotten

She's forgotten how to manage time.

She's half deaf and three-quarters blind.

In school, she made low-average grades.

For her cooking, no one throws parades.

She moves as if she has the gout.

Her memory's in constant doubt.

Her beauty's twenty years past faded.

Her singing voice is overrated.

I hear her yards off when she breathes.

Never insult her in front of me.

Centuries of Troubadours

Some centuries of troubadours,

Minstrels and bards have closed the doors

To certain mindsets, certain thoughts,

Kept us from knowing what we ought.

They've used our ears to blind our eyes,

So we take foolishness for wise.

They don't need wool. They merely sing

Of sacrificing everything

For mere moments, flights of the heart,

and many call this scheming “art.”

Completed

It inspires art and song.

Its ups and downs string us along.

It makes for drama, blindness, mess,

But rarely prolonged happiness.

Romance lights, then burns, then ends;

Our life's completed by our friends.

I Hate My Body

I hate my body
For being weak,
Knowing fatigue,
For letting me
Be robbed by sleep
Of a quarter
Of my life.

To hell with rest.
Restitution!

Misjudging Strangers

We as people live in danger

Of hastily misjudging strangers.

meeting-moments don't go far

Toward knowing who they really are.

You might catch someone (not a jerk)

After bad news and long work.

Or so I'm told; or so they say,

But I know I am not that way.

Each acquaintance that I've got,

I know well if they're liked or not,

and I treat each one accordingly.

That's really all there is to me.

Home Lives

Ideas are raised, grow up in our minds.

Perhaps they have depressing home lives.

We mistreat or overburden them.

Most of them sink, unremembered, in problems,

But there's a moment when a newborn idea

Is all its mother-mind can see,

Is pure and strong as it can be,

Makes its very home's heart beat,

So awfully young to live life's peak.

We Always Do

We did the same thing we always do.

I tried to talk, and tried to listen to you,

and I don't think either you or I got through.

I'm missing something. It has to be

Some secret or some mystery.

The other reason I could see:

You're even worse at this than me,

and that's as crazy as it seems.

Customer

I didn't have the nerve the first time.  I shouldn't now, I think,
But every repeat customer who looks like you deserves a wink.

I'm the only person on the floor prepared to offer this,
But I've written down my number here.  Please call for extra service.

Just tell me where to go, madam.  I excel the streets and halls.
I'm that kind of associate.  By request, I make house-calls.


Ring once for service.
Press two for English.
Scream if you want to go faster.
I love to satisfy the customer.

(Many an Awkward Silence) With You

I've shared many an awkward silence with you,
Which as far as my life goes, is not something new,
But it's strange how often in just two months' time
Our conversations have broken down like my meter and rhyme.

I figure I might ask "what the hell?" if you don't tell me about it,
But I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

You Stick Around

I've not looked at you long enough to share what I have found,
But I will share that I like it, that I hope you stick around.
I know some don't like auditions, and not knowing where they stand,
Don't like to wait to call it friendship.  You may prefer a faster brand.
I myself prefer the long road, so I won't blame you for going.
The recent met, I do not trust them yet, but I'm most the way to knowing.

I Stick Around

Between two different crowds

In the same house,

I stick around like a curse

Or a zombie who won't hail a hearse.

My life's a suspicion that I'm doing it wrong.

My life's secretly knowing I do not belong.

I fall out of the picture or get out of hand.

I'm not misunderstood. I just misunderstand.

Why I Write, Part x+157: Mental

I scatter my words like BP scatters oil.
I spill my guts here, without death's end to toil.
I spill ink like I'd spill water if I were the world's worst waiter.
I spill my brain's juices.  I'm a mental masturbator.

Sherlock's Mysteries

I write verse enough about you to make old professors weep
and leave the art's aficionados languishing in sleep,
But have your form, your words, your laugh endeared you most to me,
Or am I drawn to you as one of Sherlock's mysteries?
Are your charms as good as endless, like a wood's or foreign land's,
Or will infatuation weaken once I understand?
If you choose this very moment, and you bind me to your face
Will I marvel at my fortune or lament your lack of taste?
Of the labyrinthine puzzles that our science can unfurl,
None are near as complex as what draws me to a girl.

Twice-Treasured Creature

How abnormal I find you, my twice-treasured creature!
How can beauty be basic and more than its features?
How I want to travel your form 'til I learn
All of its ranges and fields and blind turns,

But I'd most like to find your mind's entrances, exits,
and assail them with love's winds and rains, weather's kiss.
Since the best part of you won't admit fingertips,
I'll explore with my words once I've knocked with my lips.

Really Think So

They say gentlemen prefer blonds,
But I don't really think so.
I think gentlemen prefer Marilyn Monroe.
She could have green hair and we wouldn't care.

Speaking as an avid reader,
I like the book and the cover.
You don't need to hire an illustrator,

But if you're really choosing between me
and someone else, who disagrees,
I guess that's your bad decision to make.

The Falsest of Advertising

My disappointment was some decades preordained,
By random chance and certain choice, not fate.
Your parents wouldn't care if they'd known,
But they're to blame for a sudden flash of false hope.

Always taken as a given,
But never truly god-given,
The name is the falsest of advertising.
You have one of the ones that means
Everything a name could mean,

Which is only to say
That you share the name,
But you aren't the same.

For My Profanities

First you came for my profanities,
and you can best believe I was angry.
You left me swearin' and cussin'
When you left me in detention.

Then you came for my homophobia,
and I let it go, 'cause I know ya.

Now you come on behalf of the disabled,
and I wonder what else you'll come for
Now that my anger is incomprehensible,
Now that you've made anger inexpressible.

Potential

It was the last word I found offensive.
She used the right lips,
and I used the wrong context,

But now I use the word like bees use their honey,
and I sling it about like gamblers their money.
I'm disgusted by the word, indeed,
But more with whom I use it on, and how I mean.

I hope potential is merely absurd,
But anything that described Plaxico Burress
Strikes me as a dirty word.

My Schooling

My faith is like my schooling,

In that I haven't always been paying attention,

Sometimes I showed up for the wrong sections,

Though I've managed to make a few good connections.

I'm just now getting more zealous than slack.

I can't always sustain, but I always come back.

I've often wanted to learn more,

Though not always what I signed up for,

and there was the time I took a long break...

But it's something I know to be of benefit.

The returns have been alright of late,

Unlike what I know of the human race –

Grasping half-wits spiced with hate.

So when I hear someone say

“You have to have faith in people,”

Well, that just sounds insane.

These Ten Years

These ten years, I've been my own worst teacher.

I never found the right words for her.

Half my voice is my deficit of character.

These ten years, camouflaged in blame and grief

Was my greatest fear – my own unbelief.

I admit that you lacked strength and I lacked speed.

I've twice spent ten years growing proud,

and quite prolific if not loud,

and yet, I still, here, fail to say

The right words. I know not the way.

One of us is left to live with both our choices;

We're both left sharing half a voice.

I Am Still Broken

I know I am still broken

When I feel all the eyes in a room.

I wish they weren't watching.

I know I am still broken.

My back is turned, whole, and I am hiding.

They don't know how I'd be acting

If nobody was watching.

I know I am still broken,

Not by who I am when no one's watching,

But because when they are, I can't be him.

Count the Thought

I have a bad habit not to count the thought,

But to feign surprise and excitement.

Good things cannot be packaged,

Nor can what's left of my soul be bought.

There are many gifts I receive with my heart,

Which might be warmer than my hands,

Though I pay more mind to who is giving them.

I have heard complaints about the hands.

And why is it still re-gifting

If it brightens a friend's day?

It better honors the thought that way.

Energy I Expended

You have no idea -- or maybe you do
Of the creative energy I expended on you
(Other kinds, too!).

It took me me most of a decade to realize
That I'm competing with a field for a booby prize
(Thanks to a rival for opening my eyes!),

But how to take the next step, to accept the mess I'm in?
I know I'm DQ'd, but I still want to win
(Still assuming the prize is less work and more sin).

Stronger Than This World

You are what this culture asks you to be,
By design or nature formed correctly,
and you find ways to be stronger than this world.

You are more than this culture says this can be,
In your tastes, your candor and your kindness.

You are not what this culture asks you to be,
Which is to say you are not mindless.


God is truly wonderous if (s)he can love everyone as much as you.
I couldn't.

Running Late

Swearing, sagging, running late,
Wearing anger like a steel breastplate,
Mailed in malevolent hate
For everything about this day,
Helmeted by hopelessness, can't see the road ahead
For wishing my week or someone else dead.
I'm in need of intervention, or maybe jail instead.

Music gets me moving, and lifts the weight off,
At least for the moment.

Covers

There's not judging a book by its cover,

and there's giving a guy named Madoff a billion dollars.

My illustrator must've had a bad day with hand cramps and epilepsy medication,

Because people still approach me for conversation.

I'll kiss you or kill you, but one way or another,

I want to tear off all the covers.

Team

Between Dumbicrats and Retardlicans, Duke and North Carolina, or
Team sparkling stalker vampire and team poorly-written werewolf,
Conflict is certainly the spice of the American life,
But it's a meal of mockery.  There's no sustenance in spice.
The moments of meat, the densest, grainy times
Are when you're disregarded by someone smarter than you are, and you have to decide
Is the best path to continue, or perhaps backtrack and fold.
I suppose I'm conflicted, as yet undecided.  That's why I'm asking you.

I Made My Body

I made my body an instrument of anger,

A vessel, a vector, a vehicle for vitriol,

Mobile and agile and five-quarters full.

Then the lights went out, and my knees went out,

and I don't need that anymore,

But I still hate with the same convicted convection.

I just lack a purposed, destructive direction,

So I just sit and boil on burners of rage

For the world, for my body, for being contained.

But Is It?

It's hardly been mentioned in the last few years,

Though it's still beloved by the old people.

For all the sense I think it makes,

It's the biggest thing with the kids today.

Depends who you ask. It's either annoying

Or a classic, a standard, its time's best thing going.

It sells like the episodes

Of a television show –

About once a week.

But is it good?

American Eyes

American eyes see life as polar,

and everything therein one opposite or the other,

But the world is not so intimate to these eyes,

Does not touch them one way or the other all the time,

So that the shadows and colors in the world that I see

Take the forms of neithers and indifferent maybes.

I was taught there's a personality type called “slow-to-warm-up.”

It almost describes me, just not quite enough.

Like an Early Snow

The troubles fall upon each of us like an early snow –

Visible but meaningless alone,

Taken all together, they cover everything around us,

Beautiful to everyone but those who have to deal with them.

And I am tracking the snow in

On the soles of the wrong words.

I am your biggest flake.

I land closest to home.

Just a Shaking

I know how much I owe you --
More than just a shaking head --
But your helpful words can't profit
Under honest looks ahead.
I wish I heartened when you say
How things will always be
But I don't even have the sometimes left
To believe in an always for me.

Why I Write, Part x+156: Reloading

The most masculine poet is armed to the teeth

For the fray in which meter and metaphor meet,

With assonant slant rhymes, so wickedly curved,

and as someone who makes puns, armed also with nerve.

My own head, full, bursts to leave others exploding.

I'm not reading, just reloading.

My Turn

I've studied the material. I've practiced pretty hard

To be everything from bearded to a lineman to a bard.

By doing everything but doing, I know what I can learn.

Is it my turn?

To any movie goer it's the age-old situation,
Stuck between respect for friends an formed infatuation.

I've felt the ways it itches and I've felt the ways it burns.

Is it my turn?

Though despairing for the future, or the part that I can see,

Life has been persistent in so often bringing me

Life-redeeming second chances, and more than I have earned.

It is not my turn.

She Is Like Water

She is like water –

Seventy percent of my world.

She is like water –

Almost unbelievably common.

She is like water –

She washes the day's grime away.

She is like water –

Almost unbelievably awesome.

She is like water –

Perfect, by nature or design.

She is part of me –

Temporarily mine.

Why I Write, Part x+155: I Am No Man

I am no man.
I am a vessel for ideas,
A vomiting vector of poems,
and I have no idea what they mean,

At least not right away.

The act of half-digestion
Leaves part of me in the poem
Without my knowledge
Or expressed, written permission.

I am slowly wasting.

Head Start

A head start isn't fair,
It's just there.
It's a sharing of personal history,
Or maybe a question of mutual need.
I know it's not healthy.
I know it's not right --
Sounds like life.

Refuse to Believe

I'm staying late at guilt-practice tonight.
Though I hold back and refuse to believe right
I'm showered with blessings as deserts with light,
Unworthy of my oft-but-not-always-appreciated life...

Or do we all conversations that lose them us time?

Why I Write, Part x+154: The Life

Those reasons that you must believe are just why I cannot.
I neither sacrifice the vices nor the gifts that I have got.
Where you are a believer, I would be made a hypocrite.
I won't accept that.  I am not like you, not virtuous.
My two favorite things in the world are sin
and hanging out with Methodists.

Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Such is the life of a deist.


They give no tax breaks, nor a wage
For bearing and raising new life on a page.
I shelter them from waking 'til going to bed.
The people I know best only live in my head.

Talk about a strange contradiction.
Such is the life of a writer of fiction.


I am no humanist.  I've no faith in my race.
No reason to expect I can keep up a pace
and craft text -- meter, rhyme, and words that mean all,
Like a bridge built in pieces, with the hope it won't fall,
Held together by bolts, tiny little punctuation.
My hobby is a recipe, in lyric, for destruction.

So much care to build it, and one word to blow it --
Such is the life of a poet.

Nostalgic Relief

I still think of you sometimes.

You are the muse of nostalgic relief.
You were hours of fun, not worth days of grief.
Being with you is like riding a bull.
It's a hell of a thrill, just know when to let go.
Can't call what we had "love".  I won't call you a mate.
You're just a mistake that I'm glad to have made.

I still say that's better than a lot of them.

The Poet's Prayer

People pray first off to survive,

and then for their sundries – in short, pray to thrive.

Poets are a different brand of moron, if we're branding.

They're enlightened idiots who pray for understanding.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that nearly killed me.

Experience, with the right student, is an excellent teacher.

Once the world had time enough for tact,

They selfishly called your end a selfish act,

But with fate in your headlights, close enough to see,

Could there be anything more selfish than to expect you think of me?

I knew, alone, to disagree.

I alone did not blame you, so I blamed me.

Someone white should be practiced

In self-forgiving deserved guilt,

But I guess that isn't how I'm built.

I spent ten years loudly praying,

and shut up ten years too late.

----------

Just because one has suffered a fate,

and two deserve blame,

does not mean that there need

to be two casualties.

How can someone I knew ten years ago

Influence who I still am as an aspiring man?

I suppose I should pray to understand that,

Or at least for the strength to leave you the hell alone.

Shine on, you crazy diamond, you.

Remind me of music you never listened to.

I guess, and I hope, you'll be back when I'm through.

Most Jarring Step

Most of us march through time with the most jarring step,
With our mind on what's coming, feet on what we've just left,
Center of gravity forgotten.  Comfort, balance we lose.
A mind on the present feels like newly-soled shoes.

Why I Write, Part x+153: Carrion-Bird

Poems grew half-unraised, words like flesh,
Until father time and mother author brought unrevised death,
The written word.
Every poet since then is a carrion-bird,
Consuming old poems to power fanciful flights,
Canon digesting dead bards to resemble new life.

Today we soar just high enough to think we've escaped
Our garbage-eating ordinariness,
Just high enough to base friendships
On a mutual preference for weirdness
Over the alternative.

I Learned

When I was four, I learned there are people you can't fool --
To be specific, those better connected than you.
When I was five, I learned my last two names, the alphabet,
and that after one-oh-nine comes one hundred and ten.
At the precocious age of six, I learned about sex.
(In another decade, I learned to appreciate the poetics.)
At seven, I learned almost everything I know about dinosaurs,
Though in twenty years, the science has learned more.
At eight, I learned that I am not special, just one, not only.
At nine I learned nothing, but was reminded not to trust authority.
At twelve I learned I'm not desired, and girls should not be trusted.
(I managed to forget that lesson a few times.)
At fourteen I learned to stop digging before the shovel's busted.
At fifteen I learned to inoculate for human hate and rumor --
Take the pep from those who'd step on you with quick, self-stomping humor.
At sixteen I learned that the present is your friend.
The next year and the future taught me that one again.

I wonder what I'll learn tomorrow.

Let's Insult the Bye Week With a Limerick

It seems last week's loss left "The Nation"
In a tense, smoking-eared conflagration.
One more week to dissect
Every cause and effect
May only increase agitation.

Stormy-Peaked Climb

I was nearing the end of youth's stormy-peaked climb

To the new adult's firm grasp on nearing his prime,

Climbing crosswise, growing streetwise, but not too wise

To consider not having the time of my life,

and though I won't call it a moment of glory,

I miss some of the people and tell all the stories.

There was nothing could stop me – no news, tests or walls.

I was priming my prime, and was prime for a fall.

Now I'm back on the climb, four years on the way up,

So fully I fear I'll run over my cup

and run back down the side, wet with mem'ries of floating.

Hist'ry's repeats won't catch me with hands red from hoping.

Fall In Montana

They say fall brings the first sign of chill in the air.

I say Chronus kisses me, to show that he cares.

They say fall is a goodbye, brings life to a close.

I say summer's hot, hectic; fall's needed repose.

Some live for the former. I swear by the latter.

The baseball's more pleasant, and actually matters.

The leaves stampede around in great herds and mobs, frantic.

The breeze blows. The world buzzes with natural static,

But God gets the contrast and color just right.

I can't help but smile. I can't help but write

In the fall in Montana.

Writer's Block, Pt. 3: A "Poem-In-Dialog"

"This point's thorning my side, so excuse that I belabor it,
But of white-people problems, writer's block is my least favorite.
When my mind tightens up like a turtle or clam
It keeps me from showing the world who I am.
It makes me anxious and angry.  It's frustrating, unfair."
 "Dude, no one cares."

My Ignorance

An incomplete list of things I don't understand:

How anyone could be the only one to follow the golden rule.

What I'd be capable of if rejected from poet-school.

Why the hormones make the heart, but not the brain or blood, skip.

Fans of pop music, movies, and celebrity gossip.

Whether sperm and egg feel pain of death when new life first begins.

All of the seven major world religions.

Why good foods and rhymes and puns should ever go to waste.

Taste.

Why I still care for a woman who's all fire and no smoke.

Why she didn't laugh when I approached it in a joke.

My ignorance is certainly a fascinating land.

Good Luck With That One

I am not a son or a friend. I am quarry,

and you were sent by the devil to make me worry.

Yeah, good luck with that one.

You are picking, pestering, nattering, nagging,

and I don't really want to sound like I'm bragging,

But I'm half-deaf and well-practiced.

Try as you like, (and I dislike,) you won't make it

Happen, though I might be nice enough to fake it,

Just not nice enough to you.

Though I am not a beer-hat-owning American,

I do know an excuse to unwind when I see one.

I suppose I might as well take it.

Deep Questions for the Shallow

An incomplete list of deep questions for the shallow:

1. If we have forty mutual friends, why don't I know you?

2. What should I put in my leatherman pocket
When I go to the airport?

3. Can someone be a teacher candidate
If the two ingredients in his perfect Saturday
Are a beer and a ballgame?

4.  Can someone be a teacher candidate
If he hates strangers?

5.  Why are we encouraged to express sadness?
Sadness is useless.
Anger, on the hand -- productive as hell
and socially unacceptable.

6.  Do I have to break a few minds and hearts
To make an omelet
Or just to make myself smile?

Hyper-Aware

The late night is a corn-maze for the mind,

Through which we wander, hyper-aware,

Senses thundering, and thoroughly lost.

I remember there's something

I forgot to remember.

I think I'm writing this poem instead.

All I know for sure is I haven't figured out

How to worry about it yet.

I doubt I ever learned –

Too many new hallucinations to teach myself.

They always seem worth staying awake for.

Unfinished

Future's a word, but it's not a real thing

As the present is now and the past once has been.

I live out of order – first present, then past,

But as it's unreal, I still put futures last.

At worst, I'll barely feel started when through,

Or at best, leave unfinished what I didn't need to do.

Who doesn't want someone to lay with, to walk with, to mend,

Or ears, hands and bodies to borrow and lend?

The catch with this lady – she asked me to bend,

To wear ruts in my life, to depend,

Not to think of how things will go after the end.

Why give a thought to arrangements or sorrows

For the sake of a theory old farts call “tomorrow?”

She said I should party like I won't pay the tab,

Like I don't need my pride or my keys or a cab.

Both the booze and the covers keep me down, keep me warm,

Though I need to pee more than I need to perform.

and if neither are satisfied, I guess that's alright.

'Cause I won't have to think of it after tonight.

Coach told a man lives life on the attack,

To sacrifice, gamble, to hold nothing back,

To play as if there is no tomorrow,

Because there isn't, as far as I know.

Right now is as far as my knees let me go.

That was good advice once, nine years ago.

Today, it's just who I am.

Cheering and Caring and Counting On

I hate cheering and caring and counting on
Things I should know will get worse or get gone.
I know that to trust the world churns up a wake,
Which Murphy will board, come to steal and to break.
To rely upon things, people, places, traditions
Is giving a whole world of Murphys permission
To destroy everything worth living for.

Permission revoked.

Three-Dollar Beer

I hope you're don't take offense at my lack of desperate

Low-light, late-night-type attraction.

It's clear that I bought you a three-dollar beer;

I won't cloud that by waiting for action.

The fact is I can only call straight-edgers' numbers.

That's all that I have in my phone.

I'm a country song – got no one to drink with tonight,

and I don't feel like drinking alone.

Social Learning

I was held back from three years of social learning.

I find myself incapable of correctly discerning

The types and directions of other people's yearnings,

But despite my utter ignorance as to the feelings' causes

I find nothing quite so obvious as wanting's desperate pauses.

Still, silence is golden, duct tape is silver, and learning isn't a task

If I break a shared silence to admit I can't read you, and ask.

Otherwise Engrossed

I'm at least halfway to urgent, but you're otherwise engrossed.
Your boyfriend is provoking or your girlfriend is verbose,
and by the time your best friend's lonely, my mind's halfway comatose.
My own best friend's about the same; at least, he's near that tired,
But he is craving sleep when I am second-winding, wired.

I guess I'm miswired.  I guess we're all snarled,
Or mismetered
Or mistimed
Or misrhymed.

To miss connections, one needn't be cowardly,
Only busy.

I Don't Have/Just A

I don't have an unprofessional attitude,
Just a diminished sense of anxiety,

Nor a problem with illicit substances

Just days I'm not feeling sobriety.

I've no disrespect for religion,

Just distaste for theatrical piety.

It's not serious social dysfunciton;

It's a slight disrespect for propriety.

They're not unresolved issues with trust,

Just some reasons to think that you'd lie to me.

MSU vs. Eastern Washington Limerick #4

Hey, check out directional state!
I bet they're unprepared for their fate.
We'll run over their asses,
Then throw Bleskin some passes,
and the defense will bust Vernon's pate.

MSU vs. Eastern Washington Limerick #3

Pass to Kaufman, to Clarke, Herd, or Talley;
Leave your freshman up 41's alley,
But if you try to run,
The front seven has fun.
When Big Zach's done, backs answer to "Sally."

MSU vs. Eastern Washington Limerick #2

Screaming Eagle thinks his team will win.
I think I'd like to ask him
"How's that passing attack
With V.A. on his back?"
Also, "You want a piece of our vim?"

MSU vs. Eastern Washington Limerick #1

Eastern's mostly ignored in their land,
Hence their hard-bitten, obnoxious fans.
After playing tomorrow,
They'll leave Bozeman in sorrow,
Once the Cats give them all they can stand.

11 Varieties

An incomplete list of varieties of friendships, in order:

1. Ex-girlfriends
2. Facebook friends
3. Friends I nod at if they're looking in my direction
4. Friends I wave or say hi to if they're looking in my direction
5. Friends who make me smile when I stop to talk to them
6. Girlfriends
7 Friends I'll lend money to
8. Friends I'll hide a body for
9. Friends I'd make a body for
10. Friends I'd give my body for
11. People I hug

Charlie Brown

Your whole cycle of hopes raised,

Then strewn on the ground

Gave me flat-backed perspective,

The same view as Charlie Brown.

But why didn't he learn?

I eventually found

There's no sense in playing rigged games.

You're not the only catch around,

Only the most appealing, intriguing,

Only the most appalling, fatiguing.

I have reached the point with you where resignation becomes certainty.

It's the same unbelief in a different shade of indifference.