Didn't Rule It Out

I never really wanted to meet you; I just didn't rule it out.
I never wanted to look at you the way I'm looking now.
I would never dare to ask you to be more than I expect,
Always dazzling with your eyes, your smile and your intellect.
I didn't need you to sway your sway, to waive just so with your waist
Or to make so many references and flaunt such impeccable taste.
I didn't ask you to jump every gate that I build before I've finished it,
But I didn't ask you to quit.

I Mean to Linger

We live in a world that can be explained scientifically
By some large, finite number of favored theories,
Some simple and elegant, like global rotation,
The Big Bang, evolution, or universal gravitation,
and some grow large in labyrinthine complexity,

But the world can be explained in all sorts of ways.

The world is a buffet,
and I mean to linger.

Punctuation

My life is a sentence, logical and loose,
Punctuated by you.
When we came full circle (or I thought we did),
I assumed we were ending on a period,
But now I feel myself sliding down the comma's back curve,
Which is just like yours, to touch a nerve.

The Skeptic's Definition of Romance

I've heard and read so many words romantic,
But the only ones I can put any stock
Into are "I've got your back,"
The skeptic's definition of romance
In seven words or less.
The rest are pretense, or bullshit,
Or diversionary tactics.

Wildfire/Spreading/Growing

The back of my throat is wildfire.
I feel it spreading.  I feel it growing,
and the pain amounts to nothing
Next to being utterly blocked,
Next to knowing I have no voice.

That pain, too, shall pass
Once I stop pretending it is new.

With Abundance

I was never damned with abundance.
I have grown comfortable not having much
and giving to those who don't ask.

Lately, my budget has grown taxed,
and some pick this moment to ask.
While I am used to being unable,
For the first time, I wish I could fulfill

Get Enough of It

It is manmade, and thus finite, and yet it grows on trees
(or ten percent does, and the rest in cotton fields).
It can be traded for almost anything, for profit.
Civilized people cannot get enough of it.

It is universal, and immutable, and infinite,
Yet you cannot get more once you've been rid of it.
It is only traded for one thing, and always at a loss;
Civilized people consider only keeping it a cost.

I disagree strongly that money is time;
To think they are opposites I'm more inclined.

Your Taxes

Civilized society taxes freedom
At the highest marginal rate.
They tax them all, save one,
Then return a percentage.
This is your refund.

The one untaxed freedom is thought,
Which we relinquish without a thought
Every time we hear a word
and give that word the permission to be a thing
and give them both permission for offending.

Remember, next time you are easily upset,
That you are only raising your taxes.

Why I Write, Part x+178: Shinier

I am a poet without hope, and the shinier for it.

To lay down and gaze up longingly at the stars

Would be to make a landing pad of myself,

To invite the wild, unschooled skies

and the rigid, unquestioning authorities

Down with a cargo against which I hoped the hardest.

It's not that I can't see the poetry in adversity,

It's just that a poet who writes only of suffering

Becomes a bore even to himself,

While I maintain an avid interest in my own life.

Masquerade Ball

Whether chilling or working or walking down halls,

My soul's drinking punch at a masquerade ball.

I smile and pass harmlessly while in my waking dream

A thousand different people scream a thousand different screams.

Your Twinkling Gaze

You seemed to slip, showed me your gaze in a mirror,

With appropriate pride and that one pinch of fear.

It would have been easy, to confuse determination

With its creepy-close cousin, caution's cuckoo, desperation.

“It's normal,” you tell me. “That's how girls act these days,”

As though you think you might drive me away.

But I never did conflate vanity with sanity.

It's a good try, but you can't get rid of me so easily.

It's Just...

It's just like me, giving the long explanation.

It's just the easier way.

It's just like your parents, the quiet frustration.

It's just one of us going away.

It's just like the time that we swore we'd be eager;

It's just plain to see that we're not.

It's just something that happens; It's just that time passes;

It's just the best option we've got.

It's just like that picnic we went on last August.

We're just the bare stem of the clover.

It's just like you not to admit to yourself–

It's just over.

Why I Write, Part x+177: Bringer of Words

I'm the tutor of jocks and the offspring of nerds.

I am the Write Brained, bringer of words,

The one with glutton fingers, always vomiting.

I can think for thirteen seconds and then write of anything.

The Way I Behaved

You blinked at least twice at the way I behaved.
You held doors for me; I didn't smile and wave,
A surprise to one so beautiful, as any mirror will show it,
and I thought you ought to know I didn't spurn you 'cause you know it.
It was irrelevant, though true, that you aren't really my type.
I just lacked for energy.  'Twas too early in the night.

The Courtship of Emily Rose

Sultry legs, kind, soft hands, and even your nose

Are all built along the most golden ratios,

Though your hair is black, streaming as Zephrus blows,

and peering through the deepest blue of your stained-glass eye-windows

Is an occupant I want absolutely nothing more to do with.

Unusual Beasts

Beliefs are the most unusual beasts.

Faced with the most inhospitable climes,

Assailed at every moment, from every side

They often find a way to thrive,

Even growing stronger, more robust,

Changing only to grow a scaly crust.

Yet, elsewhere, though they are the stronger,

They may just choose to live no longer.

I Can't Explain You

I can't explain you. I don't know why

The room's a steely gray without your smile.

I don't know how you took my heart off standby.

I don't know how you pick the right time to appear,

But all of my senses wish you were here.

I can't explain you. I don't know how

You blunt my senses, my body, my brow.

I don't know why it took me 'til now

To realize anyone who shines like you casts a glare,

and to wish like hell you were elsewhere.

Shut Me in Darkness

To teach lessons I needed to learn on my own,
You shut me in darkness, and I didn't grow.
It's thanks to you two that I don't really know
How to socialize right–even talk on the phone.

First, you said “forever.”  Then you mocked my doubts.
We'd hardly even started when you said you wanted out.
You're so ashamed to see me now, you take another route.
I smile and I chuckle.  You helped me figure people out.

I've been your “come what may.”  I catch you when you fall,
But I only need you just this time, and you make it your call.
Your teachers would say “shame on you,” your mother be appalled.
I'll only ask you this one time, 'cause you're no help at all.

The only thing that's there for me's the inside of my mind.
It aids and entertains me.  It's the one place I can hide.
So when all else fails, that figures; I just go back one more time.

Tugging on the Strings

I may not be a puppet,
But from nine to five I feel it
Tugging on the strings inside.
This meat-bag just conceals it.

Other hours, the bag that contains me
Is primarily there to carry ideas.

My multi-function biotechnology
Is complex enough to guarantee
If more than one should ever meet,
That one the other will mislead.

The Visceral Joy of the Offensive Lineman

I am one of five brothers,
Five brazen Olympians
In the events of Sin and Suffering.
Others may be damned to hell,
But we will thrive there.

Who dares challenge these Titans?
All I see are puny mortals,
Thin and flimsy canvases
On which to paint our perfection.

I Am Humpty Jumpy

I believe in God because of answered prayers.
I believe in a just god, because I have prayed for understanding,
and some of the answers have been frightening.

I believe I am God's in both the wounds and the healing.
I am covered with my scars.  I am covered with his mark.
I have tried to make my own mark on myself,
But I cannot be both bound at the wrist and wielding the whip.

I am Humpty Jumpy, the broken made cracked.
I place my faith in the power of prayers
That my friends will never understand me.

Why I Write, Part x+176: The Poet Is...(Pt. 3)

The poet is a fisherman, and thus thoughtless,
Unwanting, Unwaiting in zen patience
With his line deep in streams of consciousness
Until he gets a bite.

The poet is a tumbleweed, and thus brainless.
He rambles over language, a great expanse,
Until he finds himself stuck someplace
That is noplace.

The poet is a mad slasher, and thus heartless,
Stabbing his pen deep into life on earth
As many times as it takes to strike black gold,
Common blood.

The poet is a masker, and thus faceless,
Free, unrestricted, and somehow less.
Everything he does and says is forgotten, meaningless
Until sanctioned or censored.

It's a Process

Tongues always grow spry
Around unusual tasks.
They ask how (if not, it's why);
I answer if they ask.

I say “it's a process,”
and so is dialing a phone.
What I mean is “it's in progress,”
and I don't really know.

Why I Write, Part x+175: Proud Father

As a poet, my life's like those of proud fathers to newborns,
Except I'm self-aware enough to claim my rightful scorn.
In a moment of conception, my new words of choice appear,
After lovely English carried them for several hundred years.
Some have been impressed by how I write.  Some said so several times,
But I've trouble being proud of what is not yet really mine.

A Moment Away

Sometimes, people need a moment.
Some need a come-to-Jesus moment,
and some a fuck-the-whole-world moment.
When the normal's on break, own it.
In half an hour, life will throw it
Away.

Pretenses

Relationship Fixins (Incomplete List):

1. Communication

2. Compatibility

3. A fantastic and fitting first kiss.

Perhaps we were on a budget.

Perhaps someone pressed “abort,”

But we came up short.

We speak in unheard compliments

Followed by radio silence,

and how can anyone ever know

Someone who's so far away,

In every way?

We were doomed from the start;

Neither one of us was ever false,

But we kissed under different pretenses.

You were looking to write a novel,

and I a couple of sentences.

Seems They Forgot

They say love is all you need.

Seems they forgot compatibility,

Communication, and the right first kiss.

Seems they're no good at making lists.

I, too, have been at work forgetting.

When the rest of my life is a bloodletting,

I refuse to give up what's keeping me steady.

I forgot that it doesn't matter if I'm ready.

Together Again

It's not that we're safe together.

We just don't talk about the danger.

It's not that I want to start again,

It's just that I'm not wild about waiting.

It's not even that I'm wild about you,

The others just don't like that I'm wild. You do.

The Next Line

I love it when I know the next line

Before watching.

It's how I know there's a writer on board,

That someone's driving.

I hate it when I know the next line.

Why should I watch what I could write?

If I could have written it,

Why am I not getting paid?

Why I Write, Part x+174: The Pointlessness

I string a few symbols together,

Then weave the strings into one another.

So, poets make lanyards of words.

I wonder how many laugh at the pointlessness,

But I like things that make me laugh.

The Siren's Call

Everyone's heard of the siren's call,

But English class did it no justice at all.

The truest allure of it isn't the sound,

But the hope of the lost that they may have been found.

For so long only led where our culture compels,

I'd follow another voice anywhere else.

Problem Solver

I am not a problem solver

Because I'm not a grave digger.

Between personal debts

and macrocultural vendettas,

I have too many fights.

I could spend a whole sweating life

and it would never be enough.

I can fail just as easily by giving up.

One Hundred Twenty

One hundred twenty months don't hide what I didn't do.

After ten years' time I can't be sure I even remember you.

I never pictured myself this much older.

I can't believe I'm still no wiser.

I can't believe a decade is all I get–

So long to decimate my soul with regret.

I never really moved from where she left me.

Here I am, on the other side of should-be,

Surrounded by questions I can't answer.

They call this living–

Just one more thing

I never did for her.

Why I Write, Part x+173: My Pen Is In My Hand

I'm having a hydraulic kind of day.

My swami up and swam away

When the tile under me began to sway.

It gave like sand, and hurt my feet anyway.

Some days I don't feel solid, even on dry land,

But I go to someplace better, once my pen is in my hand.

Let's Play a Game

At first it was “let's play a game of six-on-one.

Winners don't have to sit in the corner and cry!”

Eventually, the games got a little more sly,

and I stopped sitting in the corner.

Finally, we played around of “monkeys see, monkeys do.”

Ever had a hundred people try to look like you?

I never belonged,

But I survived.

Now, on the way from too little new

To way too much to do,

I'm constricted by an ill-fitting schedule.

The long arm of bureaucracy thrashes me up and down–

One toe-deep end-one toe-deep end.

I don't belong...

Nightmares

Naked in a room full of people you know,

Falling, and waiting to hit, but you don't,

Or the dead-soul dullness behind the eyes

Of someone who turned your unwaking life

Into something even the dead wouldn't want–

The content is never important.

What's important is that fear is only a dream.

A.V.E.

Adrenaline–

The crazysexyangerfuel

That turns lines and goals

Into grails and gold.

Victory–

When you see

The there and the here,

But not the distance,

Or the defense,

Or the ice-capped fire-mountains

With a moat in between,

Because you left them behind.

Ecstasy–

When you've fallen

Into certainty and confusion

and you can't get up,

But you don't want to.

How Fast?

I drive quickly.
I think slowly.
I eat when there's food in it.
I work at the last minute.
We're all killing ourselves.
The only question is
How do you want to go?
How fast do you want to go?
Life is a matter of destination.
Life is a matter of valuation.

Why I Write, Part x+172: Unbelievability

Unbelievability,
Sesquipedalian,
Triskaidekaphilia,
Antidisestablishmentarianism–
Why do we have words like them?
I've always assumed it's because
Anything you can't say in one word
Doesn't count.

Otherwise,
Why would someone try
To reduce "poetry" to one word?

More Than Fair, Pt. 2

You make me run when you won't move,
Interrupt me, but demand I listen to you.
You stay at home, but then you lash
At me when I'm not chasing cash.
You gawk, then tell me not to stare,
But as a muse, you're more than fair.

Fairy Stories

I will not promise you forever.
I tell stories, even fictional stories,
But I do not tell fairy stories.
I will not tell you that I love you,
Because I only need you
To stave off cyclical misery.
Every year has its unbearable months.
February is always one.
The truth is, you don't even help.
You just distract me from the fact
That I am beyond help.
I just hope you can appreciate
That it would have been easier to lie to you
Than to find another distraction.

Illogical

My behavior around you

If not yet ill-fated,

Has been ill-conceived,

Most times illogical,

Perhaps inexplicable,

Try as you may have.

You've called it love;

You've called it madness;

I've disagreed that there's a difference.

Your Perfect World

You consume without thinking. You sing without song.

Your tank, it seems empty, yet you move along.

Your world turns on minute hands, marking the times

For working and sleeping and standing in lines

So as to step carefully off your pet peeves,

But your perfect world is my bad acid dream.

Commandment Roulette

“Thou shalt not sacrifice thy liberty at the altar of safety,”
Becomes “thou shalt exit through the gift shop,”
Not in one vicious, alarming attack,
But in free speech zones and obscenity acts.
Overreaction's hot air, called “the winds of change,”
Leaves our culture and deck chairs quite poorly arranged.
As a frog at a slow boil–oblivious–
This is how liberty dies.

Why I Write, Part x+171: A Dog and a Poet

I never understood “artists” who are always on the grind

For more of what store clerks and pizza boys find.

I'm as commercial as a slight breeze, and almost as driven.

I'm a dog and a poet. That's the mind I've been given.

I don't spend effort chasing “that story,” “that rhyme.”

I'm just looking to flavor (or waste) lots of time.

Easier to Remember

I'm not bragging when I say I've seen it all,

Only admitting that I've lost count,

But she is easier to remember.

She is one of those people who makes me

Forget how regrettable the human race is,

Makes me more ashamed at how human I am

With every secret I have to keep from her.

I Guess That's a Really Big “If,” Isn't It?

Should I impress a woman who's seen it all?

Need I only be ready to fall?

Should I be ready at her beck and softest call,

Or should I be willing to show some balls?

Perhaps there's only one requirement, and honesty is all.

If all advice was good, I might stalk Peter's hallowed halls...

...But I would not be single.

Vandalized

I move through a book on my imagination's feet,

Which is why reading keeps my mind fit.

Every book is a playground, too, so reading keeps me young.

It takes me back to my own playground days,

and sometimes, to the first time I saw one vandalized.

The first time I ever came across a bad apple in a good batch,

A book all wrong in a genre I thought was alright.

It was like someone had torn down the monkey bars and the slide.

Now, when I dive into a book, I make sure to bring some cement.

Miniature

I live in a world of quantum challenges,

and academic responsibilities,

Of infinitesimal risks

and artificial consequences,

awash in insignificant glances.

Heck, I live my whole life in miniature.

Just One More

My thirteen hundred poems were first one, and quickly two.
How many hours spent on Tetris, solitaire and Rubix cube
and by couples who constrict until there's no choice but to fight,
Who might stay apart for years, just waiting for that fateful night,
Or by those who stop in for “a drink,” and end up on the floor?
Nothing adds up faster than “just one more.”

My Little Shot of Rum

You're sweet, delicious poison, my little shot of rum.
I let you mangle my head for some hours of fun,
But it's not 'til you leave that I stumble and fall.
Then I can't remember why I tasted you at all,
and once you come back, I couldn't possibly forget.

I'm about as weak as it gets.

Keep Limping Along

The tale of the years that I knew you

Are a bard-breaking ballad of woe.

I thought that your end was the end of the path.

I'm still looking for someplace to go.

When absurd takes a turn for the tragic,

We reach out and keep limping along.

Call it “crutch,” or maybe “diversion,”

Be it vice or a hobby or song.

Some people turn to drinking,

But I'd never turned away.

Some people stare at their ceilings all night,

and some at their TVs all day.

Everyone has something to do

Or to take or to visit to cope.

I just don't.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!  You made it look easy
To disappoint and wound, distract, reheat me,
Without even breaking a sweat, and from home.
(Okay, you probably sweated,
Just through no effort of your own.)

So if you goal was wrath and envy,
To extract from me a moment's deadly sin,
Then I have no choice but to congratulate your win,

But if your goal was to take my feet
Right out from under me,
Then let's see plan B.

Should I Have?

Should I have sent my fingers after you?
Probably.  It wouldn't have been far to walk.
Two calls is only two more than I like to make.

Could I have said anything to help you?
Maybe.  I have since done the same for others,
But it was different, and they were different.

Should I have waved the last time I saw you?
Undoubtedly, but I'm not sure you would have seen.
Perhaps that event whose significance grows in hindsight.

Hindsight is just another word for asking too many questions.
This is the first time I admit I'm one question from the truth:
Why wasn't this world good enough for you?

Unsolved

Too young to know better and too old to resist,

We were just close enough to be kept apart,

So we each changed, in habit and form,

If nothing else, to repulse the other.

Neither one of us would turn blue,

If we could hold it more than five minutes.

Solve 4 Ex

Place x and y variables

On opposite sides

Of an advanced problem.

Add novelty and desperation

and the equation is unbalanced,

But all you need to do

Is subtract attraction

To divide both sides

Before they multiply.

There should be no remainders.

Ex Plus Why

The value of ex plus why is often negative.

It wasn't that we stopped getting along,

But we so rarely came in together.

I was late when you were early,

and I was playing when you were resting,

So either I can syncopate my life for you,

Or we can never hear from each other again.

The Great Communicator

The old masters would chuckle and despair.

I use so many words

Because I can only leave them here

and wonder what meanings you make of them.

I say what I say, and then I have no say in it.

I wonder where you go after you read,

More psychologically than physically.

There really ought to be a roadmap.

I was held back three straight years in Human Interaction,

and I'm a goddamn poet.

Out of the Blue

I don't know why you would darken my door, out of the blue,

Just because your feelings have darkened to purple.

I am not some paper doll that you can dress in mourning

Because you woke up thinking that I miss you.

Pursuant to the First Amendment, I must tolerate what you say.

I'm sure it's a relief to get it off your chest,

But upon perusal of the First Amendment, you're not entitled

To my rights of assembly, to my audience, to my listening,

and you know how little I hear...

                                              ...though it is such a nice chest.

In the Keeping

Secrets swell in the keeping.

Sometimes someone sniffs them out,

But there is nothing that does not turn.

Nothing can grow as big as the world,

and all things forgotten dry up.

Some secrets don't need digging for,

Now that they are just more dirt.

The Breath of the Past

Two decades of my life were brisk,

and they blew by,

One day never having a scent of the next,

Or a clue about the last,

But now the breath of the past

Blows cold upon my back.

I can't move so fast,

But perhaps if I remember, I'll adapt.

Six of One

She is brilliant and incomprehensible.
She is active, and currently unreachable.
She's a skip in my heart and a knot in my gut.
She is enigmatic and a pain in the butt.
She is a the life of the party, and a troubling future mother,
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Straw

She is a straw in a great well of love and nature,
The spirit world's ambassador,
None and all may travel with her.
She is an astral commuter.
Unheard and deeply understood,
Rejected and deeply beloved,
To describe her is to gift-wrap a flower,
A noble and futile gesture.

Path to Perfection

At first I was untouchable,
Until I sold my few qualities
For marginal tolerability.

At first I was weak,
Until I sold my future comfort
For temporary achievement.

At first I was indolent,
Until I sold my sanity
For dizzying productivity.

At first I was going nowhere,
Until I sold four years of my best
For a very expensive push out of the nest.

It seems the only path to perfection
Is either longer than I will live,
Or ceasing to exist,
Which means I may or may not learn which.

Life, For the Opinionated

Regret has a direct line to the memory,
But sometimes I say something, and then later disagree.
Life, for the opinionated, is defined by one choice:
Censor yourself, or contradict yourself,
Or insist on forgetfulness.
Perhaps the secret to muscular happiness
Is a blow to the head.

Get Right

Get going, get over, get traction, get up.
Hang tight, hang loose, hang out, hang tough.
Hold on, hold steady.
Keep it level, keep on trucking,
Keep your head up, keep your stick on the ice,
Shake it off, Shake it out.
Shake it.
Unhitch the trailer.

Get right.

Weapon of Choice

It might be some silly tradition you've had

Since you were four years young.

It might be a vice that you know you should quit,

Which makes it twice as fun.

It might be friends you don't deserve

Who let you talk too long,

Or some catchy, third-rate, number-twenty,

Upbeat little song

That came out seven years ago

and you just heard it now.

It only matters that you fight back.

I don't think it matters how.

Exceptions for Exceptional People

She had a mind for numbers (not just one and two and three),

In a time when studied women had to study secretly.

If she could not travel into time, ahead of it she'd see.

It's too bad that her doctor was not half as smart as she.

Another, shortly after, found that her gift was in words.

She could make the language crash, or she could make it purr.

Though hardly known in her time, to her work we now defer,

and she may not have stopped for death, but He did stop for her.

A man was born to great dimensions whose fire would not let him rest.

There was nothing that could stop him, not in hundreds of contests.

He took on every challenger. He was the only champion left,

But even he, more large than life, was weaker still than death.

Not Here

I want to bust something with my heart, with my fist.
I want to bust my fist, my fury, with something else.
I want to shout and roar and rage.
I want to feel it tearing its way out of my chest.
I want to mutter dark nothings because I don't have the voice for more.
I want to chip my brains out on brittle old bricks,
Because that would mean I'm somewhere not here.

Lighter Than Air

The way you walk makes the dragonflies stare.

The words you exhale come out lighter than air.

The gears of your mind whirr by too fast to see

Why you'd flirt with a ground-bound man-mound like me.

I tried to follow you, but the winds just weren't right,

and you sailed a thousand miles with one step into the night.

The Real Reason There Are No Painters in the NFL

The artist treats feedback
Like water off a duck's back.
If they let the slings
and the arrows (and the compliments) in,
They would all quit creating
Out of complacence and despair.
The artist is inherently uncoachable;
The great one needs no coaching but his own.

Tests

You test my knowledge and my wisdom.

You test my patience, fragile in its youth.

I want to like you,

But you won't let me.

You smile at me, for no reason.

You take shelter when the first winds of my storm blow through.

I want to hate you,

But you won't let me.

The Value of Diversionary Tactics in Romance

I met her in museum halls,

By hallowed hangings on the walls.

We both were bored by dusty art;

I had more interest in her heart.

In time, I saw that interest mirrored.

We gathered stories in those years–

I once forgot her mother's name;

I left to watch too many games;

I tipped our swan boat in the lake.

It's fair to say I made mistakes.

When she told me we were through,

I let her think I thought so, too;

In doing, told omission's lie;

In truth, I wanted one more try,

So here I was, a desperate man,

In desperate need of better plans.

My real girl thinking we're at ends,

I'm free to shop with female friends,

and one day, that girl saw us out,

Removing hope from lonely doubt.

She soundless muttered words that tore,

Not knowing what I shopped there for.

I had her best friend make the calls,

Ask her to Carlo's, by the mall,

The target, where I dropped the bomb–

A birthday party for her mom.

Two Weeks Notice

This is the age when a Hockey God and a Pope

Might both quit jobs on two weeks notice,

When celebrity marriages don't last even that long

(They're more of an at-will employment odd job).

I declare an irrelevant end to hero-worship

To match this age of impermanence,

Which will likely last until I'm used to it.

Trying to Teach an Expert on Not-Knowledge

She asks how I am, and that's easy–

I am because gametes meet,

But that's not what she means.

She means “what am I feeling?”

But that's easy too–pain, because my back isn't healing,

But that's not what she means, either.

She means feelings in my head,

But none are there.

I'm just curious why the gods saw fit

To make men out of paper-mache.

Cut, or ...Said the Hippie to the Hipster

You needn't cut yourself off from the material world.

You mustn't cut yourself off from the material world.

There is truth in the world of people and things,

Or, at least, the world of people and things is in the truth.

You need not entirely forsake materialism,

But you must be willing to forsake all that is monetary,

Be it possessions or connections or activities.

You must be able to put it from your mind.

That which you cannot put from your mind,

You must be willing to cut out of your life.

You must be able to cut like a surgeon,

and you must be willing to cut like a swordsman.

You must be with precision and abandon and enthusiasm;

You must be without remorse,

For only when you can turn from that which is costly

Will you be able to understand that which is valuable.

So Indifferent But So Decisive

Who but me could have the most unassuming nerves of steel?

How could anybody be so indifferent but so decisive?

If you, too, want to rid yourself of worry through immersion therapy,

Commit yourself to a zen approach in your economic life.

They say God helps those who help themselves,

But I've found that fortune favors the fearless.

Only Nature

Some say, in quiet, nature hums.

It's their excuse to play their drums.

Deep in the throes of tie-die dreams

They talk of nature's harmony.

The only nature I know is

A place no hippie's fit to live,

A place that's red in tooth and claw

'Neath anarchy of Darwin's law,

A place of stingers, spikes and thorns,

Where all from man to ant make war.

A Woman

A woman I rejoiced in meeting

Brings more with a familiar greeting,

But though I laud, her folks lament;

They wonder where their young girl went.

I find it backward, bitter how

They hardly see the her of now,

But girl-her's not gone anywhere;

In summer growth, spring's seed's still there.

My Mind/My Mane (Pt. 2: Haircuts)

My mind is wild, and my mane
Hides nothing when it's of the same,
But tamed by pros, and made unwild,
It hides my hate for all things styled.

My Mind/My Mane (Pt. 1: Beards)

My mind is wild, and my mane
Hides nothing when it's of the same,
But when my mane is closer-sheared,
I hide behind a lack of beard.

You Taught Me

You taught me that "maybe" means "no,"
Except if I don't want to go.
You taught me the true nature of humanity:
Not to be trusted, listened to, or relied upon.
Most of all, you taught me how to get what I want
With a minimum of effort and concern for people,
and despite the denial, the regret of years,
You are my savior.  I got what I needed.

Unconsidered Words

Nothing tastes more disgusting

Than my own unconsidered words,

Reductive, repugnant, ridiculous,

Regretted the second before they left me.

Nothing tastes more delicious

Than my own unconsidered words,

Unregretted, unrepentant, unrestrained,

Unchained in pursuing my own passion.

They're only words, after all, only symbols

Which lose strength as they ripple.

Red-Sky Morning

Her lips smile a red-sky morning,

Full of grace and full of warning–

About all the risks she could lure me to taking,

About blaming women for mistakes of my making.

The Alchemical Properties of a Seating Chart

In the wrong hands, a seating chart is the philosopher's stone,

Capable of turning an actor, an athlete, an artist,

A future father of three distinct daughters

Into “the one who sits in the middle of the third row.”

Why I Write, Part x+170: Struggling Writers

I have made my peace with subjects and predicates,
With message and purpose and audience,
With phrases and clauses and serial commas.
What I'm fighting is the pejorative use of the term "struggling writer."
All writing is grappling with a language; no writer will ever pin it down.
The only truly failing writer is the one who stops struggling.

Alphabet U

The College Kid's Alphabet

(Monday Morning through Thursday Morning Version):

A is for Academics; B is for Beer.

It's for one of those reasons U won't C me here.

The College Kid's Alphabet

(Thursday Night through Monday Morning version):

A is for All Night. B is for Beer-Bong. C is for Cuervo.

D is for Double-Shot. F is for the obvious.

The College Kid's Alphabet (Post-Finals Version):

A is for WAAAAASTED. B is for BLASTED!

C is for Crunk. D is for Don't Deserve It, Drinking Anyway.

F is for what it always stands for. G is for... …grades?

Talk About Trouble

Your hands ignite my face,

and they all run like a dream.

This combo hasn't worked this well

Since I was just eighteen.

Back then it was all about the face.

Now, you want to talk about trouble?

I can assure you, I'm not having any trouble.

You got me running and punching the jaw,

Laughing the bedroom and scoffing the law.

You've got a test strip, and something to tell me.

You sure do know your trouble.

I can't believe how much I gave up in life

For a girl who ain't mine with a kid that ain't mine.

My folks are on tenterhooks, my accounts on life support,

and you want to talk about trouble?

Bits

If a bit falls in the cloud

Before it gets any pageviews

Does it make a sound,

and if it had two million

Two months ago, did it?

Time is a mystery

Wrapped inside a gordian knot

Wrapped inside the human brain,

But the internet's a funhouse,

and our memory is a mirror.

Facebook is now, on its way to then.

Youtube is always, and never.

Half and Half

I've come to a sort of rough comfort with space

'Tween proverbial rocks and their partner, hard place.

Between need to and want to I've left some regrets,

But neither is that choice as bad as it gets.

Between want to and want to, I'm no more than half right,

and the what's wrong can never be less than half my fault.

The Consumer

I have lived decades on a steady diet of American Culture.
I have chewed on it for long hours and drunk it down in great gulps.
It is in the very air I'm breathing; immersed even now, I absorb it by osmosis,
and because I cannot push it out, I am heavily impacted.
After all, American culture is not high in fiber.

Why I Write, Part x+169: Writer's Edge

Writer's block's well-known, a failure of the whole brain.
Writer's edge is much less so, a failure of imagination,
Where I step out as far as I feel that I'm able,
Swipe at ideas just out of reach on the table.
I'm not brave enough to take a step closer to them.
I'm not fool enough to take one step closer to them.

Core Beliefs

An incomplete list of my core beliefs:

1.  I am a fifth-rate poet, pretending to be a fourth-rate poet.
I have to believe it.
It's a safety net
For a man who has lived dangerously enough to learn that

2.  Indifference is the only emotion that can't be disappointed.

I Lost Your Number

I said I lost your number, but I lied.  I just forgot it.
I said I just forgot your number, but I lied again.
I cleared my brain out to make room for two new personalities,
Sexy Garbage-Truck Driver and Wacky Prison Warden,
Who will shortly assume all executive duties and functions
While I'm out sick with conversion disorder and/or the flu.

Moral Thermometer

My heart runs hot. It knows what it wants.
I feed it, and it consumes one desire after another.
Hate, too, it will burn up, like shambling cities
At the turn of the last century.

Kick lanterns–my friends–at your own peril.

My heart runs cold. It knows not to care.

Husbands, boyfriends, mothers, fathers,

Sons and daughters are naught if not known to me.

My glacial passions will carve great swaths

Though ancient, sedimentary families,

Through green and vibrant lives.

Other hearts are lit with a softer passion,

Less fearsome in their consistency.

It is only fitting that they are called "warm."

Finding Ex

When you're young, teachers tell you to find x.
When you're older, you just run into her on accident

At the coffeeshop or in the bank–

All of the awkwardness of a fifth year reunion,
Without the formality and the theme.
I never did understand why you would go looking for that.

Another Link in the Chain

Our starched moral rectors play dismay well,
Their mouths open, aghast at the bloody mess
Made of what they try so hard to sanitize.

First, the teens are taught to be meat puppets.
Then, we throw twenty-five of them,
An unmatched set, into a big, sweltering melting pot.
Finally, we tell them to grind it out for a year.

Didn't anyone know this is the recipe for sausage?

Easy

It would be easy to take the low road,

Not to fight the heaviness in my heart,

The gravity of the situation.

It would be easy to name you Moriarty,

Get you a job with Luthor Industries,

Or as the Smoking Man's secretary,

Which is to say, change the story.

It would be easy to hold a grudge,

To hold everything against you,

Which is why I probably will.

Ill-Prepared

I am not ill-prepared.

I embrace a world

That is full of sex, magic and bullshit.

I am not ill-prepared.

I have a liberal arts degree

From the school of hard knocks.

I thought specialized coursework might limit me.

I am not ill-prepared.

I'm improvisational.

It's not a mistake,

Or a negative character trait,

It's a lifestyle choice.

Psychopath vs. Psychopath, or Why the Nice Ones Finish Last

You approached me, on the hunt,

and sounded me for what you want,

But in me, did not find your fool,

For I'm a hunter–worse than you.

I saw in you, you saw in me,

Someone not used so easily,

So each the other running sent

In search of marks more innocent.

Tolerants

I'll not do what I think a waste,

But what I'll do is hide distaste.

I support your right to make

What only I consider mistakes.

I will be silent as the pall.

I'll be a staunch non-obstacle.

What I will not be is bullied until I embrace

That which I've worked hard to learn to tolerate.

Believe

Not all believe what I believe;
Not all have seen what I have seen.
If the god you think God is exists,
I'd rather be a satanist.

Our Stains

We're both awash in both our stains. I don't want to shout them out.

I was the first to disregard, and you the first to doubt.

You put your soul's small toe in sin, and I my body's mass.

You were the first to fall in love, the first to let it pass,

But it's kindergarten to point fingers and to blame other one,

and the young aren't animals enough to do what we have done.

The Embrace

So often the poet extolls the embrace,

But hers mostly makes me think of losing weight,

An intimate embrace–I must not get a bone,

and how to time when we release?

Her head on my shoulder–can she smell my clothes?

I really should have brushed my teeth.

Her embrace confounds my senses.

Her embrace leaves me quite insensible,

Unsure if I'm in love, or just insecure.

Why I Write, Part x+168: Car Poem

Car poem is the best poem.
It is born in a New Zion
Of desperate and defiant freedom
That cannot be guilted or scheduled away from me.

Car poem is the worst poem.
It is subject to the utter humanity
Of my memory, my fingers,
and my attention span.
It has extra opportunities to accumulate defects,
Like the inbred, only editable.

Pessimist

The well-positioned pessimist lives a no-lose life
Of prescient predictions and pleasant surprise.

He still has those moments he'll remember and re-live,
But the optimist lives them for real, in the moment,
Before their contexts and newness are lost.

The pessimist can only wonder if that's worth what it costs.

Truth

The way I suffer when you go,

The ease with which you sway me so,

You probably think it starts with you.

In truth, I've always been a fool,

The kind who did at length bemoan

My many hours spent alone,

But not the years to ascertain

My heart and life are not the same.

Were Before

You are more than you were before,
and I am more than I've ever been,
Now that we're not what we once were.

So why does it bother me?

Valentine/Ash Wednesday

The way I gave, the way I cared,

The way I lived my life

As though only you were there–

You are my Valentine.

The way I let myself give,

The way I let myself care,

The way you had me thinking

That you were the only one there–

You are my Ash Wednesday.

Held You Back

You crossed my mind; you passed my tests,

and so I held you back,

To hear more lies from heartless eyes

Which linger and attack,

Hoping for an excuse

To fall in love with you.

Perhaps Cupid's quiver was empty;

Perhaps not his quiver, but my chest cavity.

The Sooner The Better

Every loose cannon from every buddy cop movie ever
Thinks Cupid is out of control and should have stayed on suspension.
Everyone with coordination problems and concentration problems
and undiagnosed, untreated seizure disorders
Thinks Cupid has a serious, just-ate-popcorn case of the butterfingers.
Every psychiatrist, and psychologist, and TV psychologist,
and armchair psychologist thinks that pop singers and poets
Need to give up reinforcing the behavior as a genre marker,
Even though those pop singers and poets have us looking for
Excuses to take an arrow, the guy really has to be stopped.

Urinal in a Women's Restroom

You are a fish's bicycle, a little white elephant,
Anecdotal evidence that the feminists have a point,
Proof that "one size fits all" is a high-card bluff
(As if extended cabs and airplane seating weren't enough).
Most of all, you are the raise in my itching eyebrow,
and grist for my itchy sledgehammer.

Boys/Toys

My snowblower can boast five horses;

My mower cuts down go-kart courses.

My car will chase down all but ghosts.

I'll round the set out with a boat.

The man in me must seek his thrills

With jigsaws, chainsaws, power drills,

and master each one's violent art

To do work, or just run them hard.

All noise one man could find,

None half as burly as my mind.

Watson

Donne had his sonnets;

T.S. had his tomes.

Holmes had his mysteries,

and Watson had his Holmes.

Jacques Cousteau, he had his diving suit;

Chuck Yeager had his wings.

What we search for is the same;

It's strange we'd all find different things.