Accidental High School Reunion

Early up, head down,

Same old almost the same.

The temp thing is hard on the biological clock,

and it's hell on the internal compass,

But your eyes are easy on mine.

I knew you, once upon a time,

But now is not the time.

I can't believe I had forgotten,

and I'm half-surprised that I remembered.

Barbarian at the Gate

I admit that it is true that there were times I was prepared,

Unwavering and full of hope, appropriately scared.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to have been many times delayed.

I would not give up my little seat, my waiting at the gate.

When the time comes for me to board and deplane, when I arrive,

When this old barbarian reaches his gate on the other side,

I wonder if I will be ready.

Good Is a Bad Word

Of all the things you could have called me,

There's only one word you could have used

That said weak and wishy-washy,

Utterly un-unique and unbelievably uninteresting,

But at least you put me on to a little linguistic lightening strike:

Everything the word says about me

Is all I can say about the word.

It's Better Than Nothing

It didn't make sense. Not now. Not to you.

The story was just too horrific to be true,

But if it really did happen, it would have been quick.

I suppose that's better than nothing.

The fury clawed its way out of my lungs.

If this had to be real, if there was nothing to be done,

Then I would try to burn everything down with my tongue.

I railed against a world that would bear you away

On the wings of your own demons,

But what I railed against most was me,

The so-called man who might have seen something,

But most certainly did nothing.

I didn't make the healthiest scapegoat, either,

But I guess I was better than no one.

I begged in the short term for time's fruit, understanding.

Not finding it, I wondered what I should be doing,

and agreed, to myself, that this will never happen again,

That there would be no me if there was anyone in need,

That this mistake was the last one I had in me.

There's nothing so deadly as a deal with an angel,

A loan against time that I'd already borrowed,

A desperate, delaying denial of some horrible inevitable,

Which I guess is better than nothing.

At the failure of the futile path that I chose,

My one true talent did itself soon disclose.

Not so good at a little bit of help,

I showed some aplomb for get-the-hell-out,

and I wrote a new set of rules for failure:

Once–try harder, twice–hide.

I suppose it was better than nothing.

So now, on a path ten years in the traveling,

I have achieved at least some measure of understanding.

It never should have happened, but it did.

Death's not half as deadly as living with it.

Dedicated to My Roommate, the Ghost

I am a lover of science, who believes fervently in ghosts

Because for the last ten years of my life, my head has been the host

To a woman whose corporeal life was ended in gunflash,

But has taken this long to die in my mind–and more, for she's not passed.

At first there was the missing, both the laughter and the tears.

Since that ended, I've blamed myself, a hobby lasting years.

I don't content it's all my fault. I didn't take that shot,

But frankly, she's been gone so long, that's all of her I've got,

and if that's all of her I'm holding onto, I can see how that sounds lame,

But if I believe in cause and effect, I must believe in blame.

Why I Write, Part x+219: It's A Helluva Drug (Remixed Drink)

My mind moves,

Bumping gray-matter grooves.

It doesn't ponder; It doesn't prance.

It's in the club, but it doesn't dance.

Sometimes, I slip into something more comfortable,

Intellectually speaking.

Through darkness, across my cavernous cranial cavity,

My mind's eye comes to rest on a ravishing, raven-haired idea,

and I try to strike up a conversation with her, to get to know,

To lay groundwork, to hear and to hold and to hope,

and it turns out she doesn't look good that up-close.

Why I Write, Part x+218: It's a Helluva Drug (Stimulant Mix)

My mind moves, meanders missionlessly,

Motor-mouthing, milling, mucking, making,

Mastering the mundane, mustering mystical metaphors,

Until I get stuck on a word I don't have a word for,

So I start picking and picking and picking and picking

and picking at whichever part of my mind is sticking

Until I the unknown out from under the ubiquitous usual,

Until I get it right.

Until I can chill out.

Until I can cool down.

Until I come down.

Incomplete

I gave myself an incomplete.

I gave myself a long two years

To learn what I could about you,

and I gave myself an F now that they're through.

You told me concealed untruths, unlies

Sharp and unlooked for, verbal, boot-holstered knives,

and I heard them with half-deaf ears,

Playing once cool, twice shy, thrice eager.

My mind, no matter how many times

Heated and quenched in heartbreak's hand

Cannot stand in front of my soft, foolish eyes, and

I still can't smell what you were cooking.

You found my weakness, but were you ever looking?

Blue-Eyed Girl

I took all that attraction I don't have

For a Hollywood world that I can't stand.

I saved, collected, invested in you.

At the time, it seemed the thing to do.

I liked that you smile and laugh, your thirst for fun.

I liked watching you shine in the sun,

Not realizing the polish it takes to shine that way.

Then I woke up. It was a black Tuesday.

I had frittered my investment away.

Somethingorother

The song said “maybe this year will be better than the last,”

and my friends say they hope it's all uphill from here.

I know life isn't cheap, but at least it's steep and fast.

Still, I can't imagine what is better than this.

I can't imagine what I'll do after this.

Somethingorother, I guess.

The Historical Linguist and the High-Functioning Sociopath

They say everybody hurts sometimes,

and I wonder if that's true.

They say “everybody love everybody.”

Once a day, I think of you.

They say that if it's real,

It's like getting hit by lightning.

They say no one wants to be alone,

But it's better for my writing.

I've been told that to be human

Is to always know desire–

Just one more reason to wonder

If I'm secretly a monster.

The Once-Bitten's Argument For Halftime Adjustments, or What's the Matter?

She tells me that she wants me,

and I want to tell her even whores have standards,

But instead I tell her that it's been ten years.

She can't be the woman I foolishly fell for.

It's possible that I'm not even the man she remembers;

It's just hard to tell inside this castle of a stone face.

She tells me that time doesn't matter,

and I want to tell her it's the only thing that matters,

But instead I tell her that if nothing has changed,

Then how could the ending be anything but the same?

She says that none of that matters,

But I want to say it matters to me.

The Other Half of a Bad Night

I'm singing the self-righteous song of recovery,

and I look with the unresting eyes of the penitent,

As I plod through the age old search of the shame-reduced,

To find ways to forgive myself for you,

and I'll always sing the self-righteous song of recovery,

and I'll always plead with those unresting eyes of the penitent,

and I won't stop dragging my feet with the same of it

'Til I've forgiven myself for myself.

The Penitent's Cure for Postmodernism

My life is a tale of progress, albeit halting,

A testament to my flaws and a God well worth exalting

So I find it most opaque, given new years which old surpass,

Why I should feel affection for my self and my times past.

My next step forward is deciphering why it should ever be

That I harbor this nostalgia for old habits bad for me.

Setting Priorities

It seems like when money talks,

Those with less better take a walk.

When money runs the culture,

You're always on the clock.

When setting priorities, some repair

To due dates, or first person there,

Without loyalty, judgment or wisdom,

Though if nothing else, it's fair,

But when I'm with a friend, at a game, in the hall,

and interrupted for somebody's phone call,

Unless it's a family emergency,

How can I help but be appalled?

Memory Games

Mensa recommends a mind-palace for memory games,

But I come home to a mind that looks more like a cave.

It's, to most, uninviting. There's no doorbell–no door.

Staying in means enduring hard, uneven floors.

It's rough, dark, and downhill, more descent than a ride,

and I'm so gutless, even I don't know what's inside.

Girls Girls Girls

There are girls who dance deftly across stage's center.

Others sit in eyes' corners, just waiting to enter.

There are friends I might like to cast in new roles

And betrayers whose grasp emptily, sound depths of my soul,

Go-out girls and stay-in girls, for my glutton and sloth,

Girls like Liberty Poem, made up from whole cloth,

Desirees with desires, from here to earth's end,

But the ones that mean something, they remain now as friends.

Liberty

I wanted to take poetic liberties with you,

But if I'm gonna be corny, at least I'll be true.

Your eyes and the ocean rarely share color,

Though the one's color changes far more than the other's.

Nor have you rosy lips. They're not so red or soft,

Though I'll grant that they are fuller and their color's not soon lost.

No, I won't lie to mother nature, as the poets often do,

Though as a poet, I still want to take some liberties with you.

Sins Three and Six

Of the sins, are three and six genetic, or are they learned?

Are our desires born onto our silver tongues, or are they earned?

Some people want based on who has those things, and how they make them seem.

Some people want what's shiny, to see others watch it gleam.

Some people want some things just so their enemies can't have them.

Some single-minded avarice can snatch people, can kidnap them,

While other peoples' deepest wants change slowly, over seasons.

Suffice to say that human greed knows all the forms and reasons.

It takes four quarters for a contest, and four decades for a rival.

Is wanting more than the other guy has a habit, or more primal?

The Man on the Ground

I wonder what it is like

To be the man on the moon,

To be the vanguard of vanguards,

To be outnumbered by emperors

and even by messiahs,

and thus by greatness to be made alone.

I wonder, because I know only the crowd.

I know how it is to be dull, to be stunted,

Only sometimes inspired, but every time loud.

I know only the life of the man on the ground.

The Man on the Moon

I wonder what it is like

To be the man on the moon,

To be the vanguard of vanguards,

To be outnumbered by emperors

and even by messiahs,

and thus by greatness to be made alone.

Evil

I see evil in your eyes,

and the more I see, the more I like.

It's not that I'm a pervert...

Not just that I'm a pervert...

But a chance to prove what I always assert:

That I am not of conventional heart,

That I do not grow fonder and fonder apart,

That no fiber of sentiment beats in my chest.

You, my darling, are the test.

Why I Write, Part x+217: The Short Answer

I don't write. I'm no pen's bleeding martyr.

I'm nothing more or less than the submissive partner

In an unconventional drummer-drum relationship

That leaves me spent, and no more whole.

My words are echoed beatings on my hollow soul.

Why I Write, Part x+216: A Timeless Nothing

My writing is an empty gesture.

The din of the crowd will eat it.

My writing's a timeless nothing.

Once online, the whole world can't delete it.

I can't write anything meaningful.

My soul's still empty, though I feed it.

I can write anything I want,

'Cause who in the hell's gonna read it?

The Consuming Tree

It is a great green everything,

Hollow, emptied and meaningless.

It is the leaf off an old oak tree:

The very means of its living.

It can be plucked and escape all notice.

Why I Write, Part x+215: Midsummer

Now is the midsummer of my discontent.

I grope for AC, but I've nary a vent.

A head-shrinker might call it a minor depression,

But I know that myself, so why schedule a session?

I suppose opinions might vary. Let's see.

Is there a such thing as reverse S.A.D.?

I suspect if there is, it's, at most, at the behest

Of the most very beautiful pharmaceutical reps,

and who doesn't have enough overdiagnosis in their lives?

A hippie would eschew the medical, and say I have “bad vibes,”

But the sixties are over. His argument is irrelevant.

I'm simply writing less, and what I do write doesn't rhyme.

At twenty-eight, am I skiing the back face of my prime?

Why I Write, Part x+214: The Zombie's Hobby

Being hit over the head by inspiration

Is like being accosted by golden retrievers,

Going down under the furry licks of flame,

Sudden but ultimately uplifting.

Tripping and falling into inspiration

Is like falling headfirst into infatuation.

It pushes everything else in life aside,

A beautiful inconvenience.

Pursuing the ultimate end of inspiration

Is like undertaking a scientific investigation,

Following a logical, but not always linear, path

To the newfound, ancient unexpected.

Writing is all of the best parts of life

Without the exertion required to live.

It is, more or less, a zombie's hobby.

The Adolescent in the Monk

In my years before, I learned that things are expensive.

In my years before, I learned that places are crowded.

In my years before, I learned that people come in two kinds:

Those who ask too much, and those who charge too much.

In my years as hermit, I learned to satisfy material desire

By dismissing it.

In my years as a hermit, I learned to love empty places

For the things that made others stay away.

In my years as a hermit, I learned that our anger is misdirected

From those who make the rules

At those who make the lowest of demands.

In my years as a hermit, I learned that life is a series of inconveniences

Imposed upon us by strangers.

In my years since, I learned that it's a pain in the ass to live it.

The Difference Between Depression and Anorexia, Pt. 2

My mind is mired

In quicksand, in memories

Wet with waist regret.

The Difference Between Depression and Anorexia, Pt. 1

My mind is mired

In quicksand, in memories

Wet with waste, regret.

Strike Two

I sweat and scream and sigh

and love every minute of every headache.

It's partly my fault for falling in love

With a beautiful paradox

That is an individual sport and a team game.

We Have/We Don't

We don't have history,

But we have convenience.

We don't have chemistry,

But we have fun.

We don't have similarity,

But we have geography.

We don't have opposites,

But I suppose we're attracted.

We don't have a fairytale,

But we do have moderate plausibility.

I still don't know why that shouldn't be enough.

Some Days and Some Days

Some days, the sun rises a little higher

In the classroom and on the teacher.

On those days, the spirit seems to rumble

As walls that imprison understanding crumble,

and the world is enlightened from underneath their shadows,

and some days, seeing your skinniest student eat a sandwich

Has to be enough.

My Personal World, Part 18: And Lady Mondegreen

A lyric drops me in the deep end of a teeming memory

Because of a mishearing that I wish the song could be.

Other times mistaken eardrums send me down into the gutter,

Awash in thoughts that I regret, or relish, but can't shutter,

But usually when my mind over ears trip and fall,

The image I land in makes no sense at all.