Sunday, January 22, 2017

Why I Write, Part x+267: For No Good Reason(?)

Though it's unpleasant, and thought it is trite,
For near fifteen years I've continued to write
Of a beautiful life and its ugliest end
Which I've long understood, but refused to comprehend.
I might've covered every detail, but over this I've glossed:
The world gains nothing from the writing, and the life's already lost.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

My Personal World, Part 24: Relativity

Bass banging out a blistering back-beat,
Hoping against hope to hold the high point
Of the dying week,
The ticky-tack ticking-away of time
Siphons, slurps, slips, sags, slides, settles,
Into a slow leak.

Out of the Box and Into the Fire, or A Poet's Worst Emotional Argument for Universal Basic Income

“Just think outside the box,” they say
As 'hind clichés they hide.
A residence outside the box
I wish they would provide.
For though I've searched in foreign lands
Across the sea's dark sheen,
There's few things I have yet to find
Save refuge from routine,
and though I'm mostly stifled,
My moods and muse both wan,
To remain confined by management's
My one preserving plan.
For when I'm working, “different's”
a longer word for “worse.”
I'm quickly made complacent.
It's my temperament and curse,
and outside of a schedule
Upon my face I'd fall.
A refuge in quick failure
Is no refuge at all.

New Years Resolution

Oil and water, mixed poorly from birth,
At peace at the opposite ends of the earth:
The one's hopes map well to the other one's fears,
and though peaceably separate for miles and years,
The one misses the other in spite of the pain
Of deliberate friction with nothing to gain
and the other is creeping toward missing the one,
toward regret for his being an unpleasant son.
It occurs, in this Janus, to this lingering other:
This year's one to make peace between child and mother.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

The Old Man and the Seed

Gaze now, callow youth, upon the old man spurned,
His overtures honest, his calls unreturned.
Why should he long, unmet, for this one connection?
To change callow youth from his own sins' direction?
To guide one who holds the same interests as he?
To extend the world's recall of how it used to be?
Or perhaps it's not to teach. Does he aspire, then, to learn?
Gaze now, callow youth, upon the old man spurned.