4D Chess, No GPS

I fall through the minutes and hours of days

Which fly by as if I'm skydiving through haze,

And as the last seconds of youth hurry by,

Though no one knows how, I have figured out why.

There's nothing within them to which I'd hold on,

So I spend that time waiting, and wishing it gone.

I though I had dreams, plans, and things to wait for,

But that thought is so old, I don't know anymore.

I Spy

On the ground, I see less with the dimming of skies,

But there's much more to see if I just lift my eyes.

The space station is easy, and puts me on guard,

As the lights dim, to begin spotting stars.

Meteorites give me something to do

While the dim Milky Way slowly comes into view.

If I'm not Sirius about following Mars,

I could spend every night of my life counting stars.

As the sun rising ends my game of celestial I-spy

I recall that Venus is the brightest object in the new-moon sky.

To a 1979 Honda CG—After Parting

I miss your curves. Or rather, I miss ours,

The way we handled them together.

I feel the convection inside,

Feel jealousy's magma start to rise

When I see another man out for a ride

Leaning deep to one side. I miss sitting astride

Your steel and your gloss, and my own design.

What's Wrong?

My head aches when it might otherwise ache.

I feel ill when it's not a surprise.

Just when I think that the symptoms are known,

It adopts yet another disguise.

It might come anytime, any hour or day,

But always like a thief in the night;

Then it's one more day wasted avoiding the heat

and trying to shut out the light.

Break

I'm in a gleeful, giddy hurry.

There's too much innocent deviance

I still wish to accomplish,

and too few hours in an hour.

I feel my freedom looming like a gloomy, morning cloud.

It portends an end to the fun I intend—

The static electric pleasure of doing anything, many things

Well within the law, but just outside the rules.

Know Myself

To know thyself—that's a blessing or curse?

I know who I am, for both better and worse.

When my life circles back to a similar place

I find I repeat once-forgotten mistakes.

I've found character is immutable law

No matter how hard I try fixing a flaw.

Half the Width of a Hair (Between Death and Survivor's Guilt)

I have, in the decades that passed, failed to find

A way to accept or put out of my mind

Mistakes I made half of a lifetime ago

With those whom—if they'd lived—I would no longer know,

For I know that stood long between my fate and theirs

Was a wall made of down half the width of a hair.

I'm only alive because plans go awry,

Because Dave had the same sense of humor as I,

While they're not, because friends believed when they said “I'm okay,”

'Cause I knew I should call, but went on with my day,

Because they helped others instead of themselves,

Because years of professional help didn't help.

The only excuse that I can provide

To be damaged, distracted, and preoccupied

Is I've looked for so long and I've still yet to spy

The tiniest wisp of a good reason why.

Half a lifetime of searching, and still I don't see

Why it had to be them and had not to be me.

Trust But Verify?

It's not that I know folks' intentions

and choose to distrust them instead.

The tip of the tongue cannot tell you

What manner of state rules the head.

We're all writing poetry by flashlight,

But they won't have the lights when it's read—

and that goes for the upright and honest,

Merely misunderstood or misled.

What of those who would greet you like family,

and under their breath wish you dead?

They slither like snakes through the office,

But sleep unperturbed in their beds.

Why I Write, Part x+274: It Makes Everything Better

I'm not looking to get hitched, or even tie strings.

I've more passion for words than for almost all things.

There are so many things I don't want in my life

Save the minutes my mind's eye will live them, to write.

To love is just work. Dating's always a bore.

But romance of the mind lets my intellect soar:

No headfirst beginnings, nor heartbroken ends,

Just the sloppy wet kiss 'tween my pad and my pens.

We Can Drill Holes on Mars, but I Can't Even

The Hubble's great eye has got nothing on yours.

I stargaze, and daydream of giving you tours

Of binary stars, dancing eons as two;

Of black holes, with the power that draws me to you;

Of nebulae—new light, like you've given me;

Of every new world that the telescopes see;

Of taking a moonwalk to see the Earth rise,

Just us two hitchhiking on old Saturn V.

You're my sun—bringing light to my everyday tasks.

I would like to get close, but I can't even ask.

Aged to be Wild

Thought the matter departed, the mind's not erased.

I still ache to feel one ride's wind in my face.

I would bleed to lean into another turn banked.

I would burn to light fires, to blow through a whole tank.

Injury is no object. I'd endure any pain

To ride through at speed in between two clogged lanes.

For my footpegs I'm longing; for my handgrips I pine.

For them, I'd do all but wait any more time.

Intrusive Thoughts, Part 2: How to Bomb a Job Interview

My mirror adds ten pounds, but not ten years ahead.

In fact, at age ten, I thought now I'd be dead.

I'm not just too impatient to make five year plans;

(Do it)

I have found them torn up in reality's hands.

I'm not famous for striking out baseball stars.

I am not—and I won't be—the first man on Mars.

(C'mon.)

I'm no diplomat

(Do it.)

I don't spend my days authoring bestselling tomes,

Nor in teaching the youth to write things of their own.

(Do. It.)

I had each of these dreams, of these plans, hopes, and fears,

(What would happen?)

and each of them went bust in under five years.

(Everyone would notice you.)

So why speculate? I just started anew.

There's really no telling what else I could do.

(Everyone would know.)

Sure, there are a few things I might like to do,

But they're hardly worth thought, let alone telling you.

(You're just chicken.)

If there's one thing life's taught me, it's that time's current flows

Fast enough that a paddle won't change where you go.

As for me, I've always preferred wait-and-see.

(Bet you won't...)

There's no 4-D map drawn to show where I'll be,

But wherever I am, and wherever I go,

(Do it.)

I'm sure I'll survive. It's the one thing I know.