Why I Write, Part x+129: Hopping Clouds

I've been hopping clouds lately. I've hit eight or nine.

I feel like an eleven – you know, better than fine,

Despite living in a family of cannibal/sacrificial goats,

Which is to say we think it's nothing to cut each others' throats,

Which is to say my happiness may not require peace,

Nor must it require a romantic contact or release.

Am I rich? Then do I need money? I doubt it.

My old music helps, but in the past I've done without it.

It seems all I need are ideas and a pen

To feel damn near a twelve, with his sights on cloud ten.

Why I Write, Part x+128: Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

A crime with no victim's no crime 'til you get caught.

Every so called “modern” culture lives in one big hive; they shouldn't ought.

I believe in Gods but no Messiahs. They're a product of the hives.

Cultures seek salvation when agriculture claims their lives.

There's not a single social ladder that I'm tempted now to climb.

When I pay myself first, I don't want money but time.

Why do I write? My beliefs leave others with questions,

I like to answer, and necessity is the mother of invention.

Why I Write, Part x+127: Either a Gift or a Social Disease

Poems fall on my head like apples from trees.

It's either a gift or a social disease.

We share our whole world with ideas unrequited,

Waiting for someone to come by and write it,

Be it something in life that is not what it seems,

Or the longstanding union 'tween science and dreams,

Or my twenty-year love affair with alternative music.

It was just laying there. I decided to use it.

I won't always be right, but not 'cause I'm lying.

I might not be great, but it's not for lack of trying.

Ideas are crippled shut-ins. To give them words will give them flight.

It might not be for everyone. To me, it feels just write.

My Personal World, Part 11: Never Be the Same

It's that first song your parents can't stand to hear

That nobody can keep from catching your ear,

That first moment that leaves you separate from them.

Let me tell you: you'll never go back again.

It's playing when you first realize that for every beat

Someone else's world ends in tragedy,

And when you say “I remember when that came out, twenty years ago.”

In those moments, even before you find out, you know,

That though to put it to words sounds incredibly lame

Your own personal world will never be the same.

What Fate's Assigned

My brain's constantly running. It strengthens my mind

To haul my life higher than what fate's assigned –

A life lived as though only seen from the fence,

Lived only in tangents to circles of sense,

A life where my words go unanswered with actions,

A life where mistakes bear away satisfaction,

Interspersing my boredom with wrath and confusion

As the villain in some stranger's fifth-rate delusion.

Why I Write, Part x+126: Sort of Humor

As a poet, I take to dull things, find them droll

and from this sort of humor, I come by my role:

To rhyme metered wordplay that's four layers deep

and put any readers I still have to sleep.

Youthful Indiscretions

When I look back (to pick a direction,)

My gaze is plastered by youthful indiscretions

and my instant, expected embarrassment,

But never it's mate, the expected regret,

For youth that fails to make mistakes

Will do so at a later date,

So now, this past I oft wish I'd forsaken

Twists me out of screw-ups that others are making.

Why I Write, Part x+125: I've Heard Enough

I have always believed that the earth leaves me messages,

But I've lately assumed that the massage is over

As soon as I've heard enough to write a poem.

Perhaps this is a bit simplistic.

My translation of these messages is kindly “inconsistent.”

To translate, I'm a poet who hasn't found his niche yet,

and I'm vomiting “blah blah blah”

Over the entire genre.

Stargazer

I'm looking up, and I know that you see

The same stars in the same sky at the same time as me,

and both at home, though not together,

Under same clear skies and same cool weather.

The air's deep breaths inspire, and now I realize

That under the broad gaze of infinite skies

The two of us, though two, are not so far apart,

At least in distance. That's fair enough to start,

Since long before I knew you, these same skies I'd always seen.

I hope you'll let me tell you when I find out what they mean.

The First Consequence

The first thing I did was expect to be hungry.

Isn't that the first consequence of being emptied?

It isn't. It's the desire to revenge myself,

and the preference for doing so upon someone else,

To live as you do. To be random and cruel.

The breakup's a Devil's Christmas, a rift-giving yule.

Why I Write, Part x+124: Well-Packaged Inspiration

A book can be well-packaged inspiration.

I thought I had one I could count on,

An author's next work, now checked in and gone.

So for a time, I placed writerly aspiration on the shelf,

'Til it was moved by unlikely inspiration – myself.

Locked Doors

Three times in my life I have just opened locked doors,

Seven if you're willing to forgive my speaking in metaphor.

The mind alone may be responsible for success or its ungluing.

The impossible is easy, when you don't know what you're doing.

Necessity

Just when I think there's not any way out,

I find the solution so long dreamed about.

Necessity is the mother of invention,

and inspiration's her kind intervention.

Just when I think there's not any way out,

Some unkind development puts ends to kind doubts.

Necessity has a an ugly sister, desperation

Whose hangover takes the form of depression.

No Getting Out

There's no building around and there's no getting out

When my object of hate's what I can't live without.

I'd just hurt my cause and claim death as reward,

Simply leaving this culture that I've long abhorred,

These regional coverings on pan-national hives,

To which we're enslaved in convenience's guise.

Nor are these symptoms lightened by a talking cure.

Who'd listen to thoughts so insane and impure?

No, my only choice is subversive – to write,

To spin allegory in pulp fiction's guise,

To repurpose these stories, to explicate life,

To use the distractions against their own hives.

Summer

I try living life to learn and enjoy it;

What goes toward these ends is worthwhile employment.

The unconscious unremembered is not good for either;

Thus goes any sleep that's not troubled by fever.

So when I say of something “I'd rather sleep through it,”

That don't mean I think anything of that thing, do it?

Arthritis Is Forever

Scars go away, but arthritis is forever,
So one Britney won't keep me from Heather.
Though sanity could keep me away --
One cannot look smart and properly play
For any of the most interesting sins.
You must seem disinterested to win,
Though such and act seems rather thin,
When any sane man would be interested in
Such acts, and such people.  Even a jerk
Would say you're worth the end and work,
We both put in 'fore we both get too lazy,
Drive ourselves apart and each other crazy.
The months of laughter, those good times
Are worth one flesh wound from behind.

Poets in Space

Cultures move and cultures change;
Our fields of study shrinks in range.
They don't take poets into space,
Or really much of anyplace.
They leave us to our literary devices,
And let us write (or not -- that's nicest).