My Rooms/Our Rooms/The Rooms

Last month, I found out how long I can be

In places there's not really room for me,

Places full of foreign memories

That aren't mine and don't make sense to me.

Last week, I found out what a jerk I am

If things go differently when I actually plan:

Intended kindness seems for the birds

Once all disappointment breeds bitter words.

This week, I moved into my own place,

My brand new home-sweet-empty-space.

Next week, I plan to remove all doubt

That I'm most at home when alone and spread out.

Not All His Playthings Are Idle

Very late last evening, at eleven fifty-six,

I felt the devil's touch–those frigid, forceful fingertips

All over my ride side, so many, all at once.

If it had gone on any longer I'd have gotten up and run.

Instead, I suffered, wishing I could sue a tactile hallucination

For paying me that kind of unwanted attention.

A One-Notebook Library

If identity is revealed by action,

Then it seems to be a fluid thing

Which ebbs in the face of infatuation.

I could say the same thing of location

Washed away by a steady flow of information.

Thanks to the 'net, I can be anywhere, learning.

Why I Write, Part x+256: My Reflective Reflex

I have been described as some sort of creative force,

and by some, even as something to admire,

But the very best crown I can lay on my own head

Is to say that it's possible I'm worth being kept.

The poet is not a fountain, but a hand-mirror,

Reflecting the little pores and corners of God's glory,

Too small, too blind, and unworthy to see the whole.

What a healthy, holy irony, to be remembered

For this impermanent record in remembrance of others.

“The Lost World” to “Typee”

The social climate leaves me too hot to say anything

That I consider to be the least bit funny or interesting,

But I settle when I find that it does not keep me from learning.

In the study of the way that unrequited restlessness

Turns into sickly-sweet, unsalted indolence,

It happens that conversation just to taste on the tongue

Is rejected by the stomach as completely without substance.

I find the whole experience narcotic, but unfilling.

The Other Side of Learning My Lesson

I am no longer truly young.

I can only remember a louder confidence,

The child of ignorance and arrogance,

That assured my doings could be done

What have I forgotten in learning my lessons–

and what's not yet forgotten, but some day will be?

How will accident and failing further humble me?

I imagine that once I'm forty or fifty,

Nothing at all will ever seem easy.

The Part of a Barrel Nobody Talks About

Today, I skimmed the creamy top

Of my bag of teaching tricks

For something that starts as struggle

and usually ends as a favorite.

Today it went over like a lead balloon

On an episode of Mythbusters–

That is to say, it was a spectacle

and some people enjoyed it.

My Wrong Turn at Big Brother's Place

For the first time in three days, my host had cause to worry,

Though two days ago he jumped the gun,

and then he wasn't around to ignore this one.

For the first time in a week, I slipped my tether,

To stop being on a schedule, and just be wherever.

For the first time in this month, I went exploring,

Which, though not always planned, is never boring.

For the first time in three months, I got lost–
One of the few parts of a year that taste like freedom.

To an Ingenue, Who Neglected her Homework

I don't give assignments, but opportunities,

and this time, I even gave you two.

Because there was work you decided not to do,

You wish that I would do more work,

To follow the first opportunities with a third,

But that is not how it works in real life.

You might get more than one chance to be right,

But the first incomplete effort will be the last.

It's your own fault that you haven't passed.

Every Other Time Around, Pt. 3

To go back through my old writing is a sort of horror show,

To be appalled both at my style and at what I didn't know.

I went through noun and verb phases, an adverbial, an adjectival,

Each excoriated, roundly mocked, upon the next's arrival,

But nothing makes my skin crawl with embarrassment complete

As much as looking back at all the crap I used to read.

The Acknowledgments Section

There was a time when these facts were acknowledged in the laws:

That Canada is only north, and not really abroad,

That only powers enumerated with the government lay,

That some things are best settled the old-fashioned way.

There was a time when these facts were acknowledged by the masses:

That most people don't have thigh-gaps and apple-bottom asses,

That we work to help the ones we love, not for society or pay,

That “gay” was just “dandy,” and “lighthearted” was “gay.”

There was a time I wouldn't have put this gripe in writing,

But if I'm bound to live in interesting times, might as well make them exciting.

Meaning in the Immaterial

Teens see a car as freedom, parents worry, cats a threat.

Some might see cats as food, where I see only pretty pets.

It is only with our memories that houses become homes

(and they then turn into movies if you add the word Alone).

A gun is just a paperweight, 'til aimed (or not) and shot.

A thing does not have meaning, until given such by thoughts.

Meaning in the Material

The sight of home, to weary travelers,

Seems no less than heaven-sent,

But a house looks like a wooden rock

If you've only lived in tents.

What's a tree, if you are from Greenland

Where no such things are found?

A sitting stone will grow no moss

On drier desert grounds.

What do flight or beak or “nest egg” mean

To one who's seen no birds?

Without a thing to base it on,

There's nothing in a word.

World The Football

A wing cocked his foot back, intending to strike

A ball in the corner with all his leg's might

A little over ninety minutes into the match,

But there was only a corner flag for his foot to catch,

and at that point did a tie game turn into a sleeper –

Four four minutes a center back squatted down to play groundskeeper,

Wasting minutes of once-wasted time before the game could end.

It was almost as bizarre as my weekend.

An Incomplete List of Thing I Lost to “Rubber Time”

-A better trip with a better friend (which I probably would have liked)

-A pair of fingernail clippers (They're lost now. They used to be mine.)

-Three of my friends came to visit me, and I wasn't around to find.

-Four weeks of work on my blood pressure (which I think still continues to climb)

-My temper, on five separate occasions (The next might take with it my mind.)

-Six different chances I would have had to call my family

-Seven halfway decent poem ideas

-My “rubber time virginity”

-My entire weekend, basically

If Wishes...

I wish you would be more straightforward with me,

and stop leaving me in knots.

I wish you weren't always turning away,

Overlooking what I've got.

I wish you would take a year and reconsider,

Or maybe do it today.

I wish you go with me, go where I ask,

Or else just go away.

I wish you all the happiness in the world,

As long as it's with me.

I wish you could see what a nice guy I am,

When I'm not this angry.

To an Ingenue, on Every Day the World Doesn't End

You're the whole field of vision in my mind's eye, though I know

That I should be concerned with the broad, with the whole globe,

With the billion souls brittled by society's rot,

But I only see you twisting yourself in attempts to tie the knot,

Never considering that someone might be a branch to your leaves,

and if not, no rope's as beautiful as even half a tree.