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.

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.

Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 3: Tiny Tim Would Dig It

Kind sir, have you chance for a stanza?

I'm only a couplet away

From a poem to upgrade my website,

and I'd sure like to get it today.

You see, it's been months since my last one,

and my mind's furnace has been left cold.

A career and a mind-bending hobby

Burns more than my skull-shed can hold,

But the fact is I felt much more healthy

When I wrote something every few hours...

Kaepernick Limerick

There once was a baller called Kap

Who sat down with his hands in his lap

While his teammates did stand,

To the ire of fans.

That's his job, which I'd say is a snap.

Life is Loss

Life's no prison, but a holding pen.

So many enter, and pass out again,

and so we struggle to make friends.

On people one cannot truly depend.

I had hoped you'd stay until the end.

Heaven—and life's nature—forfend!

But not everyone holds the pedal down,

Blowing, over the limit, through town,

and so I had hope that I had found

Someone not so elsewhere-bound.

One day, I looked up and you weren't around.

In expecting that you'd wait,

There's a truth that I didn't anticipate,

Learning it only once it was too late:

Some don't just leave; they accelerate.

Decades, it took, to remove the gloss,

To learn that at life's core is loss;

All the world's a ride, and that's the cost.

The New Creepiest Poem I Ever Wrote (ft. Uncle Sam and MC Friendzone)

I'm the destructively memorable song,

The cavalier uninvited. I just follow along.

I'm the thought you can't shake and you really can't share,

Chilling behind the back of your mind and sticking to your hair.
I'm that stomach-sinking sensation you get
When you notice forgetting not to to forget.
I'm that funny feeling that you're being followed home
And that existential certainty that you can't let someone know,
The split-second impression of "just to be nice"
And the hours of dread that implied "there's a price."
Just think of me as your respiration tax.

It's my job to ensure that you never relax.

Why I Write, Part x+266: Internal Rationalization of the Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant (ft. My Internal Critic)

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find

That if I'm writing with an audience in mind

I do it not to move, but rather to impress,

Because impressive or amusing is what I like best.

It's rare words (or anything else) make me feel.

As a reader, the thought of it doesn't appeal

As would meeting (or being) the Pathosless Bard.

Also, to move people's pretty damn hard.

Why I Write, Part x+265: Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find

That if I'm writing with an audience in mind

I do it not to move, but rather to impress,

And that I'm rarely if ever at my personal best.

800 Days of Summer

In the last five years of “play ball!”

My Pirates have learned to stand tall.

Though I should be thankful, I'm appalled

To note, as the last of them turns to fall,

That they've yet to win anything Major at all.

Big

I sometimes pay a climbing price

To see a man enrobed in white,

With a clipboard only half-listen

To my half of our scripted missive

In which we dispute stories that others may tell

To explain why I've entered what he thinks is hell.

It is not to be blamed on the size of my bones,

Nor on an imbalance among my hormones,

Changes in my metabolism out of my hands

Or a disorder of one of my much-maligned glands,

But when I still grew in my own native land,

Someone told me to “be the bigger man.”

Damn right. I did it.

Mission accomplished.

Horseshoes and Handgrenades

I want to play.

Let's play a game

Of horseshoes

and handgrenades.

Together, we'll be

Almost perfect.

We can get close,

Close together

and then you can

blow my life up.

Nineteen Eighty-Four Fifty One, Pt. 2

Do despair because Clinton climbs!

Do secede because Trump triumphs,

Because the new meaning of democracy

Is a choice between political suicide

Or political families,

Because we threw off a monarchy

To catch monarchy in disguise

Behind a flimsy mask of lies!

That was the risk of democracy

With roots in the original Greek:

That we, too, might elect a tyrant.

This, too, shall (come to) pass.

Lies My Devices Told Me, Pt. 3 (Or Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 2)

Check off that box,

and then go see a show!

Life's in schedules and lists,

What you make, where you go,

What you spend when you get there,

All the to-dos we all do,

Not subvocalized reasons

We have to push through.

It's the tangible clutter

That I purchase with time

That I could spend relaxing

My thoughts into rhyme.

A Love Anthem for the Vision-Seeker

Roses are blue.

Violets are red.

Help yourself to some mushrooms.

They're out in the shed.

A Love Anthem for the Survivalist

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

If the world ends tomorrow,

I hope I'm with you,

(Violets are blue.

Roses are red.

But if you're a zombie,

I'll aim for your head.)