Reknew It

A losing war I'm fighting
Against weakness within.
My mind seeks you in kindness
and returns to you in sin,
and if I had not known that
Every thought to you adheres
Then I certainly reknew it
Ever time I saw you here.

A Toast to the People

Here's to professors, who nitpick and praise.

Here's to good friends, who give spirits a raise.

Here's to the people I ate and I drank with.

Here's to the people I rose and I sank with.

I hate to say it, but here's to the unrequiting,

Which I can hide until it enlivens my writing.

So here's to my favorites, and here's to my jerks.

Thanks for the help–here's wishing it worked.

I Knew It!

I always knew who the worst teacher in the world is.

I always knew that I could do better.

The worst teacher in the world is a million-way tie

Between all the teachers who hate one or more of their students.

I ain't great,

But I ain't the worst teacher in the world.

A Toast to Ten Years of Unnecessary Learning That Maybe Made Me Who I Am

I am a know-it-all with a lot to learn.

I was a know-it-all with a lot to learn

Ten years ago.

Then I learned how the other half lives.

I learned how the forty-seven percent lives.

I learned exactly how forgetting works.

I learned that you can make ten years

Out of slim hopes and lying and hiding,

and now I'm going to learn if that's like

Writing, or if it's like riding a bicycle,

Because I don't plan on practicing,

Not for a long time, anyway.

Cheerfully Paying the Piper

The words “everything has a price”

Are so often so morose,

Spoken by those who assume

That declines must come with regrets,

But not I,

Who have only minded the price

When I payed time for money,

So I walk around with my head in a fog, chuckling.

My knees grind with a smile.

Mockery falls on half-deaf ears.

The piper can have whatever he wants,

Except the rights to the stories.

Lying to You, Pt. 4

The world will never speak.

The world is honest.

In a vacuum, it would be science,

Or at least the raw numbers,

A giant ball of molten results,

Too hot for fingerprints,

Unshaped by statistics,

But life will lie to you

Even if you're careful.

It's full of people,

Who are prone to lying

Or scared into hiding,

Or susceptible to the placebo effect,

Or living out their lives as statistics.

The Television

The television tells all of us lies,
Repeats just a few important ones.
By the time we are half-grown,
At least enough to reach the power button,
We already know those lies as mantras.
I have been all my life lying to myself,
Saying that my life has a destination.

Life tells all of us truths,
Repeats just a few important ones.
By the time we are full-grown,
We're almost ready to admit knowing them.
(We'll never be ready to admit knowing them.)
I am a hard man to lie to,
Which is why sometimes, I just look for the end.

Lying to You, Pt. 3

You said I was brilliant, and even a find.

You were not slow in praising my rational mind,

But were equally quick in insisting I should

Subscribe to the worst lies in all Hollywood,

A narrative unchanged in two hundred years

In which I am loyal without wait or fear.

Instead of an interest that builds up to trust

You were insistent that your boyfriend must

Live at once for one woman, and no other “her,”

Who is not even you, but who you wish you were.

You say that few things are as sexy as truth,

But you only reward me for lying to you.

Lying to You, Pt. 2

What the voters see on the shelves, it looks great,

and in this store, like others, you don't have to pay.

The government's Mastercard's bigger than yours,

But paying it off? That's what voters deplore.

Asking them to make payments gets us voted out.

Even thinking to mention it leads them to shout.

The late King of Camelot didn't see things this way.

He was honest about it, and noted to say

That you must serve your country before it serves you.

The public was listening. What did they do?

The cheered and paraded–and killed the man dead.

It's not even certain whose shot pierced his head.

We're the butt of your jokes when we don't tell the truth,

But the way to get in is by lying to you.

Lying to You, Pt. 1

Your chocolate went missing, the brown on my face

Good for one week of grounding, one minute's disgrace.

Your pudding went missing and never was found.

You assumed it was me; one more week on the ground.

I've made selfish choices and clumsy mistakes,

and you've said I should tell you before it's too late,

But whether it's accidents, candy or toys,

It all costs the same: quiet after loud noise.

I never did homework, and sometimes you asked,

But there's no heading it off when it brings the same wrath

As when you find out at the end of the term,

Right down to asking why I never learn.

You make a good show of demanding the truth.

You taught me I'm better off lying to you.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 7: Odes to Spring

I wonder why my schoolfellows write odes to spring,
The season of leaving,
This one-way entrance door to four months of not seeing,
The time to leave behind thinking,
The time to be intellectually stagnant,
When I put the pursuit of happiness
On hold for the pursuit of cash,

But then I watch a baseball game
Wrapped in the evening sun's embrace
and the breeze's cool caress,
and I wonder why I haven't.

Had a Good Day in Vegas

I spend time like I won it off the gray Father.

Had a good day in Vegas.

I purchase petty news and a few useless facts,

and the whole-worldly pleasures

On my carousel of carousal, my unmetered merrymaking,

My frantic orgy of idleness.

I treasure my transient profligacy. Perhaps

Everyone needs some nothing.

Perhaps everyone needs to be nobody.

Being someone is tiring.

I have known a rudderless landlessness.

It's an intimate relationship.

Too Late

The dearly departed are too late to forgive,

But perhaps the living have done wrong in their mourning.

Mother's comfort in youth seems a warning:

If the dead look down on us from above,

They'd see a whole life's worth of lives, full of

Broken hearts hemorrhaging archived love.

If my friends kept their eyes

After they lost their lives,

Then I should apologize.

The Gift of Life

The gift of life has ten thousand million faces.

The gift of life is given in all sorts of different places–

In the handrail we grab before we fall,

To both young and old in the hospital,

At the intersections in the midst of the street,

At the end of the budget where there's just enough to eat,

In storms that veer away from the peak that you climbed.

The gift of life's given more than one time.

Birth is just the start of it.

Birth is just the least of it.

Those Evenings

Double doors opened by God I walked in.

It had mostly been windows before.

It was someplace to eat. It was someplace to be

'Til I didn't come 'round anymore.

I don't go in for singing and dancing,

Reaching fingers-and-tongues for the stars,

But something here kept me from leaving.

Something made it the Spirit's, and ours.

Now, I leave every one of those evenings

Steps hitching to songs in my head.

It might not look like dancing to you,

But it's closer than men like me get.

There's hardly a goodbye in leaving

As long as you're soon coming back,

But knowing I'll leave for the last time

Leaves threads in my life unheld, slack,

So the song in my head might be playing

On my last walk out God's double doors,

But though you might still hear me singing,

My footsteps won't dance anymore.

Anything Else

I always rush, because I shirk.

I cannot look for work and work.

I think money is a sham,

Yet I keep wary for a scam.

I think I can only be who I am,

Because anything else makes my brain hurt.

Three Degrees of Separation

The two seats, the three degrees of separation,

The four floor tiles between us

Are a quicksilver ocean, thick and alluring

and stupefying.

I spend hours imagining that it isn't there

From the comfort of desire.

I've had this side to myself for so long

That if you cross the gulf

I won't know whether to treat it as an invasion

Or an open house.