The Visceral Joy of Making MADD's Job a Little Bit Harder

I'm blasting the lyrics and bumping the bass,

Letting cool air and speed sweep my tingling face,

Head and limbs out the window, derelict at the wheel

Of my sweeping-turn, rolling-stop blotto-mobile.

Static Electric Character

I've heard people suppose that I found religion,

That I burnt up my sins in the fires of conversion,

But I found God in a moment of teenage desperation;

I just sometimes lose his number.

A friend of mine assumes that I just found a mission,

But I've always been driven by a thing I keep my head in.

In fact, the one I have now is even the same one.

I just got a little better at it.

You might think that I got older and smarter,

Or that I found something more to live for,

Or even that I had one, and now I'm trying harder,

and not a word of all of those is right.

I just got a sense of humor about my bad judgment.

Your Memory's Alive

When I'm out on my rounds, I know your memory's alive.

It's not that I aim to go past it when I drive,

But I've been by where I last saw you a couple times,

and that's not even the way I think about the restaurant

That my memories of you seem insistent to haunt.

I suppose that's what my mind needs; I guess it's what I want.

Exhuming Societies' Bones

I know that four-eyed nerd-dom's not like Indiana Jones,

But there's still something thrilling about exhuming societies' bones,

Bringing new honor to their temples and new footsteps to their roads

and bringing life to ancient livers' humbler abodes.

Still, I wonder if it's right, disturbing ancient tombs,

Just to find out how the ancients decorated rooms.

Everybody's Doing It: Second Thoughts in the Art of Saying “No”

They keep telling me that everybody's doing it,

and I ought to go along.

They say I don't want to be the last one to get it,

Something I never did want.

I see it happening everywhere around me.

Though I'm not the following kind,

I still sometimes get the sneaking misgiving

That I'm being left behind.

Two Trains Leave the Station

If I leave Crazytown at eighty miles an hour

Head for Hollywood,

Stop for a drink in Distraction Junction,

Get dinner in Doubtsville,

and rent a room in Regrets River,

How long until I collide with my conscience?

And where do I look if I can't find the answer?

Stay Behind

I don't want to leave behind the classroom,

Or being in the dumber half of the room,

Nor hundred-poem months on the regular

Or being able to start writing a novel in November,

and of course I'll miss the people. I will be a mess,

But I will leave nevertheless,

Though some of those things may not stay behind.

Cockroach Little

The sky is falling in pieces

Big as houses,

Hard as bruises.

That happens sometimes.

When the sky falls, everyplace light

Is a busy highway,

Is a shooting range,

Is a slaughterhouse.

When the sky falls, I hide in the dark.

Risk/Risk

There's no easy and hard; there's no black and white.

There are risks, and then other risks. That's the beauty of life.

There's risk taken for granted, when we risk things forsook.

Then life asks us to risk things we can't overlook.

There are risks that we take 'cause we crave the reward.

There are risks that we take 'cause we're a little bit bored.

Those are the risks that make your blood awaken,

and then there are risks that just cannot be taken.

Fluid

Relationships are fluid.

We all know about the blood,

The tears and sweat and spit,

and perhaps a few other things,

But relationships can be watery,

Taking the shape of whatever

First holds them together,

Until something pokes a hole in it,

and then they're gone.

Sometimes, though, relationships are non-Newtonian–

Just plain bizarre.

December Is the Fastest Month

December is the fastest month,

Though one of the longest.

Its days press, one against the other,

Perhaps to conserve their heat,

and they run by in a pack,

Perhaps to get out of the cold,

Though they are warmed by tradition

and food and family feasting.

Perhaps December is so fast,

Simply because it's easiest to miss.

...Said Montana to Anyone Who Would Listen

I have been my peoples' mother and their romance and their whore,

and now I am their battle ground as their words wage civil war

Between the first of my two children, the work and industry

Who have sweated, who have taken, and above all, needed me,

and the second of my children. They admire and they love

Me, but not my other child, whom they think they're above,

Because they live in leisure and engage me in their sport,

and in fairness, the older has done nothing to the younger's favor court,

But there's a new kid in the family at whom both his elders shout.

The Californians want to change me. Old and New West say “get out.”

...Thought the Student of the Teacher

What a sorry little man they sent to supervise my class.

His mouth is twice as windy 'cause the fat blocks up his ass.

He thinks his jokes are funny, but they never seem to land.

He went to college, and found learning, but no way to understand

That he's just because he knows things doesn't mean that he's unique,

That knowing things we don't care about won't bring him what he seeks,

and that have of what he thinks he knows seems faulty anyway.

I'd flirt with him to see him squirm, but I think he might be gay.

A House Is Made Home

Every part of a house is made home by some sport.

At homes, driveways become basketball courts.

Starting from one end, the yard is a diamond.

If you start from the other, it becomes a gridiron.

The garage door's second fold can crossbar a hockey cage.

The den, when folks are gone, is a dodgeball...shooting range?

The porch-rails are the faces on which little climbers climb,

The living room and couches are terrain where cats hunts mice.

Any room that's got a wall in it becomes a handball court.

They say home is where the heart is; I say home's where we keep score.

A White Christmas/Unwinter's Day/BZN to FLA

Leaving again like we always do,

Two more airports to drag luggage through.

It might be tiresome, but to stay would be wrong.

It's easier just to go along.

Twelve more hours to go see the sun and my mom.

Almost a year is just over too long,

Though after two weeks, it may feel barely enough.

Still, family's tame-ish–it's the packing that's rough.

It's not that I don't love my grandfolks at all.

I'd just rather see them in summer, is all.

White Christmas wastes the winter when it comes at the beach,

At the price of skin sun-seared and eyeballs sun-bleaced.

I was stoked just for packing. Last night, I didn't sleep.

To my backside with all of the snow and the sleet,

Which, for feasting and family, I know leave behind.

To the whole Christmas Spirit my brother seems blind.

Punchbowls

“My people” come as ghosts, as memories, and friends;

The punchbowls at reunions taste of vague acquaintences

Faces and names that don't match up, like socks in a drawer.

That I can't even remember why I remember anymore,

So I treasure the first three groups, try to entertain the rest,

and let Facebook assume that we're all BFFs.

Pitcher-Plant Fantasy

There was a time when you were real to me,

A time before this pitcher-plant fantasy

That I can't seem to climb my way out of,

As I have out of our discontinuous partnership.

Alone, you were merely fantastic.

Together, we were fiercely cooperative,

Building that fantasy, my favorite story to tell.

Forgetting that isn't going so well.