Three Chords and a Lie

Intensity, time, distance, every couple of weeks.

We're like an equation that's missing a piece.

There's nothing new you know to show me,

and perhaps you have noticed that too,

But what's been done is fun; you arrange it differently.

Together, I feel alive as ever, since my knees felt young,

and then, on schedule, to the ends of the earth we're flung.

Apart, I find syncopation; I'm mostly sure what to do.

It's not that I'm smitten, and I'm not quite addicted.

I'm just a little bit more bored without you.

To a 1980 Honda CB

Venturing outside the fence,

Moving too fast for good sense

Over the river and through the wood,

Revving it up good,

The power beneath me,

The wind in my hair,

It's like an affair:

Making excuses to be with you,

Knowing I ought not to kiss you,

Feeling more alive with you around

As long as my feet stay off the ground.

To an Ingenue, Who Deserves Better

Plenty of folks can make hearts skip a beat,

But you make a man's skip three.

You're a once-in-a-lifetime person to meet,

and a dime a dozen, that's me.

I never felt that we got close enough,

But I'm close enough to see,

To admire in you all of the good stuff

That doesn't exist in me.

Yet I know that naught comes of admiring

When it only goes the one way.

They say there's a first time for everything,

But I don't think they said it's today.

So all that's left is making myself see;

To accept these facts, deep in my mind:

That I was born nearly a decade too early,

and you were born ten times too kind.

To an Ingenue, Talking in Class

You are too young (which you're tired of hearing)

To be sick of the ride, though you've yet to try steering.

In every thought of you, I hope you really mean

That you're sick of this place, or you're sick of routine,

Or you're sick of being shuttled from the desk to the shelf,

Or even sick of time spent with the poet himself.

You won't always be locked in an ivory tower,

and our time together has ticked down to mere hours.

You're chained one more year to the life of the letter,

and I find myself hoping you find something better.

Why I Write, Part x+272: Drive It Home

I've lost some pop; I've popped, gone flat,

Replaced Bitter Bierce with soft and fat.

Now I'm the gray A-baller, just playing out the string,

An old one-trick pony still doing the same thing,

Driving a pen that sputters and coughs

Its way back to the well. I go back to the trough.

I scarcely recall having faith that I'm right.

I still wear the sword, but I skive off the fight.

I used to write because I blazed with belief.

Now I write just to turn an old leaf.

Total Loss

It's just a matter of time, but it matters.

So many miles you wouldn't know my wear pattern

Have passed under my radar and under my tread.

I aspired to leap; oft, I boiled instead.

All the cells in the boy who let you die are dead.

That idealist made by self-interest myopic

Has been wholly replaced by this consummate cynic,

So that, were I given a post-college try,

I suspect that you'd prob'ly still die.

All hail the new guy, same as the old guy.

Why I Write, Part x+271: Unicorn Blood

Of you is the gossip within my swelled heart,

So allow me to do Shakespeare's kindness, in part.

In fact, my heart won't shut up about you.

I will help you live on, just as Eos might do.

The knowledge you're near thrills my skin like a feather,

So I'd like to grant you cursed half-life, forever.

You might be immortal, but how will you know it

When committed to text by an unread blog-poet?

Why I Write, Part x+270: Why I Might Not Write Much Anymore

I failed to be the man I'd become

When you needed me, and now all is done.

I came equipped with intent, but no plan,

and I am the white-armored bannerman

Of storytelling tradition that makes women props.

Who you actually were, I have almost forgot,

Though I recall vividly how you once made me feel,

Like I need to think of myself to make you real.

Was I really your friend, or did I get confused–

the millennial Hamlet–use your ghost as my muse?

I still hope I regret my part and your ending,

But that I write of you, I'm no longer pretending,

and now that at last I have ended this lie,

We'll see how many ways I can let a thing die.

A Bad Poem for Good Times

I finally figured out which want

Is secondary need.

If contentment is elusive,

Then I've got closing speed.

It's efficient transportation

and the best part of my day.

It's called a motorcycle,

and it's my two-wheeled bae.

Lovers on the Moon

The distance 'tween you and the world couldn't be more stark.

You are color and heat; all else is cold and dark.

Being alone in the vacuuum? It was debilitating.

The world and our embrace, though? Both are suffocating.

My lungs gasp hollow without you, and viscous with you around.

My senses all know nothing but your closeness and the ground.

I traded all the world for you; lost gravity in the barter.

Untethered to all but you, there's naught to do but cling harder.

In Love With Being In Lust

Neither now nor ever to be Mr Right,

Nor now even Mr. The-Other-Night,

My dull eyes no more lead my soul into hurt

and I've no heart to wear on the sleeve of my shirt.

No one to wait for and no one to follow

With words that ring false and gestures most hollow.

I am here neither to have nor to haunt,

Though I may miss the wanting for the sake of the want.

The Trade

The day before I heard the news

My motor ran on joy,

Unquestioning that life was just,

For I was just a boy.

The very day I heard the news,

That motor barely coughed,

But on the night I heard the news

My innocence I doffed.

I could not clothe the boy I was

In innocence so stained.

As I became a man, I swapped

That innocence for pain.

My tank's sometimes half-full of joy

Beneath that coat of pain.

My verses are as oft they were,

Before this new refrain.

Jesus Fish vs. Darwin Fish: The Movie Poster

How came to be this tie-dyed, many-colored Earth,

Colored in flourishes by mitosis and birth?

Darwin may have used death as his instrument,

Which the strong, for a moment, evade.

Perhaps life was wonderfully, fearfully made.

Whether accident,

Or heaven-sent,

It's a miracle either way.

The Gentle Waking

Dawn usually breaks, but sometimes it heals,

A sunrise I taste even more than I feel.

The new light softly through yonder window breaks

and something inside me that feels years younger wakes.

The first morning in ages that's not just evening's end,

But beginnings of what gentle dawn can portend.

It doesn't even feel like the calm before the storm...

It just feels warm.

Between 'Know' and 'Notice' and 'No'

Little Miss Vlad the Retailer,

Rejected by the fool of fools

Who dated Belle the Impaler?

I suppose over time, a poet learns

This passing disregard for design,

Mental ointment for psychic burns.

Sometimes, the cover hides the words

From those who might check you out,

Or the circling carrion-birds.

I've never seen you, only spotted.

It's not a real rejection if

I just don't know enough to be besotted.

Try, Try Again

You must make a second effort
If only one should fail.
If three efforts end without success,
Then blaze another trail.

Frozen in Time

Take care as time continues

With all the folks you've met.

If relationships don't grow,

The beginning's all you'll get.

If their budding maturation

should, for some reason, stop,

They'll freeze into position,

As ice might in a mop.

I'll say how my folks treat me,

and you'll see what I mean:

They always will be forty

and I'll always be fourteen.