Monday, December 31, 2012

0

No one is here
No one is far
No one can steer
(The door's ajar)
No one will come
No one will go
No one is from
(All's to and fro)
No one is by
No one has fled
No one will sigh
(Except for Ted)
It's all been done
All by no one.

Everything is an Ouroboros

The year will start
The year will end
We will not part
Will we, my friend?
No we will spend
Our hours well
And seek to blend
Them for a spell:
As one the bell
We'll answer straight
And in one cell
We'll contemplate
'Til no one finds
In us two minds.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Checkered

Checkers pieces on a checkers table
Made for nothing else, and left to sit
Among the others, all of which are able
With just a board (which, we must all admit
Usually comes with pieces) to replace
Its only purpose. What must it be like
To be that table fastened into place,
Listening to every open mic
And oh so rarely getting to express
Its only manufactured purpose? Then
Oh joy of heaven, tablekind to bless,
Two people sit, women, children, men
And play. How must it feel? Who knows?
The table simply thinks that's how it goes.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Wrong

Something is clearly wrong with me, you know.
I'm happy in a place frozen with cold,
Where nothing seems but everything is old,
And all of it is coated with grey snow,
Where crêches lit in profile cast a glow
Across a landscape delicately rolled
Like pastry dough, flattened without a fold
And underneath the snowdrifts cornfields grow.
How am I happy here, where farms are king,
The city is a college town upsized,
And not by much, and lacks variety?
You wouldn't think it was my sort of thing.
But there is something here that I have prized:
My love. With her I stay here happily.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Certain

I'm certain of a lot of things
But certain is as certain does;
Reason certainty oft brings
Of what one did or what one was
But sometimes faith can certain make
What reason wishes left behind
Or lies can of a sudden take
A false new form, and thus designed
Implant a certain notion in
A mind prepared to be deceived
So even certain things begin
To be examined ere believed
But high above such certainty
Is my belief that you love me.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

525600

Time is a nemesis I cannot quell
No matter how I try to push it out
It will remain - even when I can't tell
The details of its passage, I can't doubt
It lives and still moves on. Like Galileo
I must admit, no matter what the court
May say of it, it moves. I cannot K.O.
The hours that live inside a clock, abort
The minutes of a watch, or put aside
The seasons of a sundial. No, when
I break them, smother them, attempt to hide
The truth of what they say, time and again
Time merely slips away, and counts itself
Without the ticking from the clock's old shelf.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

12/25

It's almost strange...no, it is strange
To be a Jew in Christmastime.
The constant calls to rearrange
Your life, couched deep in verse and rhyme
Are wearying; I cannot bring
The Christchild or dear Santa Claus
Into my heart, though I will sing
Commercial songs wrapped in the gauze
Of movies or in ads, because
They're almost secular to me
Religion covered by the fuzz
Of pure commerciality
Or season's greetings. I get by
By staying me, and eating pie.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Humbuggery

Supersonic sleighs do seem
Slightly out of whack to me
As if in some fever dream
Huge impossibility
Was just swallowed, but once waked
All slipped off and was forgotten
Or when thought of, seen as faked
By the mind, and thus begotten
Only out of last night's cheese
Sitting oddly on the liver:
Must all presents under trees
Have a single, saintly giver
Or can we admit the thought
Of the presents parents bought?

Denialist

Is it bad of me to say
Santa may not quite be real
Nor his reindeer, nor his sleigh,
If I do admit I feel
Warmer watching children smile
Thinking of the presents coming
Ogling the Christmas pile
Cooing to themselves and humming
Christmas carols? Is it fair
To be a Grinch this way a little
If I still protest I care
For their hopes and dreams, so brittle?
Or does saying Santa's fake
Make too many small hearts break?

Saturday, December 22, 2012

140?

Counting syllables like sheep
Is a fairly solid way
I can get myself to sleep
At the end of every day
But sometimes my mind in counting
Grows too interested in how
Rhymes and meaning keep amounting
To much more than I allow.
So sometimes poems do not make
My nighttime easier, but flip
My mindswitch on, and therefore take
Away the time when I should slip
To sleep. That risk is always there
But still I count, because I dare.

Tock

I shall wait, and do it well
Although I do not think I am
That good at it (if I can tell -
It presses on me gram by gram
As if a weight were lowered slowly
But perhaps it's always so
Even for those patient holy
Saints who let the world just go).
I shall be here almost eternal
Rooted in a spot alone
Until the world has gone infernal
Or the icicles have grown
Or until you get me, rather,
Despite all this lengthy blather.

Friday, December 21, 2012

12 Hours

Even this was worth it. Even this.
Even the hours in the car, just waiting,
The so many events we had to miss
The fear of freezing, or of suffocating
In an airless but warm car, even the fear
Of waking up tomorrow in a ditch
I ran into today, the thought that here
Could be the last place I would ever switch
Lanes, before a semi slammed us down,
Even the tumbling exhausted in
A bed I barely felt, the clear white gown
Of deadly ice on which the wheels would spin
All of them were worth it, with her by
Besides, I doubted we would really die.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Avion

Patience is hard and I am very bored.
Why are we here? And why can't we get there?
It's not like my Chicago is abhorred
Or that I hate my home, or do not care
To sleep in my own bed. But really, I
Was ready to be elsewhere, eager to
Visit another city. Now I lie
Semirecumbent in an airport. Who
Would rather be here than be in Nebraska?
And if they would, they ought to realize
A storm more suited to, say, Nome, Alaska
Will keep us here if our plane does not rise.
I want to go, not so I leave my bed
But so my life continues on ahead.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Newsfeed

Facebook fails
To show whole pics
As it scales
It often sticks
A side or top
Away, and makes
A semicrop
That often takes
The point away
And only keeps
Something that's stray.
And as this creeps
Into our eyes
We like the lies.

1/1

If everything
Is yes and no
Then time will bring
No grays to know
Only the black
And white together
Giving no slack
Unto the tether
Simply being
One or other
Only seeing
Smoke or smother
I am neither
Nor both either.

Glass

The hours flow
So far away
And still I know
That yesterday
Is somewhere back
Behind my head
But still I lack
What is ahead
What will arrive
Tomorrow? Well
If I'm alive
That day I'll tell
But now, who knows?
The hour goes.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Changes

How can I tell you how it was
When you were there, but could not tell?
You did not know the constant buzz
Or how I'd turn and run pell-mell
To catch a bus to ride forever
Just to see you for an hour.
You did not take the late 4 ever
Or watch the midnight moon grow sour
Out by the curbside, lingering
Wishing to extend the time
Sitting alone and fingering
A phone, awaiting some new chime.
And yet you were, I can't forget
The other texter in that set.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Eww

The rain drops very slow
But constant in small drops
The wind is never low
And pushes all the slops
The city leaves behind
Into the walkers' faces
The gutters seem designed
To never wash the traces
Of mud and grime away
But rather hold them dear
The sun forgets the day
And all is gloom and drear
This day displeases me
Mostly aesthetically.

Friday, December 14, 2012

National News

Who the hell kills children? Seriously
Who does that? What twisted mind can think
Shooting a kindergarten class could be
Any response to anything? To sink
That low...it isn't on the chart. It's not.
You just don't do it. Nothing justifies
That sort of thing. A single child shot
Is evil, but the name of evil dies
Against this horror. It is too banal.
You just can't do it if you're human. Who
And how? A theater, a park, a mall,
They're all horrific, but a schoolroom too?
What are we if this thing is can happen? Why
Would anyone think five year olds should die?

On

Something correct can never be quite wrong,
But it can be a little off, you know?
The way that glowworms always have a glow
That's slightly eerie; or a night-bird's song
Still strikes you as a little sharp, or long,
Or somehow out of sync with what should go
With nighttime; or a day can be too slow
Despite the sun progressing past the throng
Of clouds as quickly as it ever did.
Something that's right is not always complete -
Sometimes there's something else that's deeply hid
Not quite fallacious, but too much discrete.
This isn't that. I'm clear and right and true
About how I feel happiest with you.

That

Some days are like that. "Like how" you may say
But that's your problem. I am very clear
Exactly what I mean, and yesterday
Was just that way. And now I somewhat fear
Today will be like that as well, and so
My week may pass along being like that
Until the end of time. How long ago
Did days start to be so? It is not pat,
Not cut and dried, but rather gradiated
Slowly progressing into thatness from
Whatever prior state, irradiated
By something thaty, and perhaps with some
Inherent thattitude. I cannot tell.
But either way, it thated me pell-mell.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

CTA

Really 6? You couldn't stop or stay
Already stopped? You had to move right on
Although I should have been seen on the way
My arms still waving at your form, now gone?
I ran you down, two blocks and more between,
Limbs flailing in my desperate wish to be
Home and secure. But no, I was not seen,
Or else the driver chose maliciously
And closed the door on me. Why would he so?
What would it cost him, stopped at the next light
To let me come before he chose to go
And bring an end to my despairing flight
Not at a bus stop, cold and bleakly bare
But in a bus with room and warmth to spare?

Off

It's never easy leaving. Then my mind
Shuts down upon itself and will not let
The thoughts of my departure come. I'm blind
To my own future, but I can't forget
Making the plans, preparing, readying
To go, and so although the mind may hide
Pretending what's to come's some other thing
The truth is in there, somewhere deep inside
Insisting on existence, such that I
Despite my wishes, feel the bitter cold
Of knowing I will go despite the lie
My mind attempts to tell itself. I fold
Up in myself and think of better days.
Usually that helps, but not always.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Look

I love to see you happy. Don't forget
I think the greatest joy this world contains
Is seeing you melt inwardly and set
Your eyes on me. That look for me explains
So much, and all of it exactly how
I'd like it to. I love to sit across
From you, and watch the changes you allow
To pass over your face like so much dross
Upon a sheet of gold, until you smile
And everything is golden, bright, and gay.
I love to count expressions, and to file
The ones that I the most adore away
Inside my mind, to watch for them again.
I'll just keep watching so I see them then.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Sway

I like the way you dance. It makes me glad
To see the way you move: how happily
You sway in time with music. And to see
The happiness that you have always had
Come out is wonderful. Even when sad
Your motion makes me think inevitably
Of warmer days and smiling times. For me
While you are dancing, nothing can be bad.
And so I watch you, and I grin, because
Your mood's contagious, and I am infected
By your bouncing joy. Whatever buzz
You're feeling is in me, and as expected
Your smile ignites my happiness, so I
Sway with you 'til we hear the music die.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Silly

There are some times I feel ridiculous
As if some cosmic joke were being played
Which looked on me (or sometimes looked on us)
As creatures living only to be made
The butt of all. I do not mind this fate:
To laugh is wonderful, and who am I
To tell the world that it must be irate
And let my follies pass unlaughed at by?
No, I should learn to laugh among the rest
And see my problems for the jokes they are;
To put each issue in the light that's best,
Make light of it, and see how it's bizarre.
In doing so I might well benefit
By seeming to have humor, poise, and wit.

Alterations

Some hours ago
So I hear tell
The heart was low
As if in hell
But now I see
Thank God on high
A jollity
Without a sigh
So what is this
That changes men?
A soulful kiss?
A love again?
Or something small:
Mere hope, that's all.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Oh Well

Well, I seem to recall
That there used to be rules
In the back of it all,
Back before all the fools
Made their way to this place
And destroyed all our sense;
But I guess to save face
We put them in past tense.
Now they do what they please
And they don't what they won't
So they all take their ease
And the rest of us don't.
So the rules can't have been
All that great to begin.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

On

What can I do except keep keeping on?
Why would I want to do some other thing?
The world will always turn from dusk to dawn,
And as a human, on the world I cling,
And so I must, as it does, grasp the ring,
Meeting the new day with a new approach,
Letting the sunset and the sunrise sing
Into my soul, and never dare to broach
The thought of doing otherwise. To poach
A phrase from elsewhere, I am what I am,
And so, as such, partly above reproach
And when reproached, I do not give a damn.
So I'll keep on, as I intend, and be
At least while all the world keeps up with me.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Hmph

Sometimes the schedule, as I live it, sucks.
What I desire's not what I can do
And all that I experience I rue.
Sometimes the world unlines all of my ducks,
Committing them unto their several lucks
In noncolinear space, with only two
(As two must be) in any line. I knew
That this was possible, but still, who fucks
With someone like that, Nature? And why me?
But more, why anyone? Why must mere chance
Motivated by Perversity,
That awful imp, and by his deep romance
With human suffering, make fools of planners?
It seems a breach of all (in)human manners.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Argle

Some days are long
And then feel longer
Ring like a gong
But then grow stronger
Keep waiting on
Or rushing 'round
From dusk to dawn
Or peak to sound
Or simply being
So so so slow
Or disagreeing
With what you know
So that your mind
Goes dumb and blind.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

To Go

I do not like to go away
I much prefer to be right here
To hold her tight and simply stay
Where I am happy, warm, and dear.
But sadly I must go, I fear,
Must do what I have promised to:
Be helpful, active, frank, and clear
In other places. It is true
I have commitments that run through
Whatever other wishes I
May have developed; and I do
Fulfill my promises. And why?
Because I do not wish to make
You fear my promises don't take.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Comfortable Joy

Comfort's underrated. Why should I
Not love to be as happy as I am
When it is constant and surrounds me? Why
Should I pretend I do not give a damn
About a happiness that's all around,
Enveloping and cushioning my life?
Why should I prefer the sudden rushing sound
Of joy brought in in danger, storm, and strife
Over the constant heartbeat of the same
Brought forth in warmth and stillness? Is it worse
Somehow to joy without much stress or shame?
Is that somehow no worthy source of verse?
I'll write my heart, and therein comfort lies;
Still joy, though without startle or surprise.

Windmill Country


Driving south through fields of blinking lights
The only break in the monotony
Of black, dead night, I cannot help but see
Their livid red as comfort. On such nights
A sign, however slim, of human hope
Of something someone somewhere meant to do
Is heartening. They blink when they want to,
Irregular, and as my blind eyes grope
For something to hold onto, each short burst
Of longed-for light is precious and unique;
The fields between without them are but bleak
And leave me dark, to contemplate the worst.
Daylight reveals prosaic shafts and blades
But magic fills the gaps where daylight fades.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Reune?

Whenever I go back to Harvard I
Am suddenly again merely 18
Surrounded by a distant, high, serene
Institution that can never die
Which I, so conscious of what passes by
Quail before. Then it becomes routine
I see the Yard once more a painted green,
Am twenty-two and telling it goodbye
All in an instant. Harvard is and was
The things I did there and who I became,
What changed, and changes, and what never does
All intertwined and somehow all the same,
So when I come, I somehow know I never
Left at all, and doubt that I could ever.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Dawn

Dawn breaks
As do days
What makes
That haze
Seem like
It should
Be a strike?
What would
We get
If we
Just let
Dawn be?
No break
Just wake.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Complexity

I'm not complex, at least in one small way:
I want what others want. A house, a home,
A loved companion by my side each day,
A worthwhile job: these are desires. In Rome
Each man should act like Romans do, and I
Am on this earth, and human, and act so.
I would prefer, like most, not now to die
And to continue to expand and grow
Though I, like them, would like it if my weight
And waist would not. So I am not complex:
I like to eat the sweet things on my plate,
I like the sun's bright warmth, and I like sex.
But if you ask for higher things than those
No one is simple. That's just how it goes.

Re: Mural

Evolving will not give us birdlike wings
Not in our present state, at any rate,
Unless (and this is true for many things)
Sexual selection should equate
A slightly more bewingéd structure to
A better chance of reproducing you.
Even that push would have to be so great
To overwhelm the fact that fairly clings
To all my thought of this: bones must dilate
To be like birds, and that, to my mind, dings
The chance of seeing humankind that flew
On their own power. No, it will not do.
We will not feather, or begin to fly
Without machines. We will not touch the sky.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Pro

It might be easier to let the day
Go by unnoticed, and zone out the world.
But that is boring, and I cannot stay
Unthinking with my mental sails all furled
Indefinitely. No, I must go out
And seize some little portion of an hour
Planting my flag upon it with a stout
Definite gesture of my woken power.
I shall set forth and be the better man
Walking the earth awake and full of zest.
I will be all the good things that I can
And more - and I will better my own best.
All this tomorrow. Now I'll lounge and sleep
Until my herbal tea has done its steep.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Couching

I could pretend I do not like to be
At home, and sit unsociable and still
Down on the couch, in front of the TV,
But what would be the point? Sunday still will
Find me here stationary and amused,
In massive comfort as I entertain
Myself with nothing. Do not be confused:
I still like other things, and won't refrain
From doing them to make a point. It's just
I also like to veg out on the couch
Ignoring all the things I should or must,
Stuffed in the cushions like a joey's pouch.
I'll be here waiting - you can join, you know -
Taking the day to take my living slow.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Differences

The trip without you is so not ideal;
Not bad at all, but not what it could be
And sadly (or at least sad for now-me)
I know what I am missing, and I feel
Imperfect. I can still see the appeal
Of where we're going, but I also see
What could be so much better easily
If you were going too. Sure, I can deal
But wouldn't it be lovely if you were?
We'd do the same, but be companions too
Which I (and I believe you) would prefer
Since we together make the things we do
Whatever they may be a pleasure deep
I would give much and many things to keep.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Circumstance

Among the people with whom I belong
I sense a different sense of who I am
Not that my normal life is somehow wrong
But something else is right. I do not slam
My brakes on here (not that I do at home)
As much as I in other publics would;
I do not skim the top of my heartfoam
But drain it all, and let it all be good.
Do not believe that I am not myself
When I'm alone; simply believe that I
Put certain thoughts and feelings on the shelf
To only now be seized from where they lie
And felt and thought in public. Now and here
Is good for me, and I feel strong and clear.

Thankful

Marvel at all the spacious world affords
And then be thankful. Think of sea and sky
People and places, peaces and accords,
Senses and soul, and while you wonder why
Be grateful to whatever gives you grace
And knowledge. Thank the world itself, the way
It turns and how it's angled into space
To catch the sunlight from each dawning day.
Thank yourself for being you, and each
Person you meet for being who they are.
Thank the lake or ocean on the beach
For lapping calmly over each sand spar
And thank your friends and loved ones, just for being;
Thankful's such a lovely way of seeing.

More

I am thankful for so many things
That any list of merely fourteen lines
Can't  be complete - indeed, the risk it brings
Of some offense to judgment that maligns
My thankfulness itself is so immense
I do not dare, except to say I'm glad
For almost everything (and in a sense
For everything I have or ever had
Because it's all a system set together);
Glad for emotion, being, senses, mind,
World, people, creatures, places, weather,
All the abstractions that the heart can find
And all concrete things too - and more, and more
Than I can say (as I have said before).

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Atrip

Sadly I, enroute to different places,
Can only think of coming home to you.
The smiling, beloved, looked-for faces
That I will see are not diminished, true,
But everything about the trip I take
Is haunted by the way I did not go.
The compromises that we have to make
In life are constant, and I feel them grow
With every passing year; we cannot be
Both where we are and everywhere we should.
The place I go still deeply calls to me
And on its own I call the trip a good.
But going without you and far away
Seems like a blemish on the coming day.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Night, Fall

Half-orange half-yellow light plays on the wall
Warning me (as if the darkness failed)
That night has cast its shadow over all
And day and light are both of them derailed.
I look up from my couch and see the twinkle
Of lower buildings lit against the sky
Transitioning to black from periwinkle
Except westward, where sunlight goes to die.
The room itself is bright and will not falter
Although the night beyond grows dark and grim
There is a cheerfulness night cannot alter
Despite its desperate urging to go dim.
I look into the dark and joy to find
Its ink is unreflected in my mind.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Forest Park

It still can make me sad sometimes
To not get on that southbound train
To not stay on until the chimes
Cry Kedzie-Homan, a refrain
Most welcome to my waiting ears
Which eagerly drank up the sound
For what was months but now seems years.
I still look for you all around
As if the train would open wide
And you'd step out and look for me
Like I for you. So deep inside
I barely touch reality
But pine recalling seeing you;
It isn't just the Line that's Blue.

This Is Chicago

I know quite well that this was not your stop.
It was the Red Line, not the distant Blue
To which you traveled. But that's but a sop
To my poor memory, which fills with you.
I think of how you used to leave your pew
A little early, with me running late
Or if I should be early, then a few
Minutes later, just to compensate;
How we would wander to the beach, or wait
For roommates to arrive and share a meal;
How you would share your tales of Elevate
And make the kids I'd never met so real.
I think of this each time I see the sign
That says Chicago on whatever line.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Higher

When have I ever said
The world was not for me
Or lain myself in bed
Consumed with self-pity?
When have I claimed that I
Was specially mistreated
Or said that should I die
The fact would be well-greeted?
I don't deny I've been
Morose or sulky, but
I hold despair a sin,
And I will tell you what:
If I give up, just yell
And give me proper hell.

Lethe

Dazed days of unwished wakefulness are weird.
The mind misgives the awful oddity
Of feeling fuzzy, stuffed straight and unsheared.
Undone, perhaps, part-piffled, set at sea,
Determined but demented, largely locked
Into an introspective unreflective urge
That, too-trifled with, is rightly rocked
By bold upswellings of the selfish surge
That traps the bent brain in its boistered brine
And makes the mind an anxious analyst
Of near-void nothing. Sea-salt slaps the shrine
Of intellect involved in mind's own mist
And all is air and foam. Forgot to face
A day, and dizzily surveyed the space.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Placebo

Lines of black text against an off-white square
Can never quite replace a smiling face;
A green dot shining as if ever there
Is still not worth a single warm embrace.
A little grey notation of her typing
Is not her sitting by me, thinking hard
Even the vision of her fondly Skyping
Or lovely missives in my folder, starred
Are not her presence. Yet they can all serve
In times of absence, long and deep and bleak
To bend a little back the mournful curve
That makes our separation pine and peak.
I shall be with her someday, this I know
Because of gchats passing to and fro.

Efforts

I'm never sure 
If I am right
Should I be pure
And fight the fight
Or let things be
As they are now?
Could I but see
A good way how
To do that, I
Perhaps might so...
Or I might try
To let it go
But now I'm here
And things feel queer.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Bursts

The brain I have keeps switching gears on me.
It likes to sit in neutral and just idle,
So when I think I have to try and sidle
Up to ideas, and roll on them. I see
Others fly by me, wild and rapidly
Pressing the pedal down. And yet I bridle
My mind, knowing it might go fratricidal
And kill its own momentum foolishly.
So strange it is to wander in between
Max power and a half-dazed state of being;
It isn't something that I really mean,
And yet it's something I am often seeing:
Concentration comes in fits and starts;
It's unresponsive to my conscious parts.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

37

All of a sudden it is bitter cold
As if the weather punished human faults
Looked at my wandering and thought, all told,
I was a fool for all my fits and halts.
How could I go away during the term
Or if I ought to be elsewhere, then why
Did not my self-convinction then hold firm
And keep me there despite of all that I
Had to do here? The weather does not care
For those of us with plural motivations
It wields its weight and power here and there
To force us out of inner co-locations.
And yet I know the weather does not reason;
The cold's not from my moving but the season.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Fairie

Some days are strange and halfway dreams
Or less than dreams, which unremembered
Still linger in the hidden seams
Of thought, though often half-dismembered.
These are the days that float about
Like bubbles, and like them will burst;
That conjure up a constant doubt
If they have happened, or, reversed,
A doubt that they were always so
And you and I just wandered there
Out of how life's supposed to go
Into the self-embracing air
Of a dream dimension, founded
On nothing but being ungrounded.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Tres

There's something wrong in leaving thisaway.
Not by bus; the mode is not the trouble,
But in the fact that though I want to stay
Necessity can pierce desire's bubble
And force me from my love. It should not be
That I should be bereft of her by fate,
Sent far from her so inexorably
Into a distant land, a further state.
Rather the fates should be conspirators
And bring us back together for our good
In some destinal triumph. At our cores
We all hope for that, and I wish it would
Come true for us. But no, I must be here
Busing away from her that I hold dear.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Balm

The day is simply brighter with her here;
I don't blame global warming, but her smile.
The winds no longer bite, nor cut nor shear,
But warmly waft across me for a while
As I sit by her, holding close her hand.
Nor does the rain dare fall upon my head
When I sit by her, but, as by command,
Stays in the clouds, and waters hills instead
To drain into the river and stop drought.
When she is with me, all the world receives
The blessings that it cannot live without;
Even the trees retain their last few leaves
Because she brings warm weather in her wake;
Only when she is gone will winter break.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Passing

I cannot wait for her embrace
To see her in my arms again
And run a finger down her face
To touch her nose. To wait for then
Feels like a burden, though the time
Is short compared to what it was
And so I turn my thoughts to rhyme
To see if that can help. It does
But only roundaboutly, for
With every word I write I see
The time that stands so firm before
My time with her melt rapidly
And so by writing I can spend
Quickly the time before that end.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Winter Is...

The cold is biting
Piercing, cutting
Though the lighting
Is less gutting
(Still bright out
Clear and wide)
Still I doubt
Deep inside
That the light
Across my face
Can outfight
Or displace
The despair
Of cold air.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Chicago 11.6/7.12

The sky is crying tears of halfbright joy
Caught by the streetlamps, which declare the night
Open for us, in triumph, to delight.
The streets are mostly empty, but alloy
That emptiness with hope. What can destroy
The shining lamps, reflecting out their light
Into the puddled sidewalks? In the sight
I see a remnant of the future: coy,
And only half-arrived, but present still.
A future, not expected from before,
When walking here will be as safe and sure
As downtown daytime. And such daydreams fill
The empty stillness. We can be the cure
As sure as we're the ones we've waited for.

Reelect

Joy uncontained and shrieked into the air
Relief unboundable and so unbounded
At finding that our fears had been unfounded
And what we'd hoped to find had still been there
Within our country's heart; that we could care
For those less fortunate; that on being sounded
Our souls were not so selfish that we hounded
That charity out from us; that despair
Was not the message that we gave the future.
Of course there still are obstacled to face:
It will take time to heal the nation's suture
Stitched between those who perforce share a space
But not a heart or mind. And yet I hope
Seeing the past, that we in time will cope.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Seek

There is a kind of man I'd like to see
(Though it could be a woman, have no doubt
Who sees ahead by probability
And carefully does not rule bad things out,
But plans for them, and curates, while he can
The good he would protect from such a harm,
Who knows his limits like a humble man
But has the pride to sometimes bet the farm
When he is sure and odds are on his side,
Who loves his country, but can see her flaws
And grapple with them honestly, whose wide
Far-reaching mind is bound within the laws.
I'd vote for him (or her); as I have done.
And now tonight I'll know if he has won.

Endorsement

The last four years we all know have been hard
And some decisions were not for the best
But nothing that he's done has truly marred
The good he's done. I think we have been blessed
In times of trouble to have found a man
Who sees straight as he talks, both calm and wise,
Who knows the truth of life is "Yes, we can"
But sees that "we" is where the power lies;
Who does not try to force his way, but strives
Beyond belief to bring in others' views;
Who cares for those he works for and their lives,
And does not run this country by the news
Cycle, but by what is good and right;
A man I hope we re-elect tonight.

Monday, November 5, 2012

11/6

Tomorrow is decisive
Tomorrow is the day
When at our most divisive
We all can have our say
This is day we choose
The white rose or the red
The day one side must lose
The other win instead
And compromise cannot
Without a parliament
Revise what we have got
By joining alignment
We'll see tomorrow who
Will see these four years through.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Savings Time

The slow drip of empty hours
Towards the closing time of day
Needs not what the extant powers
Have decreed to help its sway
In the wintertime the sun will
Fly across the sky toward night
Like a beetle on a dunghill
Towards his mistress with delight
Why should we then help its travel
By decreeing day to cease
Earlier, and thus unravel
Daylight which alone brings peace?
Its as if the dark ruled man
In the winter. Which it can.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Dates

I miss the simple days
When planning was not needed
Beyond a moment's phase
And long-term thoughts were seeded
Only in the minds
Of those who looked for trouble.
But now each moment finds
Its future on the bubble
And I must peer ahead
Lest that that bubble break
And leave the future bled
Of what I can't foresake
Now calendars are key
To map futurity.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Spelling Game

The people next to me are playing
Something I have often played
I can't unhear what they are saying
And yet can't interrupt and wade
Into their errors and their follies
Wielding my self-certain sword
Although I'd love to get my jollies
Challenging their whole word hoard
Alot is not a word, you know,
Unless you take it from a meme;
Don't change the groundrules as you go
Despite how tempting it may seem
And for the love of God, please stop
Condescending like a fop.

Deal

What am I to do about
My innate self-adaptive sense?
I do not often fight with doubt
Or fear, and strive for competence
In all I do. Which means that I
When awful things assault all 'round
Hike up my mental belt and try
To seek an inner higher ground.
When deep frustration threatens me
I find a way around its flank
And so avoid it frequently
It sounds as if I ought to thank
This sense, however it was got
But what if it turns me robot?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Workahol

The days I am productive are
A resourced dwindling with time
Nowadays they're few and far
And often only deal with rhyme
In older times, I swear, they were
A common, almost constant stream
But now I fear the aquifer
Has self-diminished like a dream
That flits out of the nighttime head
Just as the sunshine wakes the eyes
And tantalizes from the bed
The woken mind with vain surmise
So as I dream of working well
I laze and feel those feelings quell.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Tick

There's little left to do
Except for sit and wait.
The weather moves on through
It may precipitate
But even if does
I will ignore the rain
And walk in it because
It cannot bring me pain.
I am alone enough
Despite all fortune's dares
To be of toughened stuff
And wait away my cares
Time will bring to me
The calm of entropy.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

13

Today I am a fountain pen
So goes the tired Jewish joke
That turns the day of joining men
In taking up the common yoke
Into the symbol of the day
The gift so often given out.
And yet the joke, though bland, yet may
Express a certain inner doubt
Am I a man? I'm but thirteen
And barely that to tell the truth;
What can this day, then, really mean
If I remain the same old youth?
I do not feel so different. Still
They all say so. Maybe I will?

Overwrite

The mind rejects what it cannot conceive
So how am I to think of what went on?
I have my reason, so I must believe,
But underneath that everything is gone.
I look at facts, and know they must be true,
But nothing that I see can sink in deep.
It enters in my eyes and goes right through;
There's nothing given to me I can keep.
I know my mind still functions since I'm here
And able to construct these lines of verse
But everything I've heard has been wiped clear
For fear of hearing something somehow worse.
The ROM of me is sure it cannot be
Despite the RAM insisting that it see.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Sight Unseen

I didn't know how much I needed this
Until I had it. Being so alone
So far from those who miss the ones I miss,
Whose hearts and minds are mirrors of my own,
I walled the weariness and grief away,
Put them aside as something known but kept
Knowingly apart until the day
When I could let it loose and wake what slept.
Before I was OK and I could function
But now I feel myself again, almost
As if the force of this needed conjunction
Had brought the life back to my solid ghost.
I was a wraith, and now, despite grief's hold,
I feel myself return out of the cold.

Familias

There's nothing like a family, whether one
You make yourself, out of component parts,
Or one provided for you as a son
Or daughter, just as long as all your hearts
Beat with a constant rhythm, and you know
Whatever you may do, wherever go
They will be with you in your absence, tied
Into your soul, and never far no matter
How distant they may be. Today I cried
Half sorrow and half joy. And why the latter?
Because my family were still together;
Though congregated for a mournful reason
Our love defies the chill, inconstant weather
And keeps perpetual the balmy season.

Faretheewell

It's always hard to say goodbye
But easier with company
Then if you have to stop and sigh
There's someone there to stop and see
If you're OK. Without that, who
Will be there with concern and trust
To make more definite that you
Will be OK? And is it just
To ask for sympathy from those
Who do not know the situation?
No, it is better to enclose
Yourself in loving saturation
Filled with loved ones, so you all
Can say goodbye and bear the pall.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Circling

I wonder my movement is a way
To keep myself completely in control
And all the demons totally at bay.
Is there a deformation of the soul
When bodies never stop to let the mind
Concentrate? Or is it somehow free,
This motion, without consequence or bind
To bring regret or break utility?
I cannot hope for that, nor can I think
This constant motion is sustainable;
And should it be, it's motion still to sink
And such a motion is ingrainable
By never stopping, and so learning how
To drop fast as your mass and weight allow.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Confer

It's hard to tell
If being told
It all went well
And they are sold
Is really good
When none of them
Is one that could
Knowing, condemn.
That isn't, now,
To say I feel
Their words somehow
Are made less real
But they mean less.
I mean that, yes.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Mindful

The moment that the breath has left the lungs
Is not important. What is that to me?
I know it is the last of Nature's rungs
Running between death and vitality
But I must tell you in all honesty
A living vegetable is not a man.
It is the mind that makes the man that we
Now miss, and I can only count his span
From when the moment was when he began
To think, to when it ended and he fell.
The mind is life. If it no longer can,
And never will again, you cannot tell
Me he was there. Death is the moment when
A mind can't think, and never will again.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Running On

I have no more to say than "I am sad"
My tongue and fingers both are useless now.
The apparatus that I thought I had
For processing are failing me - and how.
With every line I try to write, each word
Feels so inadequate, and cannot make
A satisfying whole. I can't be heard
When I am silent, but my voice will break
If I speak out. Besides I cannot speak
Have nothing that can be sufficient, or
Failing that, be anything but weak
Half-formed, unprocessed, merely partial, poor.
I'm sorry, and I'm emptied by the sorrow
Maybe I'll find something to say tomorrow.

Killer App

This Blogger app is well installed
Upon my phone, where it will sit
Even when Internet is stalled
And therefore I can play with it
When other things that entertain
My email or my blogroll are
Interdicted in the main
By my 4G at zero bar.
So everywhere that I might go
No matter where cell towers lie
If I am with my phone I know
My sonneteering need not die
Except, and this is death to me,
If I run out of battery.

Viewing

Days can be busy - always are -
But weeks, for me, are usually
A little more sedate. I star
My weekends, when I like to be
Couched in front of my TV
Watching football, when I can,
Cheering intermittently
For an aquamarine man
Or a red, but rarely tan,
Black or yellow. On such days
I, hooked on TV and LAN,
Surf across a blue-green haze
But online I'm busy still
Always am and always will.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Vu

I feel like I have done all this before
Cried all the tears, regretted where I was
And when, and how it happened, that and more
And most of all, felt almost void because
I do not have the words to write it out
Much less to speak. I simply cannot say
Or even think my feelings. Do not doubt
That they are there, but there perforce they stay
Since I can't get them out - or better put
I cannot make them line up in my head
Whether to say or think. I put one foot
Before the next, but when I think instead
Of one word following the next they all
Clamor together and then silent fall.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Antimeridian

Days begin so inauspiciously
With morning rising cold against the sky.
Why should I want to watch the starshine die
And see the looming sun - if I could see
Against its shine - advance destructively,
Melting the fragile frost? Or tell me why
I ought to welcome that which, hot and dry,
Scorches the clouds, and turns what used to be
The grey-marked tendrils of a faery ceiling
Into cotton candy, flat and dead
Which fizzle in the sun, outworn and reeling
Robbed of the magic which the nighttime fed.
I think the afternoon is better far
The morning's where the troubles always are.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Went

I don't like endings much; I much prefer
The psuedo-middles that I often find
Between two stories that at heart once were
A single manuscript, and in that bind
Commingled just enough to make sure we
Who after-read them would be made unsure
Whether the slight permeability
They show was purposeful, or if the pure
Version of each story would exclude
The other. I like texts that must demur
And say they do not know, it would be rude
To so expose themselves without a blur.
And so I'll say you did not leave, but went
Thus warding off the end the former meant.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Halfs

My calm times
Are best spent
With full rhymes
Which are bent
In half verse
Intended
To make worse
The bended
And so I
While writing
Can still by
Inciting
No new thing
Be lazing.

Over Two

Half asleep
Always half
Soul to keep...
That's a laugh
For I wake
Just as much
For which sake
Even such
Who can say
That I snore
Though life may
Be a bore...
So half there
Everywhere.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Things

Imagine I could do whatever thing
I wanted, easily as it could be
Imagine what destruction that might bring
As every whim became reality.
I don't believe that I should be a god
Or that, if granted such a power, I
Would use it any way that wasn't odd
Because of who I am, and what I try
To do without that power. I am strange
And not untrustworthy, but still not worth
That great expansion of potential range
To do whatever magic deed on earth.
So I am glad I do not have that power
And therefore do not make the whole world cower.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Zoink

Buttons pressed
Incorrectly
Thoughts expressed
Imperfectly
Mind exposed
Weird and wild
Old thoughts hosed
Brain misfiled
Everything
Oddly sorted
Like a Bing
Search exported
In a muddle
Brain a puddle.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Ere

So many little errands must be run
Before the long-awaited moment comes;
The air's electric, and it nearly hums
With passing time, and duties to be done.
Indeed each inclination of the sun
Advancing though the near noonday doldrums
Threatens to take the needed time, which sums
Too high to look at. Yet there will be fun
And joy, and even calm when, later yet,
The moment has arrived, and all is well.
The day will then be done, the sun be set
And worries that right now appear to swell
Will shrink to nothing at the crucial point
When all will be in order and in joint.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Miss

I miss her head leaning against my shoulder
As we sit side by side, and how her feet
Are always propped up high, how she feels colder
Than nature warrants, how she's always sweet
Even when frustrated, how she sits
As if she owned the world. I miss it all,
I miss the tug of war between our wits,
The laughter and the hatred for the fall
(Which wants to kill her), miss the way she speaks
When she has something obvious to say
And how her comments turn to silly squeaks
Whenever nature turns its eyes her way
To make her sniffle. I miss all of this
And every day turn over what I miss.

Latenight

The days my mind is slow I do not write
Until I make myself, and then the juice
Of intellect will flow, though slow and tight,
Down through my brain and out my fingers' sluice.
I'm never sure exactly what I'll say
Or how the words will shape what follows after
But when I cannot write the world is gray
And echoes with a dull, half-muted laughter.
I am content to be, sometimes, asleep
Even as I stand with wide, clear eyes
But I am happier when I can leap
Out of that state, to where my writing lies
Waiting for me, somewhere locked in my head
Sometimes only to rise when I'm in bed.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Grinding

What's that noise?
Who can tell?
What destroys
Calm so well
But when heard
Dissipates
Like a word
That relates
Secrets, and
Being said
Must not stand
But has fled
From the ear.
It was queer.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Drunk

I try to keep politicizing out
Of poetry; it somehow can't belong
Like porter, lager, IPA, or stout
Within my mouth, it always just seems wrong.
But now my mind is filled with wondering
How lies can smoothly be received as truth
And caution seen as awful blundering
And I can see the jagged, biting tooth
Of politics prepare to bring me down.
How can I write when all I think is filled
With that which writing would but make me frown?
Or if I think it, am I so strong-willed
As to refuse to write? It all feels wrong
Like wine removed from women and from song.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Seasons

The darkness at noon
Does not afflict me
For we do not swoon
Immediately
When winter comes by
And ruins our days
Instead we all lie
And claim the new haze
Was always just so
And never was gone
But still you should know
As autumn comes on
The chill in the air
Has never seemed fair.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Tain

Reading of ancient heroes
Hearing their chants of praise
Skin torn in strips like gyros
Deaths in a bloody haze
I cannot pray enough
Thanks to my God on high
Life is no longer rough
Good men don't seek to die
Yet who can tell the deeds
We, in this warmer age,
Do, in the former's weeds?
That would disgrace the page.
High and most bloody verse
Matches a good age worse.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Angels

I hear the sound of angels' wings
Unless it's just the water rushing
Down the gutters where there clings
A tattered leaf or two. If so, the flushing
Of my drains will bring, at least,
A little cleanliness into
My life, and I have thus increased
What's next to angels. In this view
I am either way improved
Either by the angel flutters
In the aether as they moved
Or by cleaning out the gutters
As they drain. And so I see
Beauty either side of me.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Trip

The road's an empty place
Composed of nothing more
Than interstitial space
A comprehensive bore
In which there's no relief
From endless listless sitting
Except to be, in brief,
A little bit unwitting.
Unless, of course, you are
By fate or other luck
The driver of the car:
If so, you lucky fuck,
You get to stress and strain
While all of us complain.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Patter

The day is young
And yet I am
Already stung
By its flim-flam
For it is bright
And sharp and clear
So all is light
But - o - how queer
To feel the air
Upon my skin
Say - that's not fair
I should be in
For it is not
As it seemed, hot.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Common

Community's a very funny thing:
It self-defines, and cannot be defined;
It takes the best from all that all can bring
As if by angels it had been designed
And yet the worst from all is also brought
And taken in, and then outward expressed;
It takes the average too of human thought
And all and none at once of interest.
The common the low, the base, the weak
And yet the height of sense is called the same;
Without community all life is bleak
And yet it can exist without the name.
It can't be held, and yet it can embrace
Cannot be seen, and yet we are its face.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Go

Whatever I do, it will be OK
Seriously, it really really will
The sky may be (it is) completely gray
Injected with a fell unfriendly chill
The world make look as bleak as bleak can be
I may not want to put a toe outside
Or let the outside come inside to me
In fact I may prefer to run and hide
While stormclouds gather threatening above
But I am sure no matter what occurs
That I between my self, my luck, and love
Will be OK. And that's the thought that stirs
My heart to act, instead of merely waiting:
If it's OK, why bother hesitating?

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Yo

I live a double life. In neither one
Am I completely present. How could I?
For from each one I have to say goodbye
So frequently that all the times it's done
Just flow together and comingled run
Out at my ears. I do not wonder why
Or softly sit and droop my head and sigh,
But still I feel the stress forever dun
My self-reserves. I would not change this life
If all that I could change was me alone
But I would alter the eternal strife
Between my lives that has by this time grown.
I cannot be both places at one time
And fail to substitute myself with rhyme.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Fallen

Autumn comes as suddenly
As wind blows down Chicago streets
It steals the green from every tree
And then the life, as it depletes
The chlorophyll (O evergreens!
Where are the pine trees of my youth?
I never saw such ugly scenes
When I was young, but now the truth
Comes crashing down: these trees will stand
Bare and dejected through the spring
And then return subdued yet grand
To overshadow everything).
I used to love autumn chill
But barren trees to me bode ill.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

I Must Be Going

There's something special about 4 a.m.:
Not just that everything is tinged with red
Across the west Chicago sky, that bed
Is calling, that the songbirds (list to them!)
Are singing a consistent lullaby,
Or that the mind, half-tired and all fuzz,
Wishes to do as every other does:
Turn off, and let the waking world slide by.
No, if you force yourself to be awake
Perhaps from some idea trapped in your mind
And look around, and listen, you will find
Platonic stillness. Nothing else can make
The world as peaceful as mankind asleep
Leaving only nature, soft and deep.

Pasts

Nostalgia is a strange exotic beast
That calls us from our homes - or calls our homes
No homes at all, but something that has ceased
To do us justice, as the heart now roams
In distant half-forgotten lands. I see
A past that never was and yet I feel
As if it were what I would always be
And though it ought to be a bit surreal
Instead it seems as if it were correct,
As if the past I know I lived were wrong
And this alone, beyond my intellect,
Were how it really had been all along
Only the strong insistence of my will
Can make the visions fade, my heart grow still.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Drippy

We are all connected
At least we two are so
By thoughts that are directed
Between us to and fro
And as we choose to go
Into the wide beyond
The thought that we can know
The other one is fond
Makes each day that's dawned
A little bit improved.
Like raindrops on a pond
That through the water moved
Show circles perfectly
So you are seen in me.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Hum

It is a joy to move within the mind
Exercising thoughts that had been pent
Using the brilliance nature to us lent
On every object that our eyes can find
Casting off the dull and boring rind
Of everyday routine beneath which, bent,
Our minds have huddled, thinking 'til we're spent
In an unusual and crazy kind
Of way. There's such a pleasure to be had
In simple thought and what it brings to bear
So much that I without it might run mad
Confined within the bounds of pressing care.
It is best to let the mind run free
And see what sort of mind it tends to be.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Set Theory

There are only just so many ways
A day can go. Oh sure a thousand things
Can happen in the spans of single days
But at the end the total daytime brings
Only so many feelings. I can be
Happy despondent bored completely chill
Or several others, but I fail to see
The infinite variety some will
Insist on. Overall I find each day
Though all itself still falls, when weighed in all
Into a certain set of senses, that all may
Be comprehended. And therefore I call
The days a little similar although
Each moment quantumly may choose to go.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Free Speeches

There are some words I simply cannot use
"Ain't" for instance sticks right in my throat.
For when I hear another man abuse
The language, then I just reach for my coat
And leave him be. I will not join him there
Strangely attacking every passing ear
With his decayed contractions. Yet I dare
Not make him stop, for nothing is more dear
Than our free speech. And so I simply turn
And walk away and do not use the word
For while my anger may intensely burn
Against the foolish utterance I heard
It is his own, and no one can deny
The right to speak, for any reason why.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Friendly

Friends can be a joy beyond belief
Which does not disappear when they are gone.
For in their presence there was some relief
From feeling isolated, overdrawn
And stretched out thin. Enjoying company
Can make the day seem shorter and more clear;
Man was made for good society
Not individual, but with a peer.
Being alone is good, I don't deny;
In fact I like it, but it must be mixed
With something else - or else we wonder why
Our orbit of society is fixed
Internally. We must be social, or
We find the life we live becomes a bore.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Lanu

Everybody sometimes has to say
"I'm sorry." There are even times
We mean it. And I like this evening's way:
A univeral "pardon me" that climbs
Across a melody that calls to me,
Bids me remember all the wrongs I've done
Think them all over most penitently
And ponder if I've troubled anyone
And not apologized; inspires, too,
My soul to seek forgiveness from my God
For all that I in weakness fled into
And all the errant paths that I have trod.
What could be better than communal prayer
To say "I'm sorry" and sincerely care?

Monday, September 24, 2012

Zens

The unknown way
Cannot be known
Thus all can say
It is their own
For who can claim
That they have erred
Or even blame
Them as impaired
For lying. No
It cannot be
For it is so
At least for me
So they can cry
But they all lie.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Plant

I have not been outside
I do not care to go
Imagine I have died
Except without the woe
Really I'm OK
And everything is good
It's just that for today
I do not think I would
Like to leave my place
And therefore I have not
I like to watch life race
While I sit here and rot.
So I will just be here
The world can disappear.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Wands

There a rootlessness brought on by being
Further away than I would like to be;
A sort of misdirected wrongly seeing
That makes a mental hobo out of me.
I wander in my mind and wonder what
The things I do could really ever mean,
While any meaning they could take is but
A figment of my overheated spleen
And everything is crooked. What I do
Seems oddly empty, like a vacant lot
Where skyscrapers should be. It's nothing new
Just the result of being where I'm not
And never being where I ought. I know
At least though where I really ought to go.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Divine?

I have erred before
Many times ere now
I'm not keeping score
But I will allow
That I would prefer
If it could be done
To no more incur
Error - it's no fun.
Yet I must remember
In despite of me
Error is the ember
Of humanity.
If I did not err
I would not be there.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Cambio

Novelty is strange
And stranger than we know
For who can rearrange
The world at just one go?
The continents take eons
And evolution longer.
How should we mere peons
Somehow turn out stronger
Than great Nature's force?
No, it cannot be
Rather, our new course
Fundamentally
Must have been before
Somehow still in store.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Fallingwater

The weather changes with the hour
My, it must be fall already
Half the day is turning sour
But the rest is never steady
For it turns back in a trice
Makes the day confused and strange
Half of everything is nice
But the terror is the range.
Why is fall so very horrid
When beginning? After all
Though the mornings may be torrid
By November I like fall.
It's because the summer hates
Leaving us, and defecates.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Neon

Neon lights up what should be dark night
With its insistence that we pay attention;
Coming back, it doesn't feel quite right
Like a past argument no one will mention
But lingers over every moment, making
The silence awkward and the talking worse,
Coloring interpretations, taking
The innocence from smiles like a curse.
Neon is the guest who will not leave
But cannot be evicted, or the friend
Who cannot see that you would like to grieve
And hangs around the gravestone to the end.
I guess we're stuck with it by now, but why?
I like a darker version of the sky.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Permafrosts

Stupid reasons lead to stupid errors
And stupid errors lead to stupid ends.
The night is full of everlasting terrors
But they don't come just when the night descends.
The world is always full of human thought
And all the evil that that thought can breed;
And even when mankind has run to naught,
Obliterated, leaving no new seed,
Still somewhere minds will be as dumb as ours
And hearts as capable of doing ill;
Some new intelligence will claim our powers
And with them our projection of our will
Into the world. What's stupid will still be
Beyond the bounds of mere humanity.

Past Perfect

Every time I'm home there is a minute
When I don't see the messiness or dust
When my own home and everything that's in it
Is perfect, and I have no wanderlust.
And then it fades, and I am once again
Caught in reality, aware of the decay
Of entropy between what was well then
And what age made it after everyday.
I see the grime that I could not scrub off,
The soapscum clinging to the kitchen sink,
The trashbin still unemptied, and I scoff
At anyone who had the balls to think
That it was perfect. But it was, to me,
In that arriving singularity.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Off

I really do resent going away
Though in my mind I know it's temporary
Still I'd prefer by leaps and bounds to stay
And long to make delays that let me tarry
Within her arms - for she, not coming too,
Becomes the sorrow that my leaving brings.
There's very little I would rather do
Than be with her, conjoining in all things,
But no, I must away and back to home
(Or that which is my home with her apart)
And merely long within my soul to roam
And be with her again back at the start.
I cannot stay, although I much prefer
To linger while I can back there with her.

L'Shana Tova

A New Year
A chance to be
Not what I fear
But what is me
A chance to see
(At least, one more)
What possibly
Could be in store
And I therefore
Must stride ahead
And with a roar
(And little dread)
Engage what comes
With crashing drums.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Minor

I am a little low
Of energy you see
And am, if you would know,
Not fully here to be.
But I am constantly
As much as I'm aware
Ready to be me
And I am still all there.
So since you know I care
And am myself and here
I think it only fair
To make it fully clear
I may be tired now
But I love you - and how!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

My eyes are almost half asleep
The rest of me is much the same
I wish that I could somehow keep
Awake, but I will lose that game
I'll droop and then my eyes will close
And I will slumber deep and true
Already I can feel the doze
Begin to seep far down into
The cracks between my brain and spine
And nestle deeply in my limbs
Where, as I stretch myself supine
My sense of the sensation dims
And so I slip and slowly dive
Into sleep - I'm half alive.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Beauty

You never grow less beautiful to me
No, though your brow be knitted in a line,
Your smile gone, your voice pitched to a whine,
Your shoulders hunched into an angry vee;
I still see you, and know substantially
That you will find a way to make it fine,
And this is just the bare external sign
Of stress, which will be dealt with actively.
I do not mean that time could not, with age
Wrinkle your face with something more than stress;
But even then I, having seen the page
And seen the lines writ there, would simply bless
The time we had together, and the years
That wrote those lines, in laughter moved to tears.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Anniverse

Every year upon this date
We must remember once again
The place exact where we were when
The news came that we deprecate.
And every year we must berate
Ourselves for having slumbered then
And even more the monstrous men
Who did the deed. Yet should we wait
Each year to note it only now?
Should not our every effort be
To rise again, and terror-free
Despite the act, no matter how?
Should not all our days and hours
Prove our strength, recall the towers?

Monday, September 10, 2012

Em-Dash

It feels so arbitrary - time
Which wanders where it wants to go -
Not less so than others - rhyme
And all its friends that - to and fro -
Wander on the endless page
That is no page at all, but bits
Of electronic hot white rage
Enslaved to never call it quits.
This digital enslavement makes
The arbitrariness complete
And if, by miracle, it breaks
Into a million small discrete
Bits and bytes, then I will be
Eternal arbitrarily.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Ears

Had I patience coming out my ears
I wouldn't have my patience anymore
It would have flowed out over months and years
(Ignoring that it's just a metaphor)
And left me empty, impatient, and weary
Of always waiting while it drained away;
Full of annoyance, and a little leery
Of anyone who came to ask me "May
I have a moment of your time" for then
I would be certain that no time was left
For me to dawdle in. I'd tell them "When
You give as much again to me, bereft
Of time," and blow them off. So I am glad
A little patience's all I've ever had.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Altered Status

Probably acceptable, I am
I would have it any other way
But at some points my senses seem to ram
Against the chance that I may be someday
Either more or less - and such a change
Though normal and amenable to most
As people vary through the normal range
Frightens me as if I'd seen a ghost.
I'd like to think I know myself and my
Position on the scale of being liked
To change is frightening - would it bely
The present status if my liking spiked
Or dropped? Of course not. But my heart says yes
And thereupon rise fears I now confess.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Heats

Why is heat
Hard to tell?
Seasoned meat
Black of hell
Spicy curry
All outdoors
Those who hurry
On their tours
Pavement baked
Off A/C
Thirst unslaked
All will be
Seeming hot
Are they not?

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Put

I may never go outside
I might never leave this spot
But do not think that I must hide
For I must tell you that I'm not.
It's simply that I'd rather be
In here, where everything is cool
Where all the world is nice to me
And I though not alone can rule
The elements and rather than
Allowing them to work my fate
Exceed the fondest dream of man
And force them down to my dictate.
So if I do not leave here, know
I chose that I would never go.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Worth While

I find more value in the quiet days
When I can be where I would wish to be
Than in the clanging unconformity
Of massive noisy change. I do not blaze
New trails for men to stumble through and gaze
In Darien wonder on discovery
But rather let my world flow into me
Am one with it, and glory in the ways
I can find joy at home, where I desire.
My happiness is mine, and known, and true
The charcoal, not the petroleum fire
That may catch slowly, but once caught will burn
Deeper and hotter than gas fires do
And need not find new fuel before its turn.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

ACB

Air conditioning can only work
In a closed system - buses do not count
Unless, of course, the driver is a jerk
And doesn't stop on anyone's account.
But if the bus, as usual, rolls on
Stopping each block or so to gape its doors,
Heat passing in as passengers are gone
There are no earthly scientific lores
Can make it cool. I must perforce admit
A metal box so full of sweaty limbs
Would be a sauna without A/C's bit
Of help, but I profess that small help dims
Beside the outer heat it cannot stop
A/C on buses just feels like a flop.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Reburn

Let others glory in return
For I shall venture forth again
And while I linger here, I burn.
Yet I'll come back once more and then
Perhaps the city will be cool
And I will not begin to rue
The somehow automatic rule
That makes me turn as if on cue
And come back to my residence.
For though the city is so hot
(I have abundant evidence)
I still profess I hate it not
And will, when it is cool, remain
But now I hope that it will rain.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Wishes

I have desires that I keep inside
And others that I wear upon my sleeve.
You hear them all, but from the rest I hide
A little part of me, lest they believe
Too easily they know how I will act
Based solely on my urges. I am more
Than base or fine desires, and that fact
Is vital to me: letting my soul soar
High as it may, I fly beyond the flesh,
But do not leave it evermore behind:
That would be silly. I am not a kind
Of robot, or automaton, but mesh
My soul and body in a single form
And my desires help to keep me warm.

Patiently

Waiting is impossible to do
Faster than time passes, but that truth
Is not convenient, so I often stew
Wishing my waiting gone, and fear my youth
Is wasted in the wait. Of course, we all
Must wait at times, and if we do it well
We do not waste it. We may fear a stall,
But cannot let it come, for if we fell
Where could we safely land? Madness below
Makes falling dangerous, and so we must
Use the time we wait to think, and grow,
And not to fret. So we must learn to trust
In time, and know that waiting will, in time
Let the good we seek come forth and climb.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Webs

Some parts of what I am (and what I was)
Are bound up in some souls that are not mine.
But that's OK, since nobody who does
Anything can ever hold the line
And keep everyone out - nor should they so.
A soul unknitted to its kin and kith
Is nothing, and exposed to open woe,
While one conjoined and coextensive with
The souls of others, fortified in kind
Is strong and supple, bending against storms
Yet holding strong within its own true mind
Against disaster in its many forms.
The soul is strong that's well-connected out
And that untouched is wracked with fear and doubt.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Via

A day in travel is a day that's wasted
And incommunicado, which is worse.
An empty day is something we've all tasted
But being isolated is a curse.
I thrive on plugging in to my own life
Which lives as much by internet and phone
As in my person. Flight cuts like a knife
Between my acts and what feels like my own
Intentions. It's a strange way to exist
Half-floating and ethereal. But I
Have no way past it, unless I have missed
A magic way to never have to fly.
But somewhere I'll find home, and when I'm there
I will not have to travel anywhere.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Stressors

Stress can bring so many things to light
But most of all the way we can recover
Which tells us what we think is the most right
Part of our world: a good thing to discover.
For who knows that knows all they need to know;
Knows solid things on which to base their mind;
Knows how to stabilize, and how to grow;
Knows how to seek, and what seeking might find.
Knowing yourself and what you value most
Is hard, and stress can make it harder still.
But simply being lets us simply coast
And pay no mind to letting our mind fill
With knowledge. In my stress I find my core
And therefore will not wish to stress no more.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

SNAFUs

Some things end up completely clusterfucked
That doesn't mean they must be, or were fated,
But simply that the circumstances sucked
And everything about them was deflated.
It's always bad to be in situations
Where something went as wrong as it could go;
We must remember these are exhalations
Of bitter gas, and not a constant woe.
They too shall pass, and once past be recalled
Not as the end of everything we knew
But as a moment when we were appalled
And great frustration in the moment grew
Then shrunk away again, for someday soon
We'll laugh at this: maybe this afternoon.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Lone Unlones

There's loneliness in not being alone
When all around you are all strange to you
And you can wander by seen but unknown.
I often question what I ought to do
When that is true - and it is hard to know,
Because it's lonely but not emptied out.
I want to scream at all of them to go
And hope that alone can end my doubt,
But I restrain myself. Instead I seethe
And look about me, wishing they were far.
As certain as I am that I must breathe
I'm sure such lonely company will bar
My self-composure. Being with the strange
Is worse than solitude - it can derange.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Index

The greater part of beauty is in spirit
For lovely limbs can hide a prideful heart
That makes observers rather tend to fear it
Than to adore the merely outer part.
A face framed for da Vinci or his friends
With curvature that Rubens could have dreamt
Can turn aside desire from its ends
If from all pleasant thought it is exempt
By reason of the soul - likewise a face
Not given to so generously by fate
May stake a claim to an exalted place
If love and humour each find there a mate.
But, as in her, we may see two in one:
Spirit can complete what form's begun.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Vacation Blues

Time drips from my mind
And pools beneath my feet
Not wasted, though I find
Its passage is too fleet,
But strangely altered so
That all I do takes long
But hours seem to flow.
Everything is wrong
Because the hours pool
And all that I can do
Is biased off the rule
And therefore runs untrue
To what I meant. For time
Is out of rule and rhyme.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Fars

When I will go away
I don't know what to do
For when I'm without you
I wonder every day
If you're doing OK
And what you're going through.
I know that you are true,
So that isn't my way:
I worry rather more
About your heart, like mine
Which might be rather sore
When we are far apart.
I'm sure we'll both be fine
But still it tugs my heart.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Gchat

Every word that we exchange
Is precious in its own small way
And I don't think I'd ever change
Our present chatting everyday
Except if I could somehow say
By fiat we would always be
Together, and that there we'd stay
In one place ever fixedly.
For if I could forever see
You here with me, then perhaps I
Could gchat less perpetually
And not be sad and wonder why.
But only presence could do so;
There is no other way I know.

Homecoming

The streets I wander are the streets I know
But every turn is somehow strange to me.
I know the places that I want to go,
And why, and yet I never seem to be
Exactly where I wish. I cannot say
If this misrecognition is my own
Or if the streets themselves can somehow stray
And make me feel myself evermore blown
Off of my course. I cannot now be sure
Of where I am, and so I start to flounder,
Uncertain of the depth I can endure
And worried that I'll drown if I should founder.
It's still a home, but one that ebbs and flows
As what I might remember slowly goes.

Mistaken

The wind is slightly cool upon my skin
The day itself is warm and oddly clear;
I'd almost doubt the city that I'm in,
Except I'm certain how I traveled here.
There'd be no need to have a pilot steer
A plane across the sky were I still there,
Back where the seacoast is not quite as near,
Where lakes are large, and high skyscrapers dare
To pierce the clouds, and bid them to beware,
Back where the sky is orange at night. No, I
Must not be there. I'm here, where I can stare
Distractedly at mountains passing by.
The weather is the same, the place less so
And as I watch, the differences grow.

Jorvik

It must be some kind miracle that I
Who should be lying prostrate on the floor
Can stand, and breathe, and walk, instead of die
For who can do these things, or even more,
Without his heart? And I, poor fool, am sure
My heart lies in a city far away
With someone else. I can think of no cure
Science could bring to one in such a way,
But God and love together have designed
The perfect remedy for what I lack.
I have not got my heart, but I may find
By miracle I have got something back:
Another heart for mine, and it beats strong
While in her breast my own will beat along.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Teller of Tales

Begin with the beginning. It's a start.
I never knew a story could be told
Without one, or the story lacks a heart,
And that would leave it bloodless, still, and cold.
So start with the beginning, and go on
From there to where the story makes its way
Into a middle - sort of like the dawn
Meanders towards the middle of the day
And calls it noon. Then after that be sure
To find some sort of end (even makeshift):
It need not be an answer or a cure
Or wrap it up in some kind of uplift
It simply needs to make it so we know
Where in our mind the story ought to go.

Say When

When did I develop all this ease
Talking to people? As I well recall
I used to think that glibness was all sleaze
And merely fooferaw and foderol.
Now I can talk to people gracefully
With smiles and laughs that catch them up in turn
As if some imp or demon lived in me
And used my mouth to snatch up souls to burn.
Where did this aptness come from? When did I
By any means acquire such a gift?
All I am sure of is I used to try
And fail to make my lips part or tongue lift
To speak to any; now I chat along
One of the merry, glib, conversant throng.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Apartness

Some days the day just doesn't want to start
Sometimes it's me - and I'm aware of it -
Sometimes it's simply that my tired heart
Wants to ignore the fact that I have lit
Out for the west, and left you way back home.
Of course I'm no explorer, and I know
The way back from the wilderness I roam,
But my heart bitches at me even so.
I love it here - it's where my life derived,
Where everything about myself began,
But still somehow I feel a bee dehived
Or at least set adrift, if still a man.
I wish I were with you, though do not think
I don't wish I were here. Aw, these things stink.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Whys

Why do I miss you more when I am here?
I cannot really say; partly I feel
That traveling so much I ought to near
The place that I most want to be for real;
Partly I think that you would likely like
The place, and so I want to show you it;
Partly it's just time: the hours strike
And every one means we have gone a bit
Further apart in time, and so I miss
You more. I think that last may be the best,
In that the memory of every kiss
Grows more alluring as the sun goes west
And I'm without it. You should be here then
So I can hold you in my arms again.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Cat Hair

Cat hair gets everywhere
It does not stop at doors
It wants to make all hair
Sofa, carpet, floors
It takes your breath away
(Sometimes physically)
And spreads out come what may
Omnipresently.
Our vacuums help a bit
The brushes much less so
To dispose of it
For it will not go.
But hey, you have a cat;
Best be glad of that.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Flight

It's always bittersweet to leave a place.
Bitter should be obvious, because
It's difficult to calmly re-erase
The parts of us we put - everyone does -
Into the place we were. Sweet is less clear
Unless the place we're going to we like;
Otherwise the sweetness must appear
In motion, much like taking a long hike
Where every breath may bring a little pain
From burning lungs or muscles working hard
But overall the walk, despite that strain,
Seems pleasant, and refuses to be marred.
So I while leaving here feel not so great
But moving and arriving recreate.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Est

I start too often with 'there is';
It has by now become a crutch
For when my mind has failed to fizz
Or when my start has left too much
For me to do. I try to find
A metaphor, and, searching, use
This crutch to help my piece of mind
To hold up where it wants to ooze.
I do not mean 'there is' can't be
The start of something that inspires
Or that its meaning is to me
A void whose usefulness expires,
But rather that I ought to try
To find some other way to sigh.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Long Distance

Ice cream melts, and that's a shame
But that's what it's designed to do
Unless you eat it, so the blame
(If any) ought to fall on you.
When it gets milky, liquid, wet,
You know the fault is yours alone
For how on earth could you forget
That time will melt an ice cream cone?
But when you leave I am confused
For though I know you have to go
My gut still somehow feels abused
Since it's a different thing to know
And to be certain in my heart
That we two live so far apart.

Gary IN

The sky is empty, waiting
For cloudy days to come
Always anticipating
The end of the hum-drum
But while it waits it sees
The land beneath it roar
And innovate a breeze
That bears a cloud to soar
Not of nature's make,
Whiter than the norm
Which never seems to slake
Or dissipate its form
And so the sky is filled
And nature's way is stilled.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Go

The days of waiting are the strangest ones
When nothing seems to happen, yet there seems
To be no time to do it in. Time runs
Out of the pores of life, and into dreams
Which stretch eternally while wakeful hours
Pass by in minutes. Nothing is the same
As it should be, and knowing that fact sours
The things themselves and everything seems lame.
It would be better if the time were gone
Already, and the waiting were not there;
But day must always start up with the dawn
And cannot skip the morning. It's not fair,
But waiting has to happen too, and so
I wait and wait and cannot wait to go.

Mindfully

Perhaps the time will rush right by
Perhaps it will be all too soon
When I exit the afternoon
And enter night. I cannot lie:
I feel the worry, when I die
That nothingness is not a boon,
And, like the sadly moaning loon,
I fear the end and what is nigh.
But maybe life is long enough
To make the mind forget that woe
And in the time allotted grow
To become made of sterner stuff
And look at death and say "I know."
But right now thinking that is tough.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Where

The breeze blows rain across my windowpane
Which makes me wonder if it's raining where
You are, wherever that may be. The grain
Shows dark against the woodwork there,
Dyed by the water, and I wonder whether
You're seeing what I see. I cannot tell.
I do not think we share the selfsame weather,
As if by some strange sympathetic spell,
But still I wish for that bit of connection,
That spark that says that you and I are one,
That where we are is nothing but direction,
And when we part there's nothing truly done
For we are still together in our hearts
And somehow that exceeds external parts.

Monday, August 13, 2012

+

Even when the time I spend is good
(Exciting, happy, full of what I will),
I cannot shake the feeling that I should
For all of it prefer your presence still.
Despite the joy I feel when I'm away
(Not caused, of course, by your departure, dear)
My smile droops a little anyway
Because I miss you, and you should be here.
For every moment I am glad without
Your smile, your laugh, your every little thing
I feel as certain, without any doubt,
That with you I'd be happier. You bring
A kind of joy I cannot otherwise
Acquire - and without it my soul sighs.

One

Time is a slow friend
But is a fast foe.
Time will have no end
'Til all of us go,
But he can be kind
When least expected.
Time heals the hurt mind,
Which, redirected,
Can be much better
Than what it once was;
Still, time's a fetter
Since what a man does
Cannot be undone.
Tries? You just get one.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Not Just Anybody

The hardest days are those when you let go
And watch your loved ones waddle off, away
From your companionship. Although you know
They'll be OK, and come again someday
(Even someday soon) there is no boot:
You simply have to sigh. You cannot choose.
There is no chance that God will grant your suit
And turn them back around so you don't lose
Their company. They're going and that's that.
You have to deal with it - though it is hard,
Though every nerve feels pounded hard and flat,
Though every good thing feels like it was marred,
You have to deal. And they can help - for living
Ends not with leaving. Neither then does giving.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Friendships

There's nothing more worthwhile than to know
That someone has your back no matter what;
That they, with no if, and, or even but
Will be by you, and help; that they will go
The extra mile, more than that, and show
Companionship beyond the common cut.
This form of love (for love it is) won't shut
Because of simple problems, or forego
Its deeper elements from causes light.
No, it is grand and holy, and consists
In two souls knitted in a bond as tight
As any two can be - and this resists
All shear and warp. It's wonderful and true
And this, my dear, is what I feel with you.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Dayo

A dreary day can make a bad thing worse
And turn what should be good a little grey;
It's like the day itself acts as a curse
And turns your purpose and your act astray.
It isn't that the color of the day
Mirrors your mood, but rather that it sneaks
A little of itself into your way
Perhaps dimming the rosy-colored cheeks,
Or making hours feel like days or weeks,
Or simply turning every deed awry
A little bit. So unkind weather wreaks
Revenge for unknown sins on us. And I
Am smack in such a day - but know, with aid,
I can repel the feelings it has made.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Tain

Think of a fountain, spewing water wide,
Recycling the liquid that it throws,
Pumping the product that was once outside
Back in and out until nobody knows
Which was at first the pool and which the stream.
Think of that image, and you see my love,
For what is real of her and what my dream
Of what she ought to be (fantasy of
A hopeful dreamer) cannot now be told
The one has matched its opposite so well.
I cannot now distinguish if that fold
Across her brow is what I used to tell
Myself I wanted, or just what I want:
But I can say I love her lovely font.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Seafoam

I am lost
Inside a sea
And tempest tossed
Continually
For love can make
A sudden storm
And blow and quake
And take the form
Of wind and rain.
But for now I
Have from all pain
Entered the eye
Where all is calm
And joy and balm.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Sails

It gives me comfort to become aware
That that which brought me here will bring you too.
It hardly seemed, before, that it was fair
That I should be by that removed from you,
But now the knowledge that you come behind
And join me by the same way that I trod
Makes me more tranquil in a calmer mind,
And lets me give my thanks unto my God.
For we were separated, and I waited
And felt the days (too long) begin to lag.
Now that you come, my soul is elevated
Where in the interim my heart would sag.
So come to me my dear and we will be
As glad as sailors safe across the sea.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Outflow

Now the time is ever-flowing out of me
A finite store that someday will expire
And as it leaves, I live. I cannot be
Except by its departure. Should I mire
That flow, or try to dam it, I would cease
To live - and to experience that life.
Nor would that ceasing bring me any peace,
Although perhaps it would remove all strife,
For peace is something. Nothing is not so:
It is a void, a vacancy, a nought.
From nothing nothing ever comes to grow
Nor can I think the absence of my thought.
Therefore although my days will shorten, I
Would not choose not to live just not to die.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Grack

I try to let it go. I really do.
But something in my situation makes
It hard. Maybe because I'm without you;
Maybe because it somehow breaks
With what I think I am; maybe because
(If nothing else) I've been away, and so
That makes me edgy (and I know it does).
Whatever reason (I don't really know)
Makes me gnaw it like a well-worn bone,
And do it more, because I am alone.
Even distraction is not too effective;
Maybe I ought to find a different place
(Almost anywhere - I'm not selective)
Or maybe I should see your calming face.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Dreamt

I dream, but what I dream I don't remember
And what I do remember I don't dream.
I think of snowfall in a bright December
Turning the city white as clotted cream,
And her outlined against the field, her hair
Drifting across her face, caught by the breeze
(Except for what was stuffed into her cap with care)
And, half-wet, left out for the chill to freeze.
I think of how she smiled in the snow,
And how I smiled back against the pain;
Of sighs, of wishes dangerous to know
And tree-limbs growing bent against their strain.
That world was wonderful - but as things are
I do prefer this not-dream-world by far.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Low

A day is fine
But more is bad;
That is a sign
That I have had
A lot of hours
Spent with you
So that my powers
All renew
Only when
I get to see
Your face again
And frequently.
But now I'm so
That I feel low.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Miss

It's always strange
To come back here
And rearrange
My life. It's clear
That this is where
I'm meant to live
But I don't care
Since it can't give
Me what I need
(And that is her)
And thus indeed
I would prefer
To not be back
Because I lack.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Footed

I really hate the way time ticks along
Without a care, as if it didn't matter.
I wish that I could stop it - it feels wrong
To knuckle to its constant pitter-patter
And let it own me. Why should every day
Follow the old and make it all anew?
Why must we moult our skin and throw away
The day in which we did what we must do
Again tomorrow? Most of all, oh why
Must we pass on from what and where we were,
Leaving behind the paradise gone by
For what will come? I would so much prefer
To find a niche beyond time's hand and wait
Forever in that blissful, happy state.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Leaving

I am sad because I'm leaving. Still
I know it's better than to not be here
At all. If someone had possessed my will
And made it so I had kept fully clear
Of such a sadness, that would have required
My never coming here at all, and that
Is worse than sadness. All that I desired
Required coming here, and that is pat;
Leaving is just a side-effect, which takes
Some of the joy away, but still somehow
Leaves me still full of it. The joy that makes
Itself still whole despite the absence now
Is truest joy - and that is what is mine.
I will be happy, though I will still pine.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Nightingale

My head is heavy but my heart is light
For as I head into the end of day
And moonlight dwindles out of dusky grey
Into the true deep cobalt of the night,
As I keep feeling while I lose my sight,
And hear the unseen footsteps of the fey
Dark creatures that, almost unnoticed, stray
Into our world before we shutter quite,
I know she will be with me, I with her,
No matter where our bodies may remain;
And should I fail to sleep, and turn, and stir
With writhing from my dark-oppressed hot brain
I know she will be there to comfort me
As I would be as much for her, should she.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Cooling

The heat recedes, and life begins again
Out of the scorching pain the sun had brought.
The sun, life-giving, was destructive then,
But now smiles down. Of course it's very hot,
But not as much as when the day was dead.
Some warmth is needed - we live on the edge
Between a boil and a freeze. It's said
We teeter ever closer on the ledge
To falling over - but we have not yet,
And so I joy to see the heat recede
Again into this state where we are set
Just in our niche. Now let us feed
Upon the cool hot air as best we can
Before the heat returns us to the ban.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Women

Time and tide wait for no man.
Women, however, they wait for.
They may not realize they can,
But women often can do more.
The world will alter at their whim,
The skies obey their very word,
A nod from her (but not from him)
Will charm a predatory bird,
Raise a tempest, or dispel
A coming storm that threatens rain;
Their thoughts the very seas can quell,
Or bring in healing after pain.
Or maybe I just think it's true
Because of what I'd do for you.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Lightnings

The storm above me cannot touch me now
For I have found an anchor far below
The noisy surface of the world. 'Twill cow
The many, make them quake and grow
Fearful of the world they face outside,
But I am calm and happy in my heart,
Stationary, watching them all ride
The giddy whirl, but never taking part
In how they worry. I am safe and sure,
For I have love, and love is everything.
It can make fast the mind, it can secure
The heart. Mankind may be a giddy thing,
But this is my conclusion: I will turn
Only for her, and only then I burn.

Glimpse

Her smile is a strange and wondrous thing.
It makes my heart beat rhythmically and strong,
My nerves all tingle and my sinews sing
Like the reverberations of a gong
After the note is struck. It makes me yearn
And melt at once. I cannot then resist 
The pull of her, and so I always turn
Towards her, and pull her to me to be kissed.
When she is sad or concentrating, I
Am always looking for a way to make
Her smile again, and so I'm apt to try
A million ways, 'til one of them will take
And bring me back into that blissful state
And I can watch her sit and radiate.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Queasy

Denial isn't healthy, but it's easy:
The easiest, indeed, of all the ways
To deal with things that make you kind of queasy, 
And muddle on in an unreasoned haze.
But being easy doesn't make it right;
It's safer to be fully self-aware.
For in your heart of hearts your second sight
Will tell you what, perhaps, you do not dare
Admit self-consciously - what you deny
Is still out there, still looming, still to come.
And if you choose to give yourself the lie,
It may be easy, but it sure is dumb.
So I'll admit I'm leaving, and be sad
Rather than pretend - and then go mad.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Thoughts

Sometimes I wish that I could just stop thinking.
Some people do that, or I hear they do,
By meditation, brainlessness, or drinking,
Rest and relaxation, or the new
Video game system that they bought.
I cannot do it. Even when it seems
That I should be, at long last, without thought,
Quiet and at peace, somehow daydreams
Sneak in, and turn my brain from empty waste
Into a dreamland, full of shapes and sounds
And echoes of my day, that have the taste
Of thought. My mind appears to have no bounds
Except for this: it will continue on
Thinking no matter where my thoughts have gone.