G'wan

Endings are beginnings too, you know;
Nothing's ever final until death.
And even then who knows where we might go?
As long as you are here and drawing breath,
The road goes ever on; the waypoints are
But roadsigns, and they all have backs to see.
So even if you choose to stop the car,
Get out and stretch your legs, there's going to be
A moment you restart, and keep on going.
Every point is part of the whole line,
And as you move along it it is growing,
Into infinity. So don't you pine
For what is past; look on and see the way
That opened up beyond from yesterday.

Village

Waiting sucks, I think you know
Especially when everything
Conspires as conjoined to bring
Your patience to a newfound low.
Time is the tool that made me so,
Tired and ready to unsling
My burdens from my back, and fling
Myself into the future. No,
I cannot do that, though I might
Desire to be passed on through;
Time sticks to me instead like glue
And what I wait for's out of sight.
Indeed, I almost think it spite
To have to wait for this and you.

Compuserve

What the hell computer? What the fuck?
Did I do that? I'm pretty sure not, so
I think it's you, and you're starting to suck.
At least you picked the perfect time to go:
Right when I'm writing. Thanks a lot. You know,
A bunch of circuits shouldn't have a soul,
But I'm sure that you have one, vile and low,
Seeking out my pain as your heart's goal.
When I first bought you, you were fresh and whole,
Ready for whatever I might do
Or wish to do; you filled your purposed role
And I was on the whole happy with you.
Now you're malignant, and you cause me pain
I think I ought to disengage your brain.

Stress or

Stress and creative urges rarely come
Together for me; one drives out the other,
And in the busy rush of daily hum
I throw poetic urges in the smother.
Only in gaps between the everyday
Can I find moments, stolen from the whole,
To push myself out of the smoky grey
And illustrate a version of my soul
With golden letters and a curlicue.
I try to make it happen, but I know
The realization of it's more to do
With her, and how I feel to her I owe
My happiness, than to my own success;
I am, by all my own accounts, a mess.

Routine

Sometimes old places can be best ones too;
There's nothing that's inherently not right
In going to a place night after night
And liking it. And there's a virtue to
Consistency, not foolish, no, but true,
Intentional, thought-out, solid, and tight.
We need not seek the shiniest new bright
Discovery: we can, and sometimes do
Like what we have - and what else is our love
But the inherent recognition of
A place worth visiting once and again,
Evermore returning ever more?
To which when we return (I do mean when)
We find ourselves increasing to adore?

Empty Sky

Empty skies are terrible - and rare.
For either moon or sun usually
Will for a crowning jewel appear there
And if they don't, the inconsistency
Is made up by the stars, or by the clouds,
Or by the birds that swarm into my view;
In their constituent distracting crowds
Each makes in many or at least in few
What moon and sun can do alone: fill sky.
For when they are all absent, then the world
Seems emptier and lonelier, and I
Am through abyss of space endlessly hurled
Unfriended and alone - until I glance
Downward and see on earth itself romance.

Surety

Some things are simply right
In every single way
The sun sunk into night
The moon at end of day
The trees in green and brown
The fields with golden crop
The glory, like a crown,
Striking the mountaintop
The white admixed with blue
Within the sky above
The fact that I'm with you
The fact that we're in love
Nature all these creates
And each the mind elates.

Tell No Tales

I wonder what it must be like to die
And then I think "oh what a foolish thought:
Death cannot be experienced - 'tis wrought
Of that which passes all the senses by,
And makes them useless. Dead men do not lie
In wooden caskets; they cannot be sought
Even in filled graves; nor are they brought
By hearses thither - only flesh does. Why
Ask what it's like? The concept is cannot be:
There is no likeness, for there is no mind
Left to explore the consanguinity
Between it and a feeling. Just a rind
Is left: the dead are not, feel not." And so
I guess at that I'll never get to know.

It kind of sucks to have her so damn close
And not quite here. I know it's not her fault;
It's simply the effect of heavy, gross
Elements in fate, of the gestalt
Of ages, that insists on making her
Pass through but not come by. There is no way
No matter how much each of us prefer
That there should be, for her to come and stay:
She must go on, must endlessly pass through,
And nothing we can say will alter that.
It's times like this the sky appears like glue,
And everything casts shadows that are flat,
For nothing is quite right, and I can see
That knowledge in the world surrounding me.

Kelp

I wish I could always be there to help,
Never just cheering on from far away,
But like a fixed and rooted bed of kelp
Watching a baby sea otter at play
I can provide some cover while you're here,
Make the sea bed attractive to your prey,
But never follow you. Once you are clear,
I can but watch and hope that you will stay
Safe and contented, while I stand and wave,
Wishing you all the best. I have no way
To move, or to from thence protect or save.
But unlike kelp, at least, I get to say
I love you, and I hope once things are sped
You will return and grace again this bed.

Zombie

Average days breed average responses.
Whatever's ordinary and routine
Will rear its head again, out of the sconces
In which such things are kept to lie unseen
Until they're needed: little pigeonholes
Inside the mind, from which, on such a day,
They peer back out, to mollify men's souls
With customariness. And well they may.
If every day required brand new thought,
Originality, zest, effort, verve,
Mankind would to its knees swiftly be brought.
Routine and custom by design must serve
To let our minds stew on the background issues
While we, in sniffles, just reach for the tissues.

Mixmatch

My days are long and slow to end
My hours trot along at pace;
The mismatch I can't comprehend
Between the plodding and the race.
Why does each hour wish to be
So quickly terminated? Why
Does every day so tediously
Remit itself to the night sky?
How can it be that in a day
The hours are a constant tide
And yet the pace at which they stray
Is so unequal from inside?
I fear the hours will outstrip
The days, and time itself will trip.

Grew In The Telling

A different audience, a different life;
With one, the sunny side, warmth emphasized,
Another only cares for pain and strife
And so those parts are always supersized,
A third, thinking himself more soul-complete
Wishes to hear a balance of the two,
And so he mixes sour into sweet
Keeping them even, from his point of view,
No matter what their balance might have been;
Some, met in passing, do not even hear
A tale, but just a mumbled word of spin
Caught in the tempest by a careful ear;
Each story differs with the listener
According to what he and she prefer.

Late Morning

A day is not a day without a morning
But morning need not come before the noon;
A time to sit, relax, and take in warning
Of everything that's going to happen soon.
Morning can come at 3pm, or later,
And need not end before the night has come;
It need not end before the day's equator,
Nor should noontide enforce it to succumb.
Rather, the day, whenever it may start
Needs preparation, and we call that time
The morning. Thus identified as part
Of every day, it needs no clock to chime
To tell us when it is, or when it ends:
Its termination on our needs depends.

Voids

The Internet deleted my first poem
And it has died, never to rise again.
I kept the seeds in mind, still to resow 'em,
But even so, the first one perished then
Never to be reborn, though I rewrote
A poem from the same idea, indeed
Much the same words. Whatever was the mote
Made that one a unique plant of the seed
Has passed away, and never will recur.
I mourn its passing, and I wish it well
Though it has passed forever, I am sure
And poems once discarded have no hell
Or heaven. It is passed into the spaces
Whereby our data ever interlaces.

Words Worth

I don't know what it is to not be me,
Not to speak thus, think thus, be thus. And so
When I consider I must someday go
And that myself with thereby cease to be,
I cannot bear with equanimity
The thought of non-existence. Though I know.
That I will change and alter as I grow
The self that grows still momentarily
Experiences me, even if I
End up as other than the self that started.
When that last self becomes dearly departed
The life I had will with this body die
And all that's left will just be in the mind
Of those who knew me - and who these words find.

Death's Head

I do not fear to die - I fear instead
To not be me - and who knows whether death
(Which I might look on with a greater dread
Where I made certain that a lack of breath
Should equal this) brings self-cessation? Sure
It seems it must - at least the self I know.
And though some comfort that it has no cure
Coming to all, and since we all must go
We might as well not fear it, I cannot
Accept that as a comfort. For to cease
No matter what discomfort I have got
Or look to have - I cannot think it peace.
A lack of pain, indeed - but peace requires
Knowledge of peace - which who has, who expires?

Anaesthetic

The pain of separation does not fade;
No, no, it lingers, 'til, in self-defense
The body robs the soul of every sense
And shuts the heart in an eternal shade;
The very means by which the soul is made
Aware of its surroundings is turned hence,
Made subject to some terrible immense
Division, and indeed sent retrograde
So that the heart can feel itself alone
And thereby be, perhaps, left unaware
Of what it lacks, lifting the heavy care
That otherwise would make it only groan.
But even this proves lesser than its task
For pain like this drills through the thickest mask.

Extension School

Some things cannot be done by distance learners:
It takes a presence to achieve those ends.
Even when other put on afterburners
Their extra speed can never make amends
For what they lack. You cannot, through hard work
Alone, achieve the same from far away;
I know I may come off here like a jerk
But it's just something that I have to say:
Being there matters. Nothing you can do
Can imitate or replicate the feel
Of being present, and it's always true
That something's lost out of what should be real
By absence. In some cases, that's not bad
But in some ways, it's permanently sad.

Far Far Away

A constant distance is a dreadful thing
Frustrating at best, at worse a crime
Robbing the heart of its accustomed time
And forcing loving thoughts to take to wing.
Love should be intimate; therefore, to bring
A barrier between which love must climb
While not insuperable, nor rigged with lime
To catch at love, is still disheartening
And therefore villainous. It is enough
That love must falter into human words
Harsh, half-thought-out, untempered, rough
Unmusical, antithesis of birds
But to insist on distance too is vile
Though love can flourish still across the stile.

Godhead

The great and mighty god, Desire,
Strikes all who do not bow down
With purple coruscating fire
From his blood-red ruby crown.
Those who bow instead of fly
Whatever might have been their reason
Kiss the ground and on it lie
'Til he chooses them in season
And then he raises them by hand
(Hands of pure electric charge)
And gives them his stern command:
Want, and to it wide and large.
But the least felicity
Comes to those he does not see.

Older

Just because it isn't yesterday
Doesn't mean I do not care as much;
Time slips and slides, it always goes away,
But some things feel beyond even its touch.
Time wears and sands at everything he grips,
And tries to make it all come back with him,
But sometimes that ambitious grasp still slips
Leaving some feelings with a fate less grim:
I love you, and I will still love you, dear
When time has let his icy fingers slide
Off many years - and I have little fear
He will wear off much more than our outside.
Age withers, but the mind alone grows old
And I, with you, refuse to feel time's cold.

Valentine's

I used to write long allegorical poems
Full of well-researched if apocryphal facts
That needed also long, expansionist proems
To have explained the reasons for all of their acts.
I did this when I had no reason to cease it
And all I did, I did because it seemed right.
But now I see no reason I should increase it
And after all for me, it has become trite.
So I'll just write a poem saying I love you
(As if I hadn't written so many before)
And that I'll be enamoured and loving of you
Far after this short poem has said I adore.
I love you, and I wish you weren't far away
But even so, have a Happy Valentine's Day.

Monday Snow

On days like this the sun may calmly shine
But it's a lie, because the snow is coming
Much like the quiet that I, by design,
Spread over lazy days to hide the humming
Of future plans turned over in my mind.
I always think ahead, even when I
Should really have slowed down and kept behind;
Like the false impression from the sky,
It's natural, and natural to hide.
Snowfall comes on warmer, open days,
Just as my plans must gestate deep inside
On lazy ones, in a pretended haze.
The best ideas I have will come and go
In sudden showers like an unwarned snow.

BNL

It wouldn't matter where I was
If I could simply be with you
But handsome is as handsome does
As my old Gaffer said - it's true.
Since I'm not with you anyhow
And you are very far away
It's best that I am here right now.
Though that might change another day,
I can but work with circumstance,
And make the best of what I can
Despite unlucky happenstance
That separates us with the span
Of miles and days. Therefore, for me,
A second-best will have to be.

Laze

You ought to be here now, I'm pretty sure;
It would feel right, and that's enough for me.
Instead I have to awkwardly endure
The weeks of separation, when to be
Apart from you is boredom, emptiness,
A path to utter laze, where nothing matters,
And what should matter seems to matter less
Than nothing, where the void self-chatters
Chirping away unheard and unregarded.
The progress that I make when you are here
Is, when you leave, decisively retarded,
And all that once was bright seems dark and drear.
But soon I'll be with you, if not now, then,
And when I am, purpose will come again.

SImiles

It's strange that I could never know it's snowing
Given the fact that everything outside
Is white. But there's no earthly way of knowing
Without a line of sight; and I can hide
Within my chamber with the blinds drawn down
Until I feel the need to venture out
Which is so seldom. If the world should drown
In white, white snow, I would, there is no doubt
Have no idea of it. I happy in my room,
If ignorant; but sometimes that's a danger:
I must, as children do, exit the womb,
And find what I discover there is stranger
Than I imagined. All is wet with snow
And like a baby, I don't want to go.

IM

I miss the contours of your face, the way
Your smile quirks up at the end, and how
You aren't symmetrical. The shadows play
Across your face in ways unmirrored now
By bland emoticons in gchat. Eyes
Are neither dots nor commas. Colons fail
To do you justice, and the symbol lies
That claims to represent you, like the grail
Made beautiful with gold and gems. Your face
Is far more beautiful than any icon,
And all your added quantity of grace
Lies deep beyond even the grasp of Nikon,
Much less mere symbols, generally drawn:
Yet on such symbols I, for you, still fawn.

Pandora's Box

The silence can be deafening inside:
Cliche, I know, but accurate enough.
An empty room is difficult to hide,
Even if you fill it up with stuff.
The hours alter in their separate spheres
And go all willy-nilly at a pace
I can't predict; a moment feels like years,
(And it feels years since I last saw your face),
But then an hour goes by who knows where.
The room is bright, the music's on, yet all
The busyness makes insubstantial air,
And I am in a void, about to fall.
When you are back, or I am there, there'll be
A lot more of my past solidity.

Traveling Players

It's strange to be alone again so soon
After such length of unabsential time;
I find I sing a very different tune
When out of choir, when I cannot chime
A harmony against another voice:
Instead my monody clangs discords out,
As well it should - it has no other choice
For discords fit what this song is about.
My solitariness does not fit me:
It is an illmade suit, bad in the shoulders.
I wander purposeless and lonelily,
My proper path obscured with rocks and boulders.
I look for time to bring her back, and then
Make us sing harmonies along the road again.

Placement

I do not doubt that I will miss this place
When I have left it, nor that I will sigh
To think of living here. Life leaves a trace
Upon the soul, which lingers by and by
Beyond the limits of mere presence. Stay
In one place long enough, and it will feel
Homelike if not a home; then go away,
And thinking of the past will be unreal:
A ghost life peopled by a thousand thens,
Always remembered in extreme extremes,
Alwayses, I wishes, not agains,
The conurbation of unended dreams.
But even as I'll miss this place, I know
There will be someday I will have to go.

Stalkerfeed

I know so many things I shouldn't know
About the people that I've barely met
But friended, since, y'know, we used to go
To school together, or, that one time, we
Hung out, just once - and thus the Internet
Believes we ought to still stay close. I find
It isn't all that bad; it's nice to see
Peripheral friends' doings. I don't mind
Them knowing what I'm doing,; why should I?
But it's still awkward sometimes knowing they
Broke up, or he's still always, always high
And never say a word to them. A grey
Area exists between our friends
And where our facebook bond of knowledge ends.

Compose the hours in a looking glass
Reversed: imagine them from twelve to one,
And as in retrospection they all pass,
Consider what in each you should have done;
How every moment on the prior leans
And what failed late was undone in the morn;
How what was left aside in later scenes
Seemed possible before; how thoughts forlorn
And unsupported as the sun went down
Were gay and lively when it rose before;
How muscles twitched into a deep dark frown
That had been smiling ere they ended sore.
Having considered this, reverse, and try
To give those melancholy thoughts the lie.

Lack

When she is gone time, which had slowed, speeds back
To full past full speed and it sweeps away
The million purposes of everyday.
Those, which had been in hiding, from her lack
Had thought to push their way from red to black,
But find themselves instead skipped over. They
Are missed: for in their presence was the way
To justify her absence, and the slack
It introduced. Instead the days are gone,
The time, no longer useful, goes to waste,
And what a minute with her had embraced
Becomes a week of sense. I think upon
The time with her, and what were then but hours
Are years to me, in sense, awareness, powers.

City Winters

There is a certain chill the city knows
And not the country: when the pavement aches
With emptiness, and even puddle-lakes
Across the drains are frozen; when the snows
Have passed beneath the plow and black ice glows
Obscenely in the streetlights; when the quakes
Of passing trains or buses throw their wakes
In crackling ice; when every streetscape flows
Into a wind tunnel of freezing air
Swept forward, ever forward by the height
Of every building; when the winter's night
Leaves dead raccoons without a living heir.
Those nights are lovely times to be outside
Because the muggers also choose to hide.

Them's the Breaks

Let day divide from night, and time destroy
The interaction between light and dark;
Let all the world be emptied of alloy,
And every difference be boldly stark;
Let nuances be broken into pieces,
Complexities reduced to binary,
Rough wheels and bearings robbed of helping greases,
Rigidity imposed on those that vary,
Coffee and milk unstirred, sweets undissolved,
Food reuncooked, solders reunmixed,
Philanthropists all quickly self-involved,
And empathy and sympathy both nixed:
Call all this good, and villify the merge
I would still join with you against this urge.

Swirligig

Time is inconstant and invariable
At once; it will not run in common ways.
It moves as it decides, and is as variable
As it desires it should be. A haze
Descends on me, and I believe the hours
Have disappeared as quickly as they came;
It lifts, and I am certain that my powers
Can subdivide a second, give a name
To halfborn instant moments atomized.
All swirls about, and everything is strange,
And yet the time goes on, as unsurprised,
Unchanged as ever. It can never change,
But never is the same; its alterations
Play havoc with my ratiocinations.