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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.