Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Seattle

This is somewhere special. I have known
Other places I would like to be,
And always wondered if the place I'd grown
Was really different, or just to me.
But every time I come here I look out
And see the city green and welcoming,
Full of the wonders I have thought about
While otherwhere and always wondering
If they were real, and I remember then
That there is really nowhere else compares
Nor will there be another one again.
My city laughs at doubt, and frankly dares
Another city to pretend to share
The greenery, the shops, the wet fresh air.

Here

We have flown.
It is best
Not alone.
Going west
Wet and slow
Rather late
Still we go
To my state
Where we find
Family
Peace of mind
Comfortably
So I hope
Or we'll cope.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Adhesion

I will be with you
Very shortly dear
And then we from two
Will become one, adhere
And stick together for
A little while; thus
We're both less and more
By becoming us
Less because we are
Two turned into one
More because by far
We can have more fun
When we're one than when
We turn two again.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Watcher

My mind is quiet, watching everything
And yet not silent, for it mutters low
The lyrics to the songs that it would sing
Were not it watching nature's greatest show.
For were the world not placing in my sight
The beauties of a world made all of shine
Helped by the evening's orange exotic light
I would embrace the night and call it mine
With song and dance, with poetry in motion,
Chaotic whirls and trills of vocal grace
Expressing that compressed form of emotion
That stems from being in a canny place
But oh such music now would break the spell
This sight put on me as the rain still fell.

Wintry Mix

The gloomy sky reveals the gorgeous city;
The streets are fogged with almost ice half rain
But every surface glitters. All is pretty,
The ugliness, the brokenness, the stain
All filtered out by a soft focus patter
That streams in floating spirals from above
Giving an obliquity to matter
So all is slantwise, off the kilter of
Normal existence, shunted to a place
Higher and better than the mortal sphere
Where heaven's principalities may trace
The frost upon a windowpane, where mere
Human concerns seem distant and obscene
For all is cloaked in an eternal sheen.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Control

Life is always better when with you
It doesn't matter what you control for
It only makes me want you more and more
Whatever and however I may do. 
Whenever I do something that is new
Or even something I have done before
I wish that you were there, or I could store
The action and replay it for you too.
I do not mean I want to steal your space
Or make you subject to my every act
But simply that you make whatever place
You're in a place I like....and that's a fact
Wherever you may be, or stay, or go
Statistically significantly so.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Total

Sometimes the day just vanishes. Today
Was not that sort of day. I know just where
Every minute went, and that's OK,
Even though I know I ought to care
How long I waited for a bus to come
How long the walk was when the bus was done
How long the other waits became in sum
How long it took me when I had to run
Because despite the way the day went by
And all the blank frustrations it provided
I still know where it went, and I know why,
Which is much better than a day elided
Even when that day is not frustrating -
Paying attention can be quite elating.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Placing

No matter where I am I'm always in
The wrong place at (what I call) the right time.
There are so many places I can't win,
And nothing moves with reason or with rhyme.
If I were that city, I would be
Exactly where my heart demands I should;
If I were in another, happily,
Some things would happen that I know are good;
If I am here, then I will do my part;
If there, I'll do another needful thing;
If elsewhere, I can listen to my heart;
If everywhere my nerves at once would sing
And I would cry out for the miracle.
But even then, I am a bit satirical.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Fronting

Yeah, it's still cold here. Don't pretend
For even just one minute that
The front is coming to an end
For if you do I tell you flat
The cold will knock you on your ass
And freeze it off, to teach you to
Knock off that silly sassafras,
That optimism, like you knew
Somehow how long it ought to go.
No, it will stay here as it pleases
Until at last it brings us snow
Or hell despite of all flame freezes
Or by good luck, which I much doubt,
It simply warms and we get out.

Brrr

It is ten degrees outside
I refuse to venture out
If I did, without a doubt,
Freezing wind would tan my hide.
So instead, I stay inside,
Listening to wind without,
Pouring tea from a teaspout
As I comfortably abide
Far enough (the wall is thick)
From the dreadful out of doors
Where the ice makes all turn slick
Slicker than linoleum floors
Where I walk with sock-clad feet
In my permanent retreat.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Chicago Chattering

They said it would get cold enough to freeze
The diesel in the engines of the buses;
They said the cold would be like a disease
Infecting everything. But what nonplusses
My otherwise accepting mind is this:
Why is it that the cold waited 'til now?
Not that I'm sorry all these years to miss
The pain they promised me would come (and how!)
But rather, why, given the record past,
Were these last three years warmer than before?
I fear the cold that comes now may not last;
The world is ever warming, more and more,
And though the cold has come again tonight
Too soon forever it will take its flight.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Warts

The panic that sets in when things go wrong
Lodges deep in the spine, and will not go
Though everything should be resolved in song
(As in the musicals we love and know).
No, terror deeper than the furthest sound
Will bubble upward for a week, or more,
Whenever palliatives are not around,
And leave you panting, or curled on the floor.
Self-medication (sugar, salt, and fat)
Can have a little positive effect,
But if you try to go further than that,
The cure is worse than what it will affect.
And so I shiver: though the cause is gone,
The panic lives to see another dawn.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Daytime

The morning is a time I don't respect.
That doesn't mean I will not live therein,
But rather that I rarely will elect
To let my precious waking day begin
Before the blessed noontime hour comes.
Who wants to see the sun slink up the sky,
Hear how the universe awaking hums,
And bid the moon a fond, but firm, goodbye?
I'd rather wake during the heat of day
And wander out after the warmth has passed;
Letting the sunny hours pass away
To watch the red sun sink downward at last.
So let the afternoon be everything
I only want the nightingale to sing.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Travel

I love to dream of cities far away
And how I'll travel them, and wander through
Streets and parks new seen, or seen anew
After a distant while; skies of grey
Parting to show a cityscape now fey
Now modern, now exotic...tell me, who
Resists such charms? I cannot say I do.
I love a town built for a yesterday
But living in the now, or one burnt down
And built again so recently it shows;
Anywhere can be my kind of town,
Whether the night with half-burnt fire glows
Or sleeps as quiet as a morphine hound
Peaceful out upon the cold hard ground.

Tea Ceremony

The delicate and golden tea
That falls in little liquid strands
Into my mug, enriches me
And so my universe expands;
My mind is comforted, and so
The world outside seems dearer now
As if it all were mine to know
The tea does this, I don't know how
It also takes whatever harm
May have befallen me before
And makes it fall away - this charm
I do desire more and more
As night has settled on my mind
I drink my tea, and it is kind.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Angel Light

Strange is the day
Stranger the night
When, come what may,
A spot of light
Will shine so far
That you can see
A distant star
So easily
That wishes can
Be thrown thereto;
The heart of man
Will hold the view
And treasure it
Ere it can flit.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Lines

There's momentary panic when you hear
The wrong announcement from the leaving train
A burst of worry intermixed with fear
That somehow you have mixed up what was plain
And ended heading in the wrong direction,
So you must scramble past the closing doors
To rectify your failure of selection
Before you're borne to distant, useless shores
From which it is a terror to return.
Your heart is racing, and your mind opaque,
Something internal wants to lurch and burn,
And you are praying you can somehow make
Your way off of the train. Then you conceive:
You heard the other train about to leave.

Inpocalypse

Every voice is raised against itself;
The ear refuses to admit the sound.
What's rational is placed upon the shelf,
The inner reptile is now unbound,
Allowed free reign across the body's strength
The thumb opposable, the mind creative,
Allowed to stretch itself to its full length
And play with talents never native
To its own evolution. All is wild,
Whatever was once sacred is profaned,
The self returned to what's before the child
And in that former history arraigned
To face the past as judge of what has come.
It does not like the thing it has become.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Futuristic

You take your exam
I will be right here
Exactly where I am
Waiting for you dear
Doing my own thing
As I'm wont to do
Waiting for your ring
So I can go to you
And we will both go far
To visit where I'm from
Instead of where we are
Where all is cold and glum
(Except for Louisville
Which doesn't feel a chill).

Humbugs

It's lonely here, although
It's properly my home
But when I come, I know
I'd really rather roam
Specifically to you
Wherever you may be.
However, I must stew
And sit here lonelily
Enjoying where I am
But missing where you are
Wishing I could scram
But you are just too far
My work means I am here
And you are far I fear.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Blech

I hate leaving
It's a pain
So bereaving
It's insane
Useless, boring
Frustrating
Underscoring
How waiting
To return
Someday seems
Like a slow burn
Or waking dreams
Endless and
Dumb and bland.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

L

Tetris is her bag, and she is good
Maybe not as good as her dad is,
But then again, I really think she could
Be up there if he hadn't had gee whiz
All his adult life playing more than her.
If she were in her fifties and had played
The game from now 'til then, I might prefer
Her odds against him. As it is, to grade
Her down for losing by some fifty lines
Over five minutes of intensity
Is too unfair. She's showing all the signs
Of skill, made serious by fixity
And willingness to go the extra mile
Playing handheld Tetris all the while.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Louisville

The city darkling will not show its lies
But shrouds them in an absence of the light;
A city where a dollar sometimes buys
More than enough to sink you out of sight
Hastens the process, dousing every fire,
Letting the moon and stars alone be guides
Leaving the only flame a heart's desire
From which the truth of things too often hides.
Each house a castle inwardly is lit
But shadows its illumination out
Within which half-seen visions darkly flit
Leaving the very view of them in doubt
So all is dark; each island lit refuses
The common good, so evil always oozes.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Skyfall

The sun above the clouds was visible
And did not dazzle the onlooking eye
Indeed the thought it might was risible
For though it might be monarch of the sky
It looked like molten copper, brownish-red
Against the gray-white foreground of the cloud
Like looking on a penny that could shed
Reflected light off of a lamp. Allowed
By nature's odd caprice to stare up straight
And see the sun directly as I might
I took advantage of this strange estate
And bathed myself in its weird cupric light
Wondering if being so would change
Something in me to match how it was strange.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Winter

Sky is clear;
Crisp, the air.
But I hear
From somewhere
Whistling wind
Through the trees
Whose leaves, thinned,
Touch the breeze
Softly sighing
As it passes
Through the dying
Leaves; the gases
Bring the chill.
All is still.

Zoomzoom

My mind is hurly-burly
And I cannot make it stop
For it keeps itself all whirly
In a permanent bebop
When the mind is always racing
And the eyes are feeling strange
And the heart rate is outpacing
A test pilot on the range
Then the minutes turn to hours
But the hours are too short
And you don't have all your powers
And you can't seem to abort
So the day is simply odder
And the mind is daydream fodder.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Watcher

I love the winter when it stays outside
And I can watch it frost the windowpane
Then grab some tea and watch the snowflakes glide
Onto the parking lot below. I crane
My neck and see the footprints in the snow
Recent enough to not be covered by
The drift, where garbagepeople come and go
Until the snow has grown two inches high
And parking is illegal. Still I sit
Beside the window watching all this pass
Observer of the world, not part of it,
Still parked upon my self-recumbent ass.
I might go out someday, but I hope then
The warmth of spring will have arrived again.

313 Days

The snow won't fall
We wish it would
We'd like to call
And wish it good;
Tell it we miss
Its white-grey tinge
How it would kiss
The window's fringe
How we would walk
Beneath the trees
And never talk
Lest our lips freeze
We miss most though
Old Chicago.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Arctic Circle

The days that slip away were never there
A day is after all, for modern man,
A mere construction, made of light and air
Conjured from the vents, and not a span
Of daylight or of night. Who sees the sun
Set in the west and says the day is gone
When less than half his waking time is done?
Who in the east looks up to see the dawn
And says the day has started when his work
Made him wake up an hour or two before?
Thoughts like the sunrise may still sometimes lurk
Deep in our minds, but still the day is more
And somehow less than nature'd have it be;
My day has passed without a sun to see.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

2013

2013 is here to stay
At least, it will be for a year
Or just a little less today
And less tomorrow still, I fear;
So time runs out as we stand by
And do not halt its constant pour
(Though honestly, I can't say I
Know how to stop it, and what's more
If I had such a power, who
Would trust me to possess the same?
No it is better passing through
And not accumulating blame)
And we just watch, and it goes on
I may be watching still at dawn.