Sunday, March 31, 2013

Simile

My love is like a stream
That flows unendingly
Or like the deepest dream
That is reality
Or like the open road
Forever rolling on
Unburdened by a load
Into the glowing dawn
Always ever changing
But never letting go
Of what it's rearranging
The path, the dream, the flow.
I love, and love will alter
Within itself - not falter.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Baggins

Day's end
Night comes
Lights lend
Their hums
To our
Noise here.
This hour
Is dear
To all
Street scenes
Nightfall
Now means
Day's gone
'Til dawn

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

One Man Show

In all my travels, one thing has been true:
The city glitters better with a friend.
It isn't bad to walk it end to end
Alone, and see it from one point of view,
But there is something that requires two
To have the best of it, as if to spend
Twice the attention was required to send
The proper signals outward, out into
The waiting world, which only signals back
When there are eyes enough peering around
To see that small plaque set down in the ground,
Or note the oddball spices on the rack
And properly enjoy. A solo city
Is oddly empty, though still always pretty.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Shares

Everything I do that I prefer
Or contemplate and think could be desired
I want to share with you; I wish you were
Always around when I become inspired
To feel with me the joy that builds inside
Experience elation as it grows
And let that shine out which we cannot hide
Or even if my highs become your lows
I'd like to know, and talk of it with you
To hear the reasons that you disagree
And find what you'd prefer we see and do
Whatever and however that may be.
Someday I'm sure. For now I'll have to wait
And share instead by gchat when up late.

Relate

Too many things that are exciting can
By clustering together, become less.
I start to lack the memory to pan
Across the past, and then words to express
The panorama thus revealed in time.
A single incident experienced at once
Can be presented in a set of rhyme,
And thus explained to any common dunce
But complex layers that occur in bunches
Can be so difficult to explicate
That I almost prefer when time uncrunches
And gives events time to luxuriate.
If everything occurred with time to tell
I think I'd tell my history quite well.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Gone

A day can pass without me realizing
There's a hard thought, when examined deep.
At first I don't believe it sounds surprising
For all of us have days we do not keep
Bound in the volumes of our memory,
But it is strange to never have writ down
The first draft of the day ere it could be
Bound up. Not every day can have a crown,
But something tells me each should be a peasant
Working its land, existing, breathing, living
Whether that life is terrible or pleasant
The fact of it should be there, unforgiving
And true. Although not everything's remembered
I am not sure one day should be dismembered.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Tinkatank

I'm never certain what I ought to do
When she's away, except that I should work.
But I can only work when work comes through
My mind, and that right now is a real jerk
That will not focus on what it should see
But dilly-dallies on more minor things.
I cannot force my productivity,
Nor the forgetfulness it always brings,
But must instead remember she is gone,
And know she will not saunter in the door,
But like the night when banished by the dawn,
It will be long until I see her more.
I would I could distract myself, but no
I always notice when she has to go.

Friday, March 22, 2013

March

March is a month that crawls for me
Through celebrations and spring break
But despite that eternity
I always feel when I awake
In early spring (March 20+)
As if the month had disappeared
On gone on a spring break from us
And left its schedule oddly cleared.
I feel as if my April sprang
Out of a February chill
And February has a tang
Of April's showers come what will.
So March, despite progressing slow
Is always rapid on the go.

Itself

A thing can't plan itself, I know
And yet I always wish it would
Because the planning is so slow
Though once it's planned, it should be good.
But plans aren't fire and forget
And must be followed carefully
So I must plan, and once it's set
I have to check it constantly
And who needs that? I would prefer
A world in which my plans self-made
And -executed, so they were
An automatic function all arrayed
To happen when I thought about
Whatever planning was in doubt.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

I90 Corridor

My cities are my life, writ large in steel,
Twisted around an elevator core,
Shining with glass, embodied, solid, real,
Recording everything that came before,
But also slipshod, lived, and temporary,
Erased like footsteps as the rain drips down,
Sometimes important, sometimes ancillary,
Composed of parts that bleed, inhale, and frown
And yet make something bigger than they are
Merely alone: that, though forgotten, join
All into one-steel, footstep, heart, and tar-
And make something that can't be bought with coin,
Or made by artificial or synthetic arts
Like cities lives are more than all their parts.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Upper

The sleepiness hides out behind my eyes
And worries its dark way into my brain;
It turns and hits me with a mild surprise
To realize the source of all that pain
Is simply that my eyes are open wide
And not extinguished as they ought to be;
I thought that it should be something inside
Some deep and twisted hurt or memory,
Or else a wound that I could see bleed out,
A sore, a scrape, a scratch to bandage tight
An ache, an ague, an arthritic gout,
Or something else to keep me up all night
But no, the very fact of wakefulness
Has strength enough to cause this pain and stress.

Monday, March 18, 2013

As It Goes

Let the light
Shine down on
All in sight
During dawn
Let the sky
Fill with sun
As on high
Noon is won
Let it fade
Into dark
As the shade
Fills the park
All day we
Are happy.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Let

A week like this is rare
I doubt 'twill come again
Though not beyond compare,
If you compare it, then
I think that which is fated
To be compared herein
Would be so decimated
It could not ever win
And so I am content
To think this week unique
And likely heaven-sent,
And therefore not to seek
To equal it, until
It happens without will.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Why

Why not be happy? I am often so
In many ways I barely can describe.
When she is near I always feel a glow
Of which, when writing, I am but a scribe:
The way I watch her as she's turned away,
The gleam her eyes take as she smiles at me,
The combined joy she conjures in a day,
The thrill of seeing her excitedly
Bounce on her toes and grin her face all bright,
Or cock her head and peer with widened eyes
And half-filled smile at some joyful sight
She sees with an appearance of surprise.
All these I watch for, and adore in her
And all make my own joy begin to stir.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Warmer

I feel the sympathetic fallacy
Calling to me, since the weather's changed
And what once seemed determined it would be
A cold and chilly winter is estranged
From any thought of what has come before,
Transformed into a sudden semispring
Makes trees begin to bloom and, what is more,
Allows me to walk jacketless and sing
A rising trill of imitating notes
Set against the birds who have returned
Who warble proudly from their red-rimmed throats
Of what they have, from primal instinct, learned.
So as the spring returns, and my joy too,
I think the weather also must love you.

w00t

I did not think I could be happier
But now I realize that I was wrong
And though I'm sure sometime life will get crappier
Until it does, I'll let it glide along
Into the happy place where all is calm
And nothing rises to disturb the peace
Where though no Gilead there is still balm
And warmth, delight, and humor never cease.
I will continue in that pleasant vein
Joy reaching to the uttermost in me
Far from the humdrum world of doubt and pain
Somewhere inside for all eternity
So though of course I will not always fly
Some part of me will stay up in the sky.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Wimp

The day of snow need not be feared
Though obviously is not preferred
For every day is double-tiered
In ways that often seem absurd
Inside is one whole universe
Abstracted from the weather map
Where though the outside may grow worse
It does not, cannot ever sap
The inner world, assuming all
Is functioning as it should be
The car as well (save it should stall)
Is its own multiverse for me
And so although it snows, I find
It is not snowing so's I mind.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Healing

Even when I am not well
I feel a comfort in this place
The kind of thing you cannot tell
Until you meet it face to face
That no amount of thought ahead
Can make you see, much less create
The kind that never is quite dead
No matter what the outer state
So here I feel, consistently
A kind of sympathetic power
Enfolding and surrounding me
Whenever stormclouds start to lour.
I am happy here, at rest
Even when I'm not my best.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Relativity

The sun does not cease shining without you
Though I'll admit it's cloudy in Chicago
Nor does the world enforce your point of view
(And I rejoice you are no such virago).
But though the earth and sky may not exist
Solely to impose your will and mood;
Though greater things don't care if you insist
Or quail before you ere they dare intrude;
Though physics operates despite your care
And chemistry continues unabated;
Though stars still shine despite your harshest glare
Nor are by your indignance enervated,
I still maintain your happiness, for me,
Creates a special relativity.

Counts

Time dilates irregularly when
The mind, and most the heart, is keeping track.
It will compress, and then expand again
Being at once extenuate and slack
For since I saw you first seems but a day
And since you chose me but a minute more
Still well I know it was not yesterday,
Nor yet a week, a month, a year before;
And it seems decades since we two first met
A lifetime, I would swear, since first we kissed
Yet I'm aware I'm not that ancient yet
And there is no time I have skipped or missed
Somewhere between both feelings truth must be
But both at once are coinfused in me.

Anniversary

A year has passed, another year
And still I always feel this way;
Your face is still as very dear
As it has been since that first day,
And even far before we were
(As I am ever glad we are)
Together, I felt my heart stir
To see your face, though from afar.
So now, though far apart, I know
Your smiling face can make me feel
Like sunlight set against the snow
Or moonlight shining down on steel
All twinkly outside and in:
My love is as it's ever been.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Quantity

I talk too much
You know it's true
It's always such
A thing to do
So easily,
With such aplomb
That now, for me,
It just feels dumb
Because I say
My piece, no matter
What others may
Prefer to chatter
Always I
Make silence die.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

With

It is a pleasure when I think of you
To think of all the things I know you like
And which of them I think you'd want to do
Right then and there, as if you had to strike
While some eternal iron was still hot.
I like to think of you as by my side,
Having the same perspective I have got,
Knowing which ways or methods I have tried,
And thinking with me, acting with me, being
My semi-constant and beloved companion
A second Coronado with me, seeing
The novel sight of some newfound Grand Canyon,
But being you, and so providing me
A different way in which to act and see.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Mixed

The days seem slightly pointless in their train
One after one another, ticking on
Mostly arrhythmic, pinging in my brain
In long or short tones, until each is gone,
Each different, but mostly more the same,
Until the better days shortly arrive
For which, I must assure you, I am game:
The days when I feel most of all alive,
When all the colors fade out of the black
Into their normal, more eccentric hue;
When all at once I fail to feel the lack
Of my invigoration, and of you.
For now the hours are but dull refrains
Until your presence brings new, haunting strains.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Store

I live a life of semiconstant squalor;
Not dirty, no, never unclean like that,
No clothing heaped up with a rumpled collar,
No grime, no bugs. But everything that's flat
Bears a constant burden: mostly books,
But also games and papers, mementos,
Computer hardware, tools for busy cooks,
And boxes, piled up in rows and rows,
Always exceed all the space pertaining
To normal storage, even when I buy
More than what seems enough for what's remaining.
Even then I pile to the sky
And watch whomever enters back away
With wonder in their eyes mixed with dismay.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Long

Longing isn't all that healthy, but
It's healthier, at least from where I am
Than never longing. After all, it's what
I have to do if I'm to give a damn,
And pure detachment is a deadly thing,
Poisoning with objectivity
A world to which we must, as humans, bring
A measure of interiority.
If we pretend that we are not ourselves,
Placing the parts of us that feel on high
Unreachable, unanswerable shelves
Where they can wither, we are fit to die;
But if we long, we wear our human hearts
Exposed as much as our external parts.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Recourse

I miss you like the summer would miss sun;
The wind, the air; the finger miss the hand;
The river, miss the course through which 'twill run;
The dune its self-component heaps of sand;
I miss you like horizons and sunrise
Would miss each other if the world stopped turning,
Or like a Happy Meal would miss its fries
Or printers' presses would miss proper kerning.
I could not miss you more except if you
Were really gone, and not just out of sight;
Then all the world would change its shade of blue
To black exceeding the Cimmerian night.
As long as that is false, I mope away
But in a cobalt blue despite the day.

Drifting

I wish that I could just breathe normally
Just in and out, without the stab of pain;
That everything was as it used to be
Before I started on this dull, sick drain.
I wish my head were not a cotton ball,
My mouth a desert, arid as the wind,
My nose stuffed up, my energy so small
I lie in bed just like a bug that's pinned.
I wish that when I went outside it felt
Like spring again, and I could breathe clear air;
I wish the world around me would all melt
And seem as it should be, open and fair.
I wish all this, but winter has its woes
And they will last as long as winter snows.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Forecast

Why go outside?
Why move at all?
Ill shall betide
Those who don't stall
And dare the snow
Which falls in drifts
And makes us go
Through streets in shifts
First one way, then
The other goes
Until again
It to and fros.
So I stay in
Where snow can't win.

Misseses

I miss so many things but most of all
The pure assumption that you'll be around
The thought that you are somewhere near to call
And if I look, somewhere you will be found
It doesn't matter where, so it is near
Accessible to me, and not so far;
It doesn't even have to be right here
So long as I don't have to take a car
Or Megabus, or plane, to get to you -
So long as normal effort can suffice
Then I am happier, and you are too,
For being close together is so nice
That we are better people when it's so
I miss that, and I thought you ought to know.

Friday, March 1, 2013

031

Frankly, your eyes should not be like the sun
And coral is a rotten sort of red
Snow White's anemic, nature made us dun,
And hair is rather wiry on the head.
Roses, no matter whether red or white,
Or even damask, do not grow on cheeks,
Or if they do with pain, and not delight,
While perfumes cover where the morning reeks;
I listen to you often, so I know
Your voice is yours, and not some music's sound;
And since the view is good, I watch you go
And know your feet stay where they should: the ground.
I've thought this over carefully (that's rare)
And you should know you're still beyond compare.