Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Large

Looking at the drinks they sell
How many more today are large
Because the sun smokes down like hell
Or as on Cleopatra's barge
Burning the waters. How much more
On such a day does everyone
Desire to be quenched, and store
A little liquid up? The sun
Like a creditor demands
Consistent payment, so we must
If we stay out, and in its hands,
Keep our liquids in a trust
Refilled forever; so we keep
Buying the large and drinking deep.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Bright Lights

The city at its ease is a delight.
We are all happier, and thus much nicer
Ready to think our fellows are alright.
At such a time a wondering circumspicer
Might think the city was a heaven, made
By man for man, to better all his ways
And yet there still remain some spots of shade
Hidden somehow from nature's shining rays.
The old man on the corner slumped and sad
The cardboard sign beside him ripped and torn
Telling of the diseases he has had
And all ills that he through time has born.
And as we pass along our merry way
He should not be obscurèd by the day.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Facefirst

After today I'm buried in my brain
Somewhere down there under all my thoughts
And there until I'm rescued I'll remain
Covered in neurons like a leopard's spots.
I am immersed in all I can conceive,
Unable to move on beyond my mind
Thinking about the things I half-believe
And what I don't, but to which am resigned.
There's some thoughts here I hardly have considered
Since I was small, and still remain untapped
And others over which I have so dithered
That they by metathoughts are fully wrapped
And I am stuck heardfirst into them all
I barely hear the world outside me call.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Topic

You are the cause and topic of my joy
In you I find a source of all that's good
Smiles that linger, sweets that do not cloy:
The sunlight dappled on a wellknown wood,
The sky bedotted with a cloud or two
Just enough to make the sunshine seen,
The sea just rippled so it's white and blue
And covered with an iridescent sheen,
The mountain rising up behind the city,
Dominating but not threatening,
The birds imagining a newborn ditty
Which they, in chorus, will proceed to sing
These joys are but partial components of
The happiness inspired by your love.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Self-motivation

Some days its brutal work to make the brain
Ease into effort, and then into motion;
It takes a kind of academic pain
To change the tide of one's own mental ocean,
Which would but ebb and flow beneath the moon
Not heeding our mere mortal Canutism;
To make the tide of thought dance to our tune
Requires an emphatic optimism
Joined to a certain willful disbelief
In all we have self-learned in all our days
Thinking we can turn a newer leaf
Without the springtime to provide new rays.
But we can do it, if we tell our mind
To disregard the facts that it will find.

Paradoxicality

If there were nothing left to do
But sit around the house all day
I would get bored. But it's not true:
There are some things get in the way
And when that's so, I find I will
Laze happily all day and night
At my ease, immobile, still
Without a scrap of work in sight.
So while I can procrastinate
I find I do, until nightfall
But if I have no work to wait
I wish that I could do it all.
It's only in the empty haze
I do not wish to sit and laze.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Productivity

I do not know how to produce
The product that I am expected
To by some magic introduce
Into the world, when self-directed.
When others tell me what to do
I must admit, it's easier
But then of course, to follow through,
I have to work myself. Infer
From this the fact that I may be
Inefficient anyway
Despite what others give to me,
And you will see that, come what may
I do not think I can create
The things I ought. Commiserate!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Zzz

Sometimes the brain just takes a short vacation
And won't respond to anything you think.
Don't ask me about any implication
Of how I think without my brain - I'd sink
Into some intricate, elaborated
Sillily complex absurdity
Until both you and I were fully sated
With my struggling attempt to be
Logical (which I am truly not).
Instead, just think with me - at times the brain
Refuses to cooperate - it's hot,
It's cold, there's something to complain
About, and it just won't behave. Instead
You end up with a tired, empty head.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Inadequate

Yeah, I don't know what to say
It's hard to think of it right now
I think about how yesterday
Or earlier, if you allow
I wouldn't have imagined this
Could ever come to be at all
And now...I guess I really miss
The time before this sort of fall
If there was really such a time
Which I'm not certain of - but still
It feels like things turned on a dime
And won't go back. I hope they will
But things like this don't disappear
No matter what I say, it's here.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Mega

Not in service buses are the worst
When you excitedly arrive and see
Three buses waiting. Then you check the first
And then the second finally all three
And see the blinking sign illuminated
Those three unchanging words, now making nine:
Not in service. I have rarely hated
Inanimation quite so much. It's fine
To see the wrong bus, with its sign correct
For other places I don't wish to go
But to see all of them so imperfect
As to be going nowhere...that is so
Frustrating that I uselessly will curse
Wishing them that are the worst much worse.

Rolls

Thunder rolls
Lightning flashes
Bell-like tolls
Giant crashes
Blinks of light
Stabs, still glowing
Brilliant night
Magic showing
Instantly
Through the sky:
Why can't we
Like it, fly?
Hubris. No,
We stay low.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Tide In The Affairs

There are some routes you cannot steer
Where every finger on the helm
Counterproduces, as you'd fear,
And threatens quick to overwhelm
Whatever motion was desired
And take the ship aback, thus breaking
The course you thought you had inspired.
But there are still some ways of making
The ship stay true upon its course:
You have to hope the wind stays true
And blows with constant, even force,
The sea stays calm enough to blue,
And fortune smiles. Then you might
Find your hopeful course aright.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Red

The drums, the drums, the drums down in the deep
Echoing whenever our noise ceases
Threatening the peace that we would keep
Disturbing it and tearing it to pieces
With sharp stacatto arhythmatic beats
Thrown hurlyburly upward at our minds;
Our own light music loops us and repeats
Desperately onward, but at last it finds
The drums cannot be stopped. They will still come
And all will be devoured in their wake.
Silence is precious, as the beating drum
Tests just how much our weary souls can take
And with each rap we feel the coming doom
As in our very sleep the drumbeats loom.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Moar

More time is always better time with you
Except if something terrible occurred
And we then come together as you do
After the dreadful storm to try and herd
The flock back to the cote. But even then,
If something horrible has truly come
I'd rather be with you than be, again,
Alone and wondering if maybe some
Horror had befallen you as well.
No, it is always better if you're here,
Even if here were a kind of hell
Unless my wishing made you come, my dear,
In which case I would wish you heaven-borne
Not left with me down here to sadly mourn.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Distraction

The patience that I have is almost gone;
Why must my brain torment me thus? What good
Comes out of thinking always on "I should"
And never on "I can"? No, never on
The possibilities that might be drawn
Out of the present, always that which ought or could
Have been or someday be. I wish it would
Be sensible, and not forever fawn
Over the past and future. What about today?
What can I do right now? I cannot tell
Because my brain is stuck another way
And will not focus. Still, all may be well;
I'll write down what it says I ought to do
And when the time comes, try to make it true.

Friday, April 12, 2013

{0}

Again the ether seizes on a post
Makes it exist where it had not before:
An electronic, digitalized ghost
Drenched not with protoplasm or with gore
But with the bits of TCP/IP
That will not let it rest in emptiness
But draw it into half-reality.
I may have made it once, I do confess,
But thought it gone, discarded, made away;
To have it haunt me blank is near unnerving
And since I know that I must let it stay
I try to find a way to be deserving
Of something other than its condemnation;
And so I make it whole, by innovation.

Woah Woah

There is a comfort that surrounds me when
She comes around; a kind of blanket that
Flies over and envelopes me again
Each time I see her. I cannot give a pat,
Simple explanation, but to say
My mind grows easy, and my shoulders let
A little of the tension of the day
Out of their joints, and I can then forget
The pains of living, and instead be me
A better me than I am without her.
It comes with automatic constancy
And there is nothing I need to do to stir
This feeling; only let her in, and sigh
With my contentment that she's finally by.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Battlements

I used to be a wise man in my way
But now I find that wisdom is but folly;
The baling that I thought I did to hay
Has sprouted thorns, and turned out to be holly.
My sad attempts to prove that I was jolly
Have proven false, even as they were made,
And I from happy am grown melancholy
As joy and wisdom both together fade.
But though disheartened, I am not dismayed;
I am still certain all will come out well
And though the bonds of life may have been frayed,
I will restore them, ere I go through hell.
So though the past has crumbled in my hands
I still build castles in the future's sands.

Cloud Cover

It seems as if the world has drained away
Into a hospitalic gray, surrounding
All I can see; the sort of shade that may
Insulate the soul - a cosmic grounding
Against whatever might still lurk outside.
Or maybe it's a sign that we are taken
Away from where we usually abide
And after we have slept we will awaken
In some fantastic land, another realm
Where physics and astronomy are gone;
The most unlikely things will overwhelm
Our senses, and we will not wish the dawn.
Or maybe it's just clouds. But who needs that?
Crazed speculation's always where it's at.

Medium

The math of it can be addicting, no?
So many hits, so many different places
All somewhere in the world - maybe you know,
Maybe you don't, but somewhere, distant faces
Are watching what you write - even if they
Can't read the language, somehow stumbled there
From links supposed to go another way
They took a moment from their lives to stare
Even without intention, at a page
I placed, I wrote, I made. How can this be?
It is a simple marvel of the age
That I can write and others somewhere see
The private musings other ages kept
In private places, where they, unseen, slept.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Differences

A marriage is a strange thing to be planning
Or, I should say, a wedding. Marriage, less.
After all, a marriage plans on spanning
Decades of future life, but weddings press
All their activity into a week,
A day, an afternoon, a moment's bliss
And by constant compression ever seek
To push a year into a single kiss.
A marriage is a harder thing to do,
But has a lifetime in which to be done;
A wedding is a massive much ado
And barely lasts the transit of a sun.
To plan a wedding is thus full of fear
While marriages are calmer, year by year.

Tree

Slowly and surely grows the mighty oak
Unless, of course, the ferns can shade it out,
Or steal its water and obliquely choke
The grand tree's roots off of the waterspout.
Do not forget that even redwoods may
When they are little, be outshaded by
A shrub that grows before it in the day
And fail to find its energy, and die.
So do not think that underbrush is weak
Or that potential is assured to be;
Be certain of yourself, forever seek
To make potential real, and constantly
Refuse to rest on laurels not yet gained
Lest you should like the young oaktree be drained.

Feelings

I ought to care that Margaret Thatcher died
Because I follow all the chattering
That tends to talk of all that she implied.
But somehow I can't see her passing mattering
Except to those she loved, and who loved her
For whom it must be pain, despite her age
Which we should not forget. I wish it were
Truly momentous when we turn the page
On lives that are significant, but I
Cannot repress the feeling that, in truth,
The deaths that matter do not often die
At full extension, but instead in youth
Or middle age, or late, but by surprise
Not quietly in a hotel high-rise.

De Verba

To say I love is insufficient. No;
I love, am loved, exist suffused with it
As is a cherub by the holy glow
Of the Most High, beside whom they may sit.
I am no mere possessor of this love
Nor am I simply one possessed thereby
To mark the nature and condition of
My being is a futile task to try
Unless it be considered as a whole
All one, and all enraptured in the state
Of love, wrapped in it to the very soul
And far beyond that verb, a mere substrate
On which the true state's image may be shown:
Love is myself, and not merely my own.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Hobbiton

A hobbit-hole means comfort, yes indeed,
And wine, and tea, and crumpets piping hot;
It means good conversation, over seed-
Cakes, and a little bit of what is not
Present anywhere but in the Shire:
Good solid folk, all unaffected by
The world outside and all its sticky mire:
The evil tinging every view, the sly
Calculation that goes deeper than
The silver or the deed, and dives into
Darkness and dark action. In this, man,
Elf, dwarf, and all the other crew
Excel, beneath the glamour and the gleam.
Only hobbits are the way they seem.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Coffeetime

Caffeine and I are not the best of friends
Especially when I have eaten little;
I know the way this story always ends,
Yet have not changed my ways. No, not a tittle
Despite this. I am foolish, I admit
But everything is just so bright and clear-
So I, although I know I'll have to sit
Calmly sometimes, refuse to ever steer
Away, and let my body self-reset.
Instead I simply ride the caffeine wave
Which splashes me about and leaves me wet
And has not yet whirlpooled me to my grave
Even in the side-effects and crash.
So I must scratch, although I feel the rash.

Slow

The mind I have can only work so much
Except it really should be more than this.
But hey, I've done all that I need. As such,
The slightly more I can afford to miss
Until the day the more itself falls due
And my remission into laziness
Becomes its own reward, and turns the screw.
But until then, I really must confess,
I do not feel the need, and cannot make
My mind imagine that it ought to be
More pressured than it is for its own sake.
And so I wander through life lazily
Always so close to falling off the brink
That I can see the drop. It makes me think.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

City Lives

Some cities may possess a quality
That makes them feel familiar in the soul,
As if they held a superfluity
Of citiness, and bound attraction whole
Into the streets, the smells, the very air.
In such a city, I could walk for miles
And never cease to joy in what is there;
I could explore the canyons and defiles
Defined by cliffs of glass and steel, and walk
Down boulevards that lift my heart on high,
Hearing no language I could ever talk,
Or reading signs I cannot translate. Why
Would I desire to be elsewhere, when
I could be in that cityscape again?

Fantasy Novella

Queer is the world that bears such company
And strange the day in which I wish them here.
But odder still the way it came to be,
And yet more wonders are en route I fear.
So I will meditate upon the past
And bear my spirits up with former charms
Lest I should feel the dark and chilly blast
Of worry wash across me. Future harms
Cannot be voided by the mute appeal
Of my nostalgia, but may be reduced
And so I think of what I used to feel
And not what that in latter times produced.
Spare me from such companions, yet be sure
To spare me also from the threats they cure.

Blaze

The sun, no longer at its noontime height,
Still beats incessantly upon the road
And turns my eyes against their very sight
By pushing them into an overload.
I turn aside, only to see reflected
In every surface too much sun to see;
By which my eyes feel almost self-directed
To close themselves, for their security.
Yet even as I close them, purple flame
Mixed with a yellow fire, closes 'round
And everywhere is lit up just the same
As if my eyes had never gone to ground.
I cannot flee the sun, until at last,
The day falls down, and nighttime's spell is cast.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Relative

With every foolish thing I do
(And oh my god there are so many)
I try to find a point of view
That finds them serious. For any
Given act, or thought, there must
Somewhere in the multiverse
Exist a point of perfect trust
That thinks it necessary. Worse,
For every such existent point
A series of related ones
Claim that, though it is out of joint,
A chord of greater goodness runs
Through it, and makes whatever's done
Justified. Think this, and run.

Blech

I cannot work
I cannot tell
Why I should shirk
Except for - well,
The basic fact
(Regrettably)
Is that no act
Appeals to me
That any way
Resembles my
Work, so today
I simply lie
Unhelpful, still
Devoid of will.