Wheres

I do not wish that you were here
The day outside is far too bleak
Ugly, and extremely drear,
And so it has been this whole week
No, it would be too bad to seek
Your presence here, and make you feel
The pain I feel. But I might tweak
That wish to say, with more appeal,
I wish I were with you, to deal
With all you much experience:
Which, though I know it can still keel
Over, and show some evidence
Of its own suckiness, I'm quite
Certain beats this ill-shaped night.

Thanksgivings

I have been blessed, my whole life through,

And nothing that has happened yet

Has ever been near equal to

The many aids I can't forget

The parents who, from childhood on

Were always there supporting me;

The teachers, up before the dawn,

Who taught enthusiastically;

The friends, forever in my heart,

Who made me feel included, or

Went further, so that on their part

I was another family; more

Than I can ever thank them all

They are all there, and heed my call.

Visions

My tired brain
Makes things opaque
Which should be plain
For goodness' sake
They ought to be
Bright, open, clear
But inside me
They turn, I fear
To odd, deranged
Exotic things
Somehow estranged
From what sense brings
To normal men.
I'm tired again.

In

I am back
In my city
On a track
White and pretty
Snow and ice
Nothing more
It looks nice
What a chore
To tread through
Coated ways
And into
Restless days
Work, not rest
Is now best.

Float

I am often hurried, though I feel
Much too serene to be so. It is strange
The business ahead never seems real,
Nor do the points across which it will range.
I float above, not quite insensible
To what goes on beneath, and yet almost;
Which is not wholly indefensible
But only if I am a sort of ghost,
A specter or illusion of myself,
Condemned to seem the whole, and yet not be,
His soul plucked off some high eternal shelf
To fill the insubstantial wraith of me.
If I am ghostly, then my life is haunted
By everything I am and all I wanted.

Map

There is a point - there always is a point
When where I am snaps into where I've been
When everything is suddenly in joint
And I can then, quite rapidly, begin
To slide the pieces carefully together
Each street or sidewalk in its proper place,
Connected by the necessary tether
To where it lives in my conceptual space.
Only when that happens can i stride
Into the dark secure in my own sense
That what is outer matches what's inside
And I am safe at least in reference.
Before the halflit streets were threatening
Now they are dim, and that's a different thing.

Face the Strange

Do not imagine I am less myself
When I am elsewhere than my normal haunts.
I do not shove my soul onto a shelf
With my collection of stuffed megadonts
To gather dino dust and be forgotten
Until the weight of time has made them stone.
No, I do nothing quite so misbegotten;
I am myself companioned and alone,
In warm familiar comforts and cold strange
Distant metropolises where I wander
Around their unrememberable range;
Myself no matter what I have to ponder,
Always at heart the same, and therefore true
To my eternal self, my life, and you.

Visitation

It's strange to go somewhere I like so much
Without you. Strange to walk alone these roads
Only imagining how you'd like such and such,
What would amuse you, what would give you loads
To tell our other friends about. I bear
Your presence with me, but that cannot be
A substitute for you. I often stare
At signs that signal where I know that we
Would turn because you wanted to, and sigh
Because you are not here to make me go.
I swear - you must believe - I really try
To photograph all these so I can show
Them all to you, but electronic means
Hardly amount unto a hill of beans.

Herest

Every place I go
She is here with me
In my soul. I know
Just instinctively
What she'd love to see
What would make her cry
Where she'd like to be
What she'd walk on by-
Also I know why,
What makes her that way.
She is always nigh
In my heart each day.
Someday, I hope, too
She'll be in my view.

Diagnosis

A world of white suggests, but does not show,
A snowfall imminent, or happening;
It could just be a mist, instead of snow
Settling through clouds that touch and cling
Seeming to make it white. But having trod
The ground outside, and seen it blow around,
Catch on the tendrils of the frozen sod,
Huddle in corners, glide across the ground,
And altogether act as snow should do,
I think it would be impudent and rude
To counterclaim against a truth I knew
And claim the white mist was not all imbued
With petal-snow, that falls in loops and whirls
And blows about in constant pellet-curls.

Teapot

I love the ionizing smell of rain
The confirmation that my sense was right
The clouds weren't scattering sufficient light
And it was coming. Umbrellas are vain
Against Chicago tempests, and they strain
Under a puff of wind - at such a sight
As this, a stormcloud putting drops in flight,
Each gust strikes them as if against the grain
And hurls them outward. Revel in the wet,
Do not pretend to shield it from your skin
For rest assured it will, it will get in
And soak your insolence. So therefore set
Your fond attempts aside, and say with me
I love the rain in superfluity.

A Part

Absence does not imply a lack of care
Nor does an empty bed deny the fact
Of love that loves although it is not there
And shares its heart although it cannot act.
A love that is continual and wide
Enough to stretch across both time and space
Ignoring where it happens to abide
To pull another love to its embrace
Can still be felt although from far away
And tucks a distant form in bed at night;
Its thoughts should not be ever said to stray
Out towards its object, for they are, by right
Always out there, and only stray back in
To wish that it were closer than it's been.

Lightless

Dark days feed darker moods.
The emptiness of light
Physically intrudes
On the weary sight
Bludgeoning the eyes
Unrelentingly
Until they cannot rise
And hesitate to see
The good that glistens there
In every photon flying
Believing them all bare
Insentiate and dying
The heart is dull and cowed
While the head is bowed.

Higher

The moment of creation is a drug
A million little hits add up forever
Building a tolerance up, slug by slug,
Requiring then more and more endeavor
To get the same damn high you used to get.
A couplet breeds a limerick, which will
In turn breed sonnets, octave and sestet,
And villanelles, and further verse forms still
Until the mind is covered in a haze
Of decomposing poems all arranged
In order to extract the high, and raise
The sluggard mind from where it's self-estranged.
Cold turkey only starts the cycle over
The mind's a subtly persistent rover.

Scalar

'Twould be a lie to say I do
Not care about the world outside
And yet although that isn't true
The pull of it I cannot hide
For truly I care less than I
Care for the world these walls contain;
For this small world I live and die
Its sorrows are my wind and rain,
And all the world without, though there
(And yes, important in its way)
Is not the focus of my care
For by this wind I bend and sway.
Outside is but the stars and sun
Inside my world beneath to run.

Lacuna

I did not miss this Valentine's
But other purposes and needs
Exceeded (as the flood exceeds
The river's course, and breaks the lines
By which mankind harshly defines
The channel, pushing past the reeds
Into the plain, and richly feeds
The pastureland beyond) the signs
By which I usually proceed,
And so I found myself not writing
In this space, although that day
Often is a time to read
Something novel or exciting
In a poetical way.

Mixed

I like just sitting next to you

Watching what you do and thinking

That falling isn't what I do

For you - instead it's more like sinking

Slowly down forever. Falls

Finish when they hit the ground

Like an aircraft when it stalls

Or was hit and now is downed;

Sinking can go on forever

Through the medium surrounding

Touch bottom simply never

Never breaking, never grounding

And our love is viscous, so

I will sink and it will grow.

Nightly

Sometimes thinking is a chore
Something my brain won't let me stop
But putters on forevermore
Skimming the chaff out of the crop
Disposing of the barley-meal
Leaving me only husks and rinds
As I attempt to sleep, I feel
The pressure empty yet it finds
A way, despite its oddity
Its merely psuedosentience
To keep awake and punish me
By making everything grow dense
Constricting that which ought to dream
Into a single, wakeful stream.

Otra Vez

Again the road lies out before
My jaded eye so I can see
The way I travel evermore
Into a clear eternity
The pavement crackles with the weight
Of all my futures rolled in one
A destiny is heavy freight
And sparkles in the midday sun
But even as I see the road
And ponder as I gaze, I find
It takes from me the heavy load
And eases my unrestful mind
Making all I have to do
Seem simpler than it started to.

Compuserve

Every hour that I spend
Here before my screen, I am
Wasting what I know will end
And seeming not to give a damn.
Hours are a resource we
Possess an unknown number of
And each I spend removes from me
Another hour I could love
An hour I could have embraced
The one with whom I am enamoured
Or bravely turned and boldly faced
My destiny, and never stammered.
All this I could, but I do not
I'm jammed into this little slot.

Memento Vivi

I want a way to make the world my own
Not changing it, exactly, but ensuring
Whatever I do matters: seeds I've sown
Grow up, and what they grow becomes enduring;
Acts that I do are not sunk deep in time
Wasted away and turned to nothingness,
But, like bold Shakespeare's monumental rhyme,
Blaze onward in a visible success
That will not fade until the stars grow cold,
The air is fogged with chemicals and death,
And mankind knows that it has gotten hold
With mortal sickness tinging every breath.
I want to make the world my own and be
Remembered for some thing eternally.

Days

Spending three or four days at a time

In different places, seeing different skies,

Listening to Southwest's announcement chime

Tell me my flight's delayed before it flies

Or Megabus slink slowly into town

Makes it rather difficult to say

Which time zone it should be when I get down.

I'm fairly certain it should be today

But you could sell me on tomorrow too,

And yesterday's a possibility.

I don't forget which town I'm passing through,

But sometimes it is difficult for me

To think of when I'm leaving, or for where

Until I've finished passing and I'm there.

Shangri-La

There is discomfort in a long horizon
That stretches on forever endlessly
I like my mountains making a disseisin
Stealing away the distance so I see
Their whiteclad tops or wooded flanks instead
Of endless flatness coming to a line;
A flat horizon lies out like it's dead
Give me a jagged range covered in pine.
I love to see the clouds dip down and touch
The hilltops or the mountains far away;
An infinite expanse is just too much:
I want to live beneath the mountains' sway
And see infinity but in the stars
Confined to earth it jangles and it jars.

Rolling Rock

It's crazy, but quite accurate, to think
I'm going to be leaving once again
Tomorrow - and again, in just a blink,
On Tuesday - always leaving, often when
The place has just become a comfort, too.
But always I am moving on, and on,
And keeping going in the way you do
By pure inertia. If another dawn
Sees me observe it from another place
What can I do? Momentum will not stop,
But will ensure the sunlight on my face
Strikes at a different angle as I flop
In a new bed each morning, and I take
A look at where I've chosen to awake.

Wait 5

Weather reports lack granularity
They say a day is rainy - what of that?
Seattle has, with regularity,
Half, or quarter, days of rain, which flat
Contradict, for half or more the day
The bland report that claims the rain is here
Yet overcast would also not repay
The forecaster, who would pay very dear
For every drop of rain that chanced to fall.
No, no, we need a forecast that can tell
The day drips slowly, but the rain is small,
Sometimes the sun breaks through. Or not. Oh well.
Such a forecast I propose to name
Seattle-like: when all is not the same.

Cloudbreak

There is no land like this
Except itself alone
The pine trees try to kiss
The sky but are outgrown
By mountains shimmering
Snowcapped beneath the sun
Or half-seen glimmering
Across the bay, each one
Distinct and yet together
A joint experience
A gift from modest weather
To give us evidence
The land is blessed, and we
Are blessed to stop and see.

Placed

I can't pretend I do not miss
The feel of her within my arms
The sudden magic of her kiss
The constant comfort of her charms
The way her face will turn to me
And brighten in that instant; how
She fits with me so naturally
Far more than fortune should allow.
No, I cannot pretend that I
Would not prefer she were still here
And yet before I start to cry
I think of what prevents a tear:
She's where she ought to be, because
It's where she can do what she does.

Adios

I can't believe you're leaving, but I could
Hardly believe you came this way at all.
I do not mean to say it wasn't good
Or that you often fail to heed my call,
But simply that between all sorts of things
I wasn't sure you'd ever really be
Right here with me - and therefore my soul sings
To know you were, and I am, finally,
Willing to accept, with heavy heart
The thought that you will leave so soon again;
You being here at all was such a start
I cannot be too sad. I can say when
Not if to your return, and therefore I
Can watch you leave and never sob, just sigh.

Feb 1

February springs into the air
As if it were the precursor to summer
Which, I must say, is not exactly fair
Since it should really show itself a bummer:
We know the weather will turn bad again
We know the rain and snow will both return
We know it will be cold, but know not when
And that someday the sky will become stern
Steelgray instead of blue - and therefore why
Should February on arrival seem
The first possessor of a blue clear sky,
The realization of our winter dream?
Rather, I beg, be honest and portray
The dreariness it will bring on its way.

Grandiose

My love is pure
And inundates
My heart, secure
Of what awaits,
Determined to
(Come what may be)
Be true to you
Consistently,
Sure in its own
Determination
That it has grown
By irrigation
By your own care
That love is there.