IM

I miss the contours of your face, the way
Your smile quirks up at the end, and how
You aren't symmetrical. The shadows play
Across your face in ways unmirrored now
By bland emoticons in gchat. Eyes
Are neither dots nor commas. Colons fail
To do you justice, and the symbol lies
That claims to represent you, like the grail
Made beautiful with gold and gems. Your face
Is far more beautiful than any icon,
And all your added quantity of grace
Lies deep beyond even the grasp of Nikon,
Much less mere symbols, generally drawn:
Yet on such symbols I, for you, still fawn.

Pandora's Box

The silence can be deafening inside:
Cliche, I know, but accurate enough.
An empty room is difficult to hide,
Even if you fill it up with stuff.
The hours alter in their separate spheres
And go all willy-nilly at a pace
I can't predict; a moment feels like years,
(And it feels years since I last saw your face),
But then an hour goes by who knows where.
The room is bright, the music's on, yet all
The busyness makes insubstantial air,
And I am in a void, about to fall.
When you are back, or I am there, there'll be
A lot more of my past solidity.

Traveling Players

It's strange to be alone again so soon
After such length of unabsential time;
I find I sing a very different tune
When out of choir, when I cannot chime
A harmony against another voice:
Instead my monody clangs discords out,
As well it should - it has no other choice
For discords fit what this song is about.
My solitariness does not fit me:
It is an illmade suit, bad in the shoulders.
I wander purposeless and lonelily,
My proper path obscured with rocks and boulders.
I look for time to bring her back, and then
Make us sing harmonies along the road again.

Placement

I do not doubt that I will miss this place
When I have left it, nor that I will sigh
To think of living here. Life leaves a trace
Upon the soul, which lingers by and by
Beyond the limits of mere presence. Stay
In one place long enough, and it will feel
Homelike if not a home; then go away,
And thinking of the past will be unreal:
A ghost life peopled by a thousand thens,
Always remembered in extreme extremes,
Alwayses, I wishes, not agains,
The conurbation of unended dreams.
But even as I'll miss this place, I know
There will be someday I will have to go.

Stalkerfeed

I know so many things I shouldn't know
About the people that I've barely met
But friended, since, y'know, we used to go
To school together, or, that one time, we
Hung out, just once - and thus the Internet
Believes we ought to still stay close. I find
It isn't all that bad; it's nice to see
Peripheral friends' doings. I don't mind
Them knowing what I'm doing,; why should I?
But it's still awkward sometimes knowing they
Broke up, or he's still always, always high
And never say a word to them. A grey
Area exists between our friends
And where our facebook bond of knowledge ends.

Compose the hours in a looking glass
Reversed: imagine them from twelve to one,
And as in retrospection they all pass,
Consider what in each you should have done;
How every moment on the prior leans
And what failed late was undone in the morn;
How what was left aside in later scenes
Seemed possible before; how thoughts forlorn
And unsupported as the sun went down
Were gay and lively when it rose before;
How muscles twitched into a deep dark frown
That had been smiling ere they ended sore.
Having considered this, reverse, and try
To give those melancholy thoughts the lie.

Lack

When she is gone time, which had slowed, speeds back
To full past full speed and it sweeps away
The million purposes of everyday.
Those, which had been in hiding, from her lack
Had thought to push their way from red to black,
But find themselves instead skipped over. They
Are missed: for in their presence was the way
To justify her absence, and the slack
It introduced. Instead the days are gone,
The time, no longer useful, goes to waste,
And what a minute with her had embraced
Becomes a week of sense. I think upon
The time with her, and what were then but hours
Are years to me, in sense, awareness, powers.

City Winters

There is a certain chill the city knows
And not the country: when the pavement aches
With emptiness, and even puddle-lakes
Across the drains are frozen; when the snows
Have passed beneath the plow and black ice glows
Obscenely in the streetlights; when the quakes
Of passing trains or buses throw their wakes
In crackling ice; when every streetscape flows
Into a wind tunnel of freezing air
Swept forward, ever forward by the height
Of every building; when the winter's night
Leaves dead raccoons without a living heir.
Those nights are lovely times to be outside
Because the muggers also choose to hide.

Them's the Breaks

Let day divide from night, and time destroy
The interaction between light and dark;
Let all the world be emptied of alloy,
And every difference be boldly stark;
Let nuances be broken into pieces,
Complexities reduced to binary,
Rough wheels and bearings robbed of helping greases,
Rigidity imposed on those that vary,
Coffee and milk unstirred, sweets undissolved,
Food reuncooked, solders reunmixed,
Philanthropists all quickly self-involved,
And empathy and sympathy both nixed:
Call all this good, and villify the merge
I would still join with you against this urge.

Swirligig

Time is inconstant and invariable
At once; it will not run in common ways.
It moves as it decides, and is as variable
As it desires it should be. A haze
Descends on me, and I believe the hours
Have disappeared as quickly as they came;
It lifts, and I am certain that my powers
Can subdivide a second, give a name
To halfborn instant moments atomized.
All swirls about, and everything is strange,
And yet the time goes on, as unsurprised,
Unchanged as ever. It can never change,
But never is the same; its alterations
Play havoc with my ratiocinations.