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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.