Off Kilter

Waiting patiently's a useful skill
I often lack. Oh, I may seem to be
As calm as anyone you'll ever see,
But only my exterior is still.
My inner workings and my inmost will
Are constant turmoil, helter-skelterly
Sploshing all about unevenly
Such that I fear my organs might all spill
And show the world outside the way I feel.
I try to keep an outward even keel,
But even that is strained, and inward woes
Show themselves doubly when restrained without:
Leaving me distressed while no one knows
The way I'm discomposed, or what about.

Collidee

I know the world can seem (and even be)
A disappointing place, in which your vision
Is all too often subject to derision,
And therefore of discouragement. But see
These setbacks as but temporarily
Effective; like a half-felt drunk collision
Between two friends, who, without a decision
Still amble on their way amiably.
The world will waddle on, and so should you:
It isn't always such a pleasant place,
But it can be improved by point of view:
Not lying to yourself just to erase
The bad, but seeing what is good, and letting go
Of what's frustrating, bad, or full of woe.

Planning Purposes

Let us not, when making plans, forget
The way the world works counter to all thought:
How what mankind erects is alway fought
By nature's entropy, and thereby set,
Often at naught. But do not let us let
This recollection wreck us. We have bought
Time for ourselves before: if there is aught
The past can teach, it is that our regret
Comes more from failure to have planned than plans;
So though we recollect things can go wrong,
Let us not only sing that heavy song,
Whose burden is so heavy that it scans
Hard on the ear. Let us be merry too
And do those things that we have planned to do.

Live

When she leaves, I know what I will do
It's what I always do; the only thing
I know how to do when she's gone: I'm blue,
But I go on, and hope that time will bring
Her back again. There is no virtue in
My patience: it's enforced, and therefore low.
But when she's left before it still has been
The only thing that let me let her go.
I know she has to leave, and cannot stay;
No more would I desire that she would,
Given the reasons (all of which must weigh)
Why her departure is a common good.
Still, I will sigh the time away again
Simply existing 'til she comes. But then...

Scattered Bodies

Some mornings it's a struggle to awake;
A violent debate between the will
And sense of duty, one of which must break,
Granting the other passage, as they fill
The selfsame space: by both the body's driven,
Now to stay sleeping, now to rise and go.
Therefore the body, when the mind is riven,
Marks the deciding vote, and it says no,
It will not rise and greet the awful day
Whose hurtful beams already bruise the eyes;
Let day come in and pull the sheet away,
Else body will not ever choose to rise.
But duty always wins, for will too knows
The world still turns, whichever path they chose.

Free Gift

What does it mean to take and love the giver?
To love receiving, but to even more
Feel everything of weight within you quiver
Because of who has given? To adore
Not just because the one who gives has given,
But a priori, well before that cause?
To feel, by inward vast compulsion, driven
To love despite the benefactor's flaws
But yet before a benefit is felt?
To take, and benefit, and to obtain
But antedating that obtaining, melt?
I think it goes directly with the grain:
I cannot love to take unless I love
The giver of what I'm receiver of.

Portrait of a Busrider

He's fast asleep, a cup clutched in his hands
Half full or emptier of coffee: still,
He cannot raise his eyelids, and he stands
(Sits rather) as a monument to will
Defeated by itself. His underbrain
Has roused its might to keep his mind unroused,
And whether from the long day or that strain,
The edifice in which his mind is housed
Has fallen dormant, and he will not move.
Yet why should he? The bus will move perforce,
And therefore it would not seem to behoove
His present state to modify his course:
He can still sleep and yet move toward his goal
Gleaning some little comfort for his soul.

Paths

I like to think I know where I am going:
What features I will see, what road I'll tread.
But there's a danger to assuming knowing:
What if, in all of it, I've been misled?
What if the road I think I travel on
Will wind its way past sites I don't expect?
What if the place I think I will have gone
Has disappeared, and what I think is next
Will never come? How would I then recover
My oriented sense, if all is wrong?
By reaching out to lovingly discover
The new landscape, as if I all along
Had planned to go there. Equilibrium
Is in the mind, not where I go or come.

Verbacious

Some verbs don't seem appropriate to use
In poetry. I don't mean fuck or damn;
Those have a purpose, if but to abuse.
I mean the sort of verbs I often am
Timid in using: far less standard ones
Like frack for instance. It's a verb twice over,
But like a sticky pack of hotcross buns
Smashed in a backpack all the way from Dover,
It doesn't quite feel right, as if it were
Unfit to use. Polite society
Frowns on such words, and therefore they incur
A penalty; at least they do for me.
It's off the beaten path, and who goes there
Except when rhymes are broken, in despair?

Halfrhyme

Being with her is just a constant pleasure;
Perhaps not always equal, but sill grand.
Affection flows beyond what could be planned,
And everything is love in massive measure.
She is the central purpose of my leisure,
The pad on which my happiness can land,
The arch by which my joy is made to stand.
Yet under this substantial load of pressure
She has not buckled, but remains with me;
She still believes I'm equally as key
For her as she for me; and this alone,
This happiness which she shares equally
Which we together by ourselves have grown,
Is why I must resist all urge to groan.