Relatives

I find it very likely that my life
Will be a good one - it has been so far.
It lacks the greater part of woe and strife,
And all the perils that so often mar
Otherwise fruitful lives. I find it so,
And yet I still complain and natter on
About the problems that I've come to know
No matter how minute. I used to yawn
And say that's how a life will always be:
Compared on its own terms, not absolute,
And therefore troubled when the boundary
Of what is usual is crossed...but screw't.
I'd rather keep my mouth more closed hereafter
And think of present joy and future laughter.

Excess

Some words are deeper than the voice can say,
Than tongue or lips can ever hope to speak.
This does not keep the tongue or voice away:
They say them every day, but are too weak
To plumb the depths in which the heart can feel.
Among these words count honor, faith, and trust,
Care for the good, and for the commonweal,
The hope to be - and act - faithfully just,
And then for mercy when that hope falls short,
Coupled with forgiveness for all wrong:
The wish to, at the furthest, last resort
Hold by our principles, firm, fast, and strong.
But chief among them count the virtue of
A constant, common, and comingled love.

Caffeine High

Caffeine is beneficial to the mind

Taken in doses of a human size.

When you increase your intake, though, you find

There is a twitching lodged behind your eyes,

A little tap that runs down from your thighs

Into your feet - a rhythm you can't lose - 

A tremor by your heart that seems to rise,

And everything's a little stranger. Choose

To drop the caffeine then, though, and refuse

Your body what it wants, and there's a price.

The fool who first indulges, then eschews,

Will feel the absence of what once was nice

In headaches, joint pain, and the worst mind lag

It's sometimes better to keep on the jag.

Good Life

A little sigh can hold a universe
And make a world out of a simple phrase.
But often such a world is purely worse
Than what is real in very subtle ways
The sigher does not know - for worries sigh
And take the worrier into his fears,
Giving the comforting real world the lie,
Implying bloodshed, absence, hate, and tears.
A safer sigh, from longing or desire,
Is still no likelier to touch the truth:
It looks and sees the dying of the fire,
The dwindling of handsomeness or youth,
Forgetting charcoal burns hotter than wood.
Ah friend, it is the life unsighed that's good.

Steam Sale

I hate to think there's only so much time
In which I could be playing all these games.
The clock still strikes, the phone alarm will chime,
And time itself inordinately lames
Such purchases, since all of them, well-played,
Considered, analyzed, and rightly done,
Would take such hours as, I am afraid,
I have not spent since I was first begun.
Why then continue to invest my cash,
My interest, my bandwidth, and my mind?
Is not that choice a little bit too rash,
Too unconsidered? Somehow I don't find
It works that way. The options are immense,
But somehow buying them still all makes sense.

A C

The air is cold
Because you left
It's stale and old
And all bereft
Of any sense
Despite its chill
That it could fence
Off any ill
Even the heat
Which ought to be
Its role to beat
And comfort me
Instead, 'twill freeze
My inner ease.

Backs

When you are gone, the best part of me frays
And wilts a little on the underside.
I fall into a general malaise
Hidden by the arms that I stretch wide
To try to seek to find a certain spark
In company, or in the Internet.
But nothing that I do can void the stark
Simplicity of what I can't forget:
I'm lazy, bored, unfruitful without you.
Forever wandering an inner sea,
Mapless and wild, unsure what to do
Or how to make my inner parts agree.
I am so glad whenever you come back
For you supply direction that I lack.

Absence Work

I really dislike missing you. Of course
It's better than the other kind of missing
That utters from a slightly different source
And has no memories of hugs or kissing.
But still it's hard to think of you and know
I will not see you saunter through that door;
To feel the time between us only grow
Knowing it will not dwindle anymore.
I cannot say but in some future place
(And if I'm fortunate, a recent time)
I will look up and see your smiling face
And then look back and laugh at this poor rhyme.
But for the moment, in my sadness, I
Wish you were with me now, and breathe, and sigh.

Twains

The mind and heart do not communicate.
The mind is well aware that it must go,
And sure that she who's left must surely know
The reason for its altered future state.
The heart, which does the tyrant mind berate,
Screams out an incandescent tortured no,
And pleads that such a fate will bring it woe
To no avail against its potentate
The mind, which blithely bids the place goodbye
And knows full well that it will soon return;
The heart begins to rock itself and cry:
The folly of its course it will soon learn
When mind (still unsurprised and wisely stern)
Leads back the heart again - but by and by.

Lich

Liches are reconstituted flesh
Made living by unnecessary power.
The undead ligaments obscurely mesh
And move, and creak, but no emotions flower
Within the cold, dead heart. It's ever so,
Except for hate: hate of the living hearts
That flow with blood and beat with love - and grow.
They feel the touch of their partly-knit parts
And wonder why they cannot be that way.
It's envy, purely, that excites this pain
And brings them to their evil, and to slay
All around them - they are half insane
With wishing to be human, and alive.
Only from unlife does hate derive.