Large

Looking at the drinks they sell
How many more today are large
Because the sun smokes down like hell
Or as on Cleopatra's barge
Burning the waters. How much more
On such a day does everyone
Desire to be quenched, and store
A little liquid up? The sun
Like a creditor demands
Consistent payment, so we must
If we stay out, and in its hands,
Keep our liquids in a trust
Refilled forever; so we keep
Buying the large and drinking deep.

Bright Lights

The city at its ease is a delight.
We are all happier, and thus much nicer
Ready to think our fellows are alright.
At such a time a wondering circumspicer
Might think the city was a heaven, made
By man for man, to better all his ways
And yet there still remain some spots of shade
Hidden somehow from nature's shining rays.
The old man on the corner slumped and sad
The cardboard sign beside him ripped and torn
Telling of the diseases he has had
And all ills that he through time has born.
And as we pass along our merry way
He should not be obscurèd by the day.

Facefirst

After today I'm buried in my brain
Somewhere down there under all my thoughts
And there until I'm rescued I'll remain
Covered in neurons like a leopard's spots.
I am immersed in all I can conceive,
Unable to move on beyond my mind
Thinking about the things I half-believe
And what I don't, but to which am resigned.
There's some thoughts here I hardly have considered
Since I was small, and still remain untapped
And others over which I have so dithered
That they by metathoughts are fully wrapped
And I am stuck heardfirst into them all
I barely hear the world outside me call.

Topic

You are the cause and topic of my joy
In you I find a source of all that's good
Smiles that linger, sweets that do not cloy:
The sunlight dappled on a wellknown wood,
The sky bedotted with a cloud or two
Just enough to make the sunshine seen,
The sea just rippled so it's white and blue
And covered with an iridescent sheen,
The mountain rising up behind the city,
Dominating but not threatening,
The birds imagining a newborn ditty
Which they, in chorus, will proceed to sing
These joys are but partial components of
The happiness inspired by your love.

Self-motivation

Some days its brutal work to make the brain
Ease into effort, and then into motion;
It takes a kind of academic pain
To change the tide of one's own mental ocean,
Which would but ebb and flow beneath the moon
Not heeding our mere mortal Canutism;
To make the tide of thought dance to our tune
Requires an emphatic optimism
Joined to a certain willful disbelief
In all we have self-learned in all our days
Thinking we can turn a newer leaf
Without the springtime to provide new rays.
But we can do it, if we tell our mind
To disregard the facts that it will find.

Paradoxicality

If there were nothing left to do
But sit around the house all day
I would get bored. But it's not true:
There are some things get in the way
And when that's so, I find I will
Laze happily all day and night
At my ease, immobile, still
Without a scrap of work in sight.
So while I can procrastinate
I find I do, until nightfall
But if I have no work to wait
I wish that I could do it all.
It's only in the empty haze
I do not wish to sit and laze.

Productivity

I do not know how to produce
The product that I am expected
To by some magic introduce
Into the world, when self-directed.
When others tell me what to do
I must admit, it's easier
But then of course, to follow through,
I have to work myself. Infer
From this the fact that I may be
Inefficient anyway
Despite what others give to me,
And you will see that, come what may
I do not think I can create
The things I ought. Commiserate!

Zzz

Sometimes the brain just takes a short vacation
And won't respond to anything you think.
Don't ask me about any implication
Of how I think without my brain - I'd sink
Into some intricate, elaborated
Sillily complex absurdity
Until both you and I were fully sated
With my struggling attempt to be
Logical (which I am truly not).
Instead, just think with me - at times the brain
Refuses to cooperate - it's hot,
It's cold, there's something to complain
About, and it just won't behave. Instead
You end up with a tired, empty head.

Inadequate

Yeah, I don't know what to say
It's hard to think of it right now
I think about how yesterday
Or earlier, if you allow
I wouldn't have imagined this
Could ever come to be at all
And now...I guess I really miss
The time before this sort of fall
If there was really such a time
Which I'm not certain of - but still
It feels like things turned on a dime
And won't go back. I hope they will
But things like this don't disappear
No matter what I say, it's here.

Mega

Not in service buses are the worst
When you excitedly arrive and see
Three buses waiting. Then you check the first
And then the second finally all three
And see the blinking sign illuminated
Those three unchanging words, now making nine:
Not in service. I have rarely hated
Inanimation quite so much. It's fine
To see the wrong bus, with its sign correct
For other places I don't wish to go
But to see all of them so imperfect
As to be going nowhere...that is so
Frustrating that I uselessly will curse
Wishing them that are the worst much worse.