Bonus Poem from 1975

This is one of my earliest poems. Though I wrote it in 5th grade, it actually took first place for the 6th grade in a citywide writing competition the following year. At the award ceremony, I was asked a lot of strange questions by an odd man, whom I later learned was a psychiatrist. Fortunately, I really didn't know how bleak this poem was, or really even what it was about. I just liked the way the words sounded, and that it stirred up the adults.

Life

Life is a reality,

Death is but a dream,

Though reality is as harmful

As sometimes the truth may be.

A dream can be a nightmare

Caused by reality,

And life is not forever,

Unlike death can be.

But powerless is death

Overcome by life's reality,

Though the struggle of life is futile,

And to end it, you are free.

Sunday, May 7th, 2006

NONE!

After a full day of packing for my move and engineering last week's audio show, I forgot about my writing. I woke up at 4am, finally remembering, but decided that it was just too late.

Monday, May 8th

Losing My Pen

It's the same pen

For the most-part,

That fills the page each day,

Bleeding for me,

Paying out its prose,

Wriggling like the finger of a wizard

Knitting threads of the arcane

Into a summoning spell

With so much attention

Riding on his fingertip

That it's all he sees in every dream,

It's sleepy wiggle

Sending wishes, unfinished,

Off to fend in the night.

And if one dared

Sneak in at midnight with a saw

To take that finger,

What would it remember?

Would it have a nascent power of its own?

And would my pen,

Falling from my pocket

Or left idling on a bench

Ever make another poem

In the hands of some sweet stranger:

Some student from Quebec

Or some carpet wrangler down the block?

And if it did then what of me?

Would the wizard of nine fingers

Sell his powders on e-bay,

Pack his shop and all his scrolls,

And go back to throwing nets

Off some salty pier

While some eleven-fingered prodigy

Became the Shakespeare of all alchemy?

Or would he wave his other hand,

Be whole again and go on as before?

Or after the perils of a mystic trek

To a far enchanted realm,

Find his missing digit in a witch's bowl?

Just like the grief struck poet

Ends his mournful rant

At some wondrously fabled,

Magic, muse-infested,

Secret stationary store?

Tuesday, May 9th

Eleven Fifty-Nine

The hour subdivides

Only so many times

In the amble of the day,

Its great pursuits

Eager each for greater plots.

But busyness provides

No toehold for rhymes,

No option for word play,

When the clock recruits

And cordons all its slots.

My brief allowance rides

On the absence of my crimes,

Or procrastination's stay,

So some remainder suits

What term the muse allots.

As the night subsides,

Midnight's last bell chimes,

And the muse meets me halfway:

Stomach, words and loose ends,

Tied up in brazen knots.

Wednesday, May 10th

Amateur Night

I've been watching things play out

In the dim depths of imagination,

Waiting for some figment to stand firm,

Some scrap of mental agitation

To light up with a solid story,

Take a truth out of its pocket

And finally become real.

But it's taking far too long these days.

The stage too dark, the director confused,

The script never coming out of rewrite,

Never one breath more than subconscious,

And all this to say I can't make sense

Of my own circuitous monologue,

My own inner amble gone strange.

Oh, and right there the image leaves me,

The spirit wandering from the room

And leaving me grappling words from shadow,

Gasping for an easy breath,

Grasping for some sense of strength,

Some measure of independence

To prove my worth for her return.

And as I plod and stumble,

Blab and stammer,

I catch her blot her cigarette out upon the stoop,

Then brisk and stiff she breaks into a run

And crosses at the corner down the street.

And before I can pry the paint-locked window open

The stage goes black again

Before she's even caught her cab.

Thursday, May 11th

Odometer

One hundred thousand miles

Meant something once,

The kind of milestone met

With a divided heart:

Half in fanfare, half in prayer

That the engine lasted

Just a little longer,

Not punish you too quickly

For neglecting to reserve

The funds for a transplant.

All those numbers turned at once,

Just past the Pak'nSave.

All those nines gone to nothing,

Rolling over the top and then…

And then what?

One hundred thousand one,

One hundred thousand two,

And then what, then what then?

They all pass the same,

Every mile: just once, then gone,

Where was Ninety thousand

Or just eighty five?

Where was four hundred thirty three?

What was the number when we met?

When we mingled our CDs?

When we parked

And went into the woods,

Adding mileage to our shoes

And to ourselves?

Turning time into life,

Breath and bone into soul,

One quiet whisper into love,

And leaning in without care

For our mismatched numerology,

The days or weeks or years

Until our own hidden hundred thousand

Wrecks our hold on immortality,

Which of us is counting upward

All of what is spent,

And which is counting backward

What remains?

Friday, May 12th

Marathon

The quiver of the knee

Before the stride goes long,

The soft yield of the step

Widening the eyes

When you finally feel it,

When you know that it's gone wrong,

The center of gravity

Sprinting out ahead on its second wind

While you, drained, uncertain,

Flail behind, a pinwheel, a windmill,

A back-page story seconds away.

And before you go down,

Before that same knee hits the dirt,

You know you'll spring up again,

Roll and slide, bloody, torn,

Grit under the skin of your palms,

Penitent knee burned by its own blood,

And pushing back the helpful hands,

The hands that know better,

Hands like your own when it isn't you,

You'll be seconds more

From a second end,

A final end, and ruthless--

One that demands instead of asks,

Lay down

Though the job is just half done.

Looking up at perfect knees

With nothing better now to do

Than gather up and gab,

You know there's no finish line

For those here today.

But for one, at least,

Another start just down the road.

Saturday, May 13th

The Best Laid Floor Plan

There are dozens of permutations:

Couch here, TV there,

His office upstairs or mine,

Who gets the door,

Who gets to loft,

Who gets the view and who the space?

But it comes together, the plan,

Tape marks on the floor

And colored labels on the boxes,

As if we were in control.

Come back in a week and see

Indecision taking root

Like a strangling vine

Bursting from half-empty boxes,

Following their effluvia

Into the closets and kitchen drawers,

Filled and overflowing

With things we've never used

And likely never will.

What was the plan for unopened mail,

Or watches waiting for repair,

Old disks and print-outs and batteries

All mingled with the new?

Why is human nature

The last item to be packed,

And the first, unwanted,

We exhume?