Ambitions & Frustrations

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090315

A PASSING FIT

Where am I at home;
where do I fit in?

I’m most at home
away from home;
such is the fit I’m in.


090314

HEADY AMBITION

Oh, I have a brain
without a par!

It knows:
a door’s not a door
when it’s ajar.

It knows:
I’m still a genius
when I’m abed.

Oh, I have a mind
to get ahead!


090313

WHEN’S DAY

Prophecies a-plenty delve
into end-times.
If the Mayan twenty-twelve
really ends time,
let’s stay alive till then.
Let’s share that final when.


090312

THINKING OUTSIDE
THE FLOCKS

How do they know—
those who never go
amok,
keening and careening
through an empty sky—
how do these ever know
the flock?


090311

YOU GO FIRST

Someone needs to share the wealth.
Someone needs to give up steak.
Someone needs to bite their tongue.
Someone needs to take a break.


EXCLUSIVITY

Did you catch that piece
on “Jesus Interrupted”?
The guy says many books
were excluded from the bible.

Oh, yeah—
those agnostic gospels.

Gnostic.
Plus a bunch of others
that were like fairy tales.

They’re all like fairy tales.


INTERROGATORY

Someday
when you are all alone
in your empty house,
go to a mirror
and look into those eyes.
Look deeply. Stare.
Then say aloud:
Hey, you! Are you in there?


090310

SLAMMED UPSIDE THE HEART

You! You! You! You!
I couldn’t have imagined you—

Or foreseen
the heart-hammer impact
of this now-apparent fact:
it isn’t love if it’s abstract.


SO GOES THE NATION

Who can track the brokers,
the moguls, or the feds?

Like you,
I once inhabited the land
of look-you-in-the-eye;
and my children had beds.


090309

OPPORTUNISTS

They clamor for attention;
crowd and interrupt you;
take all you have to give.

Try to understand them.
Words just want to live.


090308

HEART TO HEARTLESS

Each of us
must do some “way.”

So do a way with heart,
even (or especially)
to people who
do away with heart.


090307

WHERE POETRY IS SLAMMED

It’s hard to hide
when you’re young and beautiful,
as I was—but all the young are beautiful.
The old are beautiful.
The shy. The angry. The confused.

Poetry reveals this—
and doing so, is slammed.

It’s hard to hide
when you’re young and beautiful.
It’s hard to withdraw into your own thoughts,
your own view, your own way.
Even when you cannot do otherwise.

It’s hard, too, to unhide
later, when your thoughts and view
and way direct you
to reveal the revelation;
to boldly go
where poetry is slammed.

It’s hard to unhide
when you’re old and beautiful,
as I am.

Hard and easy.
That’s the poetry.


090306

REITERATA

Placidly go,
even if not wanted here.
You have the right,
no less than tree or star.


090305

SHUT-IN SHUT-OUT

Hello.
I’m on a run,
with no time
to hug or kiss you.

Goodbye.
I’ve got to run;
let me go ahead
and miss you.


090304

TRIAL

I feel,
by life,
betrayed.

So
which of us
has strayed?


090303

FORKED

Here I am
at a fork in the road,
with a “mother” load
of hurt.

One sign says,
“Go hungry.”
The other says,
“Eat dirt!”

Here I am
at a fork in the road,
starving,
about to swoon.

All there is
is a fork in the road;
no sign of a knife
or spoon.


090302

TOO ERROUS HUMAN

Your system failed?
No?
You failed it?

Relax, okay?
Find another way.


090301

BRIAR PATCH

What the snare?
How the stun?

Why, again,
this begun?


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