Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you

New birthdays new babi es
Marriages are graduations:
Promotions for bachelors & bacheloerettes

A new morning gone
I'm moving on, I'm moving on

A death, a crash, a disease
Goodbye Sparky, goodbye

Births followed by deaths followed by
Commercial breaks, cups of coffee and
back to more happy, happy
birthdays.

I go down to the Liffey
to think of girls
not because the English
called her Anna Liffey
unable to pronounce her Irish name

not even because she begins
in the mountains
hill dark girl
her feet in pig shit
in the Wicklow bog

not even because every life
is an unfinished life
every one emptying always emptying
every one again leaking
up from the mud

but because I have never
mastered either
neither girl nor water
but at least I can see
from Bachelors Walk or Aston Quay

bridges hard bridges
open for her and on her face
the rain paint in silver
illuminations for the sea to clean

So many paths I could have taken.

So many things I might have tried.

Somehow I ended up where I am

and I just don’t know why.

I could have stayed in Morgantown

and earned my bachelors in getting high,

or gone to Maharishi

and let them teach me how to fly.

I could have done a million things

and I can’t help but wonder why,

why I chose the path I chose,

if this is all still just a lie.

I could have picked up and moved to Arizona

or Charlottesville Va.

lived in a shitty apartment

and worked for minimum wage.

I can’t help but write these stories

and watch them play out in my head

of everything that might have happened

of all the lives I might have led.

And I can’t help but wonder

where I might be today

if I had done things differently,

if I had chosen to walk away.

Instead I’m still here in this same town

where I have always been,

a town that will never understand me,

a town where I just don’t fit in.

All these options I’ve considered.

Still I can’t figure out

what I should be doing with my life

what I’m really all about.

Maybe one day I will find a path

to take me where I want to go

or perhaps I’ll wander all my life.

I guess you never really know.

Some poets have degrees,
Be they Bachelors or Phds.
But a poet, a poet is really qualified by experience,

And the ability to distil language to the dance of written form,
To transpose observations into song.
Etching stretches of moments too short,

Into something long enough to match the longing for it.
Weaving yearning with touches of genius,
Abstracting epiphanies from cracks in the pavement,

Extending the halls of learning by
Stencilling truths onto toilet walls,
So that even to shit is to experience the profound.

A poet is one who can make meaning out of madness,
Pluck obscurities from the air, exposing the  bindings of being,
Or explain how words, in their whirling make the world go round.

But a poet,  a poet does not understand that ache inside,
That ache that drives them to write, to whisper and to yell
Words, metaphors and similies, in the constant attempt

To quantify that special kind of hell,
That haunts them, as ravings in their head,
That inspiration that is their constant torment.


And sometimes, sometimes its heaven instead,
But that’s when it’s hardest to write
Because suffering, when transformed to stanzas,

Is somehow easier to ignite
Than that intangible something we call joy.
For something as simple as a smile

Cannot be matched by any extravaganza
Of words no matter how we try.
But a poet,  a poet will spend lifetimes trying

To describe that very sensation, that fleeting
Sense of something greater than oneself, greater,
Even than the offerings left in ink at the poet’s
Altar of a page.

And sometimes it will be so hard, this attempt to transcribe
Emotion into a form decipherable to others  
That the poet will feel only rage,

And exhaustion,
Till even the point of the pen begins to expire
But a poet, a poet, even in the pits of despair,
Does not retire,

For there, lingering somewhere
Above in the air, is a glimmer of truth
Just waiting to be shared.

The cocktail dress split hope down the screen
Letting that reoccurring dream compel me
Into memories of you
The clink of my cup
Shattered sobriety with the pain of daybreak
The ice looks like crystal but only something that will disappear and overflow your glass is standing at attention
The bar stool cracked, empty and the faux leather ripped, and torn
Cougars and MILFs strut down the bar top
Scanning tonight’s bachelors
I sit behind, for my dress is long and flannel
Heavy, hot making me sweat and stink
I run faster than a cheetah in my mind
Tearing doors and bridges apart
Speeding towards the sunrise
Attempting for the pot of gold
The cocktail drips from the table on to the floor
A puddle I will eventually slip from
Hair in my face
My ankle sundress reaped with alcohol
I stand up, look around
Towel?
But all I see is you
Walking back slowly retreating to the door
Leaving me to deal and regret the decisions
I so poorly execute

A morning: wandering through churches--
light, through Chagall’s stained glass
tinting your face different shades
of adoration. There is a red scene
coming, blush.

An afternoon: The Bride
Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors,
Even. Try to look away.
That reaction, what is it?
Tell me more.

Twenty dollars: we’re poets
baby, your money is worthless.

As I began to climb the campus stairs,
All alone with a numb ache-
A depression blocked those minute vessels,
That carries my vital fluid that frequently thins.
A kind of a genetic disorder that robs me off-
All of my terrible hormones that loses competition,
A competition so heroic called youth,
That settles the score of my sexual life.
A physical length that reduces me to a dwarf,
Almost an intelligent ape that snubs too-
And cannot have biology with another species,
That adores a disqualified creature of its size.

What can make me happy?
What do I want then?
Shall I need those beautiful preachers of opposite genes?
Shall I claim their eminence in my life?
Or leave them for those eligible bachelors?

As I landed my nose in the campus pillars,
And nobody cared but me-
A stimulus recoiled and resurrected those minute vessels,
That carries my vital fluid that became viscous again.

Sine waves, perpetual motion
Centripetal force, density of the ocean
Associates, Bachelors
Student Ambassadors
Register, register, schedules, grades
Grants and scholarships, tuition is paid
No snooze button, turn off the alarm
Losing some sleep.  It's ok, though, no harm
Friendly teachers and Nazi instructors
Digital logic and semiconductors
Homework, classwork, essays, papers
Last minute class of procrastinators
Get up, get blazed.  'Fore school, 'nutha blunt
High while accepting student of the month
Higher than you, and my grades, too, are higher
How smart would I be if I put out the fire?
Gen. Ed., English, Mathematics, Psychology
Now on to the good stuff, much richer chronology
Top of my class, highest grade in the program
In just a few years, I'll have money in BOTH hands
This hand-to-mouth shit ain't for me
I'm tired of living week-to-week
Broke, tired, and hungry day after day
But when payday comes, it'll be here to stay
You don't have to do as I do
But my feet are too small to fill these big shoes
If you think I can't fill them, then surely you're trippin'
But do whatcha do, cause my burgers need flippin'

When is the final round?
         Conception Semesters Birth
         Sit Crawl First step
         Crèche Primary Secondary
         Bachelors Honours Masters
         Junior Senior Manager
         Lust Love Family
         Unemployed Gainful Pension
         Plan Experience Memory  
                         ∞
When is the final round?
         Field Farm Fort
         Tack Gravel Tar road
         Rural Remote Urban
         Wood Rock Concrete jungle
         Developing Established Revitalization
         White Multi racial Black
         Conservative Liberal Decadent
         Pretoria Tshwane Tshwane Metro
                        ∞
When is the final round?
         Bushmen Dutch British
         Colony Union Republic
         Native Settlers Previously disadvantaged
         Undiscovered Developed Commercial
         Subsistence Commercial Corporation
         Oppressed Equal Masters
         Apartheid Democracy Socialistic rule
         Logical Confused Insane