He sat there behind the table,
with his glasses sitting on his nose,
and his skin sitting on his bones - both loosely,
the way you’d expect someone to sit
after 75 years of good, but hard, living.

“The trick is-” he said
deliberately pausing to shift the weight of the sentence
toward the upcoming words
“you have to wipe away all the things you don't want to see."
He said this as he scribbled his name
inside my new copy of his old book
smiling in that gentle old man way.

I scampered away like a schoolboy
feeling like an idiot
having rambled at him
in my best impression of a scholar
- like a kid wearing his dad’s oversized suit.

I talked at him about
how well he captures a moment in poetry
like this former US Poet Laureate
wasn’t aware of his talent
and I was somehow the first
delivering the good news.

As I wander the campus,
having escaped my embarrassment
I think back to a poem he read tonight
about watching an old couple sharing a sandwich.
It was an ode to love,
an image you can see in any sit down restaurant,
literally anywhere in America.
He focused in on this couple,
in this diner
at this moment
apart from time, like a moving still life
forever framed by his words.

He wiped away the screaming kid
and its overwhelmed mother in the booth to the left,
the table of teenagers playing hooky to their right,
and the underpaid twnetysomething waitress
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

He wiped away all of that distraction
and unearthed this beautiful moment
this pure example of true love-
A sandwich cut from corner to corner
by the shaking hands of a man
whose glasses sit upon his face
and skin upon his bones
all the way you expect a man to
with woman he’s loved for forty years
with whom he shares everything.

I think about the moments I have missed
the poems never writ
because I was staring at the waitress,
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

Drifting
somewhere between sleeping
and waking life

Dipping
in and out of the fuzzy lake
of my subconcious mind

Straining
to keep myself on the surface -
losing grip, (here i go again)

Waves a blue and white
painted like the sky in that Van Gogh
Starry Night.

Paintied in thick blue tears
and yellow splocthes of infinity.

Snoring
snaps me back
to barely awake.

Tripping
up the stairs
I make my way to my bed,
Wrap my arms about my Love
and let myself fall into
Van Gogh's heavy tears

When she was little,
she tried to count the stars,
lost track at 236,
and started over.
This has been a recurring trend
throughout her entire life.

She would search for four leaf clovers
not because she believed in luck
just for the challenge of it,
like hunting for needles in haystacks
just because – why not?

She loved to challenge of impossible tasks.
She was never angry with herself
when she failed -
because she wasn't stupid
she knew what impossible meant.

But every time she did find a lucky clover
or counted even just one star more than last time
she’d smile to herself,
having beaten the impossible.

All she wanted was
proof that she isn't doomed to fate -
proof that she is more
than a infinitely tiny speck of carbon
living on a mite larger speck of carbon
floating in a vast sea
full of impossibly massive specks of carbon
that too, are infinately tiny
when compared to the sea,
in which we all swim.

So when she made it her mission
to steal this boy’s heart
it wasn’t about love.
Not that she was intentionally cruel.
Just that she didn't see the world that way.

It was the fact that he was so distant,
so out of her reach,
like the incountable stars
hanging above her head
every night
taunting her.
She couldn’t help herself –
she had to try.

She took her victory
and his virginity
in the back of a Dodge Neon
parked in the shadow of an abandoned factory
on a dead end street.

Afterwards, they sat on the roof of her car.
With eyes soaked in that teenage sappy first-time kind of love,
he gazed upon her glory,
like she was some sort of angel
sent to save him.

She was too busy counting the stars to notice.

From the prompt: The End Of Monsters

“Nobody asks why the chimera needs killing.
It’s a lone thing – a wrongness,
a distortion wandering in from elsewhere
burning the straight plowed fields of us”
- E. Rose Sims (On Cartography and Dissection)

He took his vorpol sword in hand
and with it, slayed the last Jabberwock.
Claimed its head, and placed it on a mantel,
in between Grendel’s arm, and the Minotaur’s horn -
Trophies of his conquests.

He told himself that he was making the world safer.
Still, that didn’t stop the nightmares.
The memories of the screams let out by the faun
as he plunged his dagger into its neck.

The way the chimera begged to be spared,
in is best human accent, before he thought to cut out its tongue:
“Please, no ****. Who will look for my family?”
“No mercy, not in this world.” He tells himself.
“Monsters need to be killed.”

He told himself that he was the great Dragonslayer.
The adventurer.
Eliminating the native threats
so that his people can safely claim the land.

Now that his deed is done,
the final monster, slain.
Our hero hangs his vorpol sword up on the wall.

Yet, he lies awake at night
unable to sleep,
he stares up at the stars.

He dwells on a bone chilling thought -
that maybe somewhere in a distant land
there is a map being made of his home town
and some undiscovered other
has labeled it -
“Here Be Monsters”.

I wrote a poem.
A long, healthy, glorious poem.
It started as a tingle in my gut.
The longer I ignored it, the angrier it got.
Until I could not hold it in any longer.
So I sat down.
I worked it out-
I stressed and pushed myself
harder and harder
until finally -
Release.
Catharsis.
Expelled out of me and into existence.
I looked down at my newborn poem
and became overwhelmed by a putrid sense of shame -
It was ****.
I flushed it.
"It's April."
I tell myself.
"They can't all be winners."

It's long drive on this highway
The window creaks its jagged way down
I breathe in the new air
for the first time in months

George Watsky is building
his Cardboard Castles in my stereo
On repeat-

I think of Emerson
On repeat-
Skip-
On repeat-
I think -
I feel like his transparent eyeball
Repeat-
His eyeball-
I  begin to understand
what has always seemed
a clumsy metaphor

I begin to feel -
one with everything
Skip-
everyone is love
Repeat
Love
Every-Everyone is me
And you
Skip-
Everyone is all I need.
Repeat
I am all I need
And you -

I don't need anything
Except for -
-more road
-more time
-more gas

the CD starts skip-skip words
Hopping - lines
Reminding me
Of finite fuel
Repeat-
finite time
with work looming just hours away
Repeat-
death, just decades away

Then, as if responding to my overturned thoughts
My ****** speakers belt out:

Hey ******* -
The sun is shining

Wake up earlier

Spend less time online
Spend more time outside
Every day, do something that scares you

Take more deep breaths
Realize you can't control certain things
Dance naked to 90s music when no one else is home

Meet new people
Meet old people – they have better stories
Listen to more people's stories
Learn to see things from different angles
Learn to look for Better Angels

Walk more
Drink more water
Drink less caffeine
Don't leave the coffeepot on when you leave the house
Be more aware of your bad habits
Be more patient with others' bad habits

Seek something every day
- even if you don't find what you're looking for,
at least you won't have wasted the day

Don't start smoking – despite what you may have heard
about what it does for stress
Worry less -
about what you can change
Change what you can
Stop writing cliches

Stop blaming your inaction on your home town
or your parents
or your emotional instability
Take responsibility for your inaction

Read more often –
you have books you haven't touched, ever
Write by the water –
the white noise of river helps you think

Return more favors –
people have been kind to you
Be kind to more people

Don't small talk –
small talk is for small minds
Don't ruin a good conversation by talking too much
Make something every day
(art, love, decisions, etc)

Go to bed earlier