Unhappiness creeps
on the spine like spider’s feet
too late to smash it

Cows meandering
through yellowed autumn grasses
the world’s groundskeepers.

Baja fish taco
Bad phrase for poetry, good
culinarily

Just one class today
succeeded by morning rain
how fast I forget

Say: the past is dead
I want nothing to do with it
while you’re here instead

Morning fog descends
why should I write of seasons
if nothing is new

Memories drape like
cobwebs on old furnishings
spiders in their nooks

Encircled by strangers
brushing a body feels like
static in winter

In Heresville, you can
walk to the edge of the world
within the hour

“Your life is boring”
and so? It’s not like I was
given another.

Pry into me please
I won’t know unless someone
else does it for me

I look away
find a hole in my vision
unyielding lamplight

Just one class today
out of mind, my cellphone holds
the day’s happenings

Thoughts and plans extend
into ellipses, like torn
cobwebs reaching for
incomplete parts in the wind.

Bannisters of pine
creeping as I walk below
stretch to meet the rain

Through university
I am becoming convinced
Genius can’t be trained

The favored poets: Browning, Teasdale, Auden
Dickinson and Shakespeare, Sones, and Li.
and while the fire told me it was true
what stoked the coals of liking poetry?

Of nature, nurture, choice: it was not nature
I come from several cynic engineers
and while from nature my mind now sings music
no poems were explored in those young years.

But I don’t choose which nerves are set aflame
and melt out of compassion for those words,
or else that state would happen every time
I reached the next work in my syllabus.

What makes her like them? Maybe it’s because
her boyfriend left her world the night before.
The swirl of pain flowed out of the trapdoor
and made her brain susceptible to love.

Her eyes would flash, the key hormone would rise
and Whitman croon just the right qualities
to leave her re-seduced. But maybe not.
If anything else happened, she forgot.

Perhaps it was the recent phone call home,
a gentle teacher urging her to grow,
or snowflakes landing on her face like foam.
If I knew what, then I would let you know.

Normally I progress with such confidence, I think,
    though others might not see it.
    My future, to myself, is just one rail
    but sometimes it’s the trolley problem
    where I don’t know who’s on which track,
    (who might I demolish today?)
And that was all one bullet; I’m sorry.
    (Don’t be. If I was offended, you’d know.)
But I’m a fool. You see,
I thought I knew you and know how you knew me
And my usual overconfidence led to my comfort
I honestly didn’t have it in me to doubt.
Should I embrace the may-be-waste-of-time?
I see now why before I pretended anyone could be a friend
                   (any one could be a fraid?)

Now that the cherry blossoms have burst for two days,
the branches are bare.
I thought my orchard was growing more gorgeous than it was.

Cute. I could write a whole poem about it, but poems are hard, and it’d seem too trite. So I think I’ll write an essay.

I’m the oldest of an oldest of an oldest. The example for three people. The person my father speaks to like a peer and my mother like I’m a particularly diligent subordinate.

I take responsibility in the airport, through the stress of nothing to do during two-hours delays. I learn to entertain.

I take charge of gathering, comforting, keeping out of the way during the most unsavory disagreements. I learn to protect.

I take charge of washing hair without stinging her eyes, talking about goals without the pressure of a watchful future, comforting her over a particularly harsh scolding.

Even before I had the “her”s, my soul has felt the same at 4 and 16 and 20. I think it may well feel the same at 80.

I was the one who faced cursing, stalking, online searches and mid-day phone calls. Who read emails and was read into. Who developed a rusted colander of a shield to use 20 times per week. Who was chased through hallways and stonewalled and screamed for it to go away, knowing it’d do nothing. Who was told I was weak but stubborn, smart but wasting my talent, compassionate but selfish, wise but not knowing what was best for myself, open-minded but choosing the wrong people. Who was told I was difficult and far from anyone’s ideal child. But still my presence was relied on.

Cute suggests rest. It implies a lack of responsibility aside from your appeal to others. It’s bizarre to hear, especially from those I’m supposed to be caring for. What in me could be gently prodded, amusedly accepted? I haven’t been the cute one since 2004.

There’s nothing praiseworthy here. There’s nothing to take care of here.

Set your heart at rest.

I find myself disengaged—why? When everything is the same but—
-I am 3 months older
-She is less easily delighted
-The sleepy aura of heaters coated in snow
==
We are the x in front of a word, not behind it. We put the cart before the horse.
==
Poetry prunes the spiky thoughts off
us so what is left is smooth and
inoffensive. But others are radicals
and then without their words, their messages
lose force, like judo kicks over the course of hours.
==
Rhyme is so sincere, that when there’s lack of trust, there’s lack of soundalikes.
==
What is there to be upset about
except for what others infuse in you?
Think how successful one’s own life could be
without the core, without others who care,
Freer than a paper snowflake with one too many cuts.
==
A story cannot reach its full potential until it loses its identity
and the protagonist scrubbed clean
existing in the minds of the collective.
==
Sometimes you get stuck in academia;
EA would suggest you allocate your time more effectively
but then, full time lit profs would not exist
and there is demand for them. So what’s the point?
I guess liberal arts promotes the self-improvement required for clear thinking,
while EA takes a more biological tone
skim the cream and fridge the rest.
==
The life of the mind is the sacrifice of the life
or at least the other 90%
Those who put you down for living
are not worth your time.
Live the life of your life,
and 髮 yourself until no one knows you
outlive the minds with your grace/wisdom/tenacity
show them how it’s done.
==
Green, stained cloths
lie over the donuts

…For I have crossed through fire
over seas bordered by time.
Hazy seem the heat-licked days
when dreams consumed the mind.

Some men may claim the cross too long
and leave the stretch unclaimed.
Though unbought frontiers have no cost
to build up or to tame.

Do not offer Kings or Gods
reign over death or birth,
for who consults tenants of hell
on rules of life on Earth?

A taper, burnt down near to ash
might be snuffed without pain,
but life roaring with candlelight
may flicker down again.