(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 7, 2014)


What a rolling stone gathers
you don’t want—mold and must.
So you stay out in the ether,
saying but not staying,
smoothed-over in your always moving.
You don’t stick around. Never complain;
never explain; never define.
Clauses are dependencies.
Flourishes are trimmings
for the house proud.
You are eternally new,
flexible in obtuseness
and obscurities. Far from the sink-
hole of being obliged.

Those who stick around a movement,
those who pledge a bit of future
to another know the sticky intimacy.
Skin to skin, they commit to paper
what they are saying,
stand on the square, stay to debate.
Committed to all ears,
eyes, hands, and souls—
as comes rolling by,
having gathered nothing,
the bad penny that inevitably turns up.