Today I heard the sparrows chirp like
cheap labor as I stepped over cotton and polyester
to grip my hands around the flimsy neck of
consciousness. My thoughts fly to the future
where success and goals completed linger
like clouds that refuse to rain.
Today, I pulled on my socks and shoes with
my emotions as calm as a lake without wind.
My mind scattered, but focused, I met another
sparrow on my path and I stopped, prepared to meet
a lion. The sparrow explained, and flew off with the
promise of an answer. I watched
it disappear behind a tree as the clouds blotted out
the certainty and confidence. Today,
the winds filled the trees like balloons as
storms loomed in the distance while I laid
on flowery cushions filling my mind with attempts
at distraction from more and more inevitability.
And though I spoke aloud
my misgivings, they kept their form.
Unlike the world beyond my skin, today
there was no thunder to my lightning.

Today, I woke up to spearmint soaked vegetation,
where I communed and warred with
jagged-edged thistle, and needle-nosed insects
filling their large bellies with the space between
the stitching of my shirt. I pounded
my foot on metal and the ground beneath opened.
I lifted and the tender roots of those things I call
weeds snapped and popped as they were torn from
their sphere, like fish from a pond.
Today, I walk as though
I were in a giant corn-field where
a thick fog floats through shortly after
the sun has fallen below the ragged trees off
in the distance. But I cannot see those trees,
I see only the grey around me,
and I hear it ask me the same question
again and again and again and
I know it is me asking the question. While the answer,
like the horizon, is something I already know.
The problem is, I don't want to leave the fog.
I want
the sun to set so that I can leave and never have
to look
or think about the horizon ever again.
A deer passes, he is on his way out of the corn-field,
I stare at him jealously, wanting to follow him or
hoping time will stop
so I can have a little more time to think about it.

This poem goes out to all of the deleted words,
the millions of ideas quickly erased, obliterated
because they just didn't quite fit in with
the rest of the ideas. Today, I honor them briefly,
but sometimes, life moves by too quickly
to mourn, even when life, true life, is lost.
Today, I sniff the cold, stiff air
and the breeze feels like shivers, covered
in warm, futile sunlight. The short hairs on
my adam's apple scrape on my collar like
road-gravel on newly built freeways, but
I don't drive.
Today, momentary friendship is held up
by our busy hands, and even as we leave
we hope that our hope will keep it airborne,
but at least I know that this fellowship
will not break if it hits the ground,
it will always be there to pick back up
at a later date.

Today, I got sick of asking all these questions and
so I sat down on a grey cushioned hotel chair
among a group of bodies filled, like mugs to the top,
with honesty and sadness and loudness. Still, I was sick
of wondering the answers because all
that I seem to want anymore is oblivion. I think
therefore I am forced to suffer with the idea
of a self, floating continuously like the
fog on a stage as it drifts between the heads of
the audience members and into the ventilation.
Today, I shiver in the Autumn air, acting out
a withdrawal from
satisfying similes for codependence,
when I know that
salmon swimming up stream are bigger men
than I am.
And when the blades of grass quiver and freeze
in the cold blue morning dew,
I will think about poetry and sigh.
Even though my soul's silver blood runs and dances
into the arms of camaraderie, I fear, the way a
squirrel fears winter, as I shake the hands
connected to new faces that I am not opening doors
but climbing a ladder to a diving-board.
Today, I look out at the dark sky through
the antique glass and I dream of dancing;
I watch as a car passes, swishing on the wet streets,
and I return to my question-asking.

I decided to write a poem a day, but
why write poetry when it becomes mediocre, unless
that's like asking, "You know, why live today?
Because I just woke up to another ordinary,
uninspired day, and I am feeling mighty trite,
in a conventional, hackneyed and tired kind of way."
I say to myself, "****,
the air smells like moistness and rotting leaves;
but it wouldn't be the first time."
No, see, this wouldn't be the first time
that I sit to the tune of spinning discs inside of
high-tech boxes, while the windows are
so dark they reflect my white t-shirt and pink skin.
I write poetry tonight, today, for no apparent
reason. Ooh. Maybe I'll inspire somebody; maybe
someone else feels like this; maybe I'm just feeling
sorry for myself, but this is the poem I've written.
And so, today I must sit, irritated, at my desk
and look at these useless words and decide
that today, I have written one more.
Today, I have lived one more
day.

Today was like clean paper, void of marks;
of productivity waiting to happen.

Today, I learn about shadows as I pass
underneath the mammoth highways, flying over
fields of tall grass and bumbly weeds;
walls don’t hold them back because they
didn’t build them.
Today, I sit and listen carefully
as future moments begin to whisper
stories of their arrival, but still
too many questions begging to be asked
and too many answers begging to be kept
secret. I whisper in a strangers ear, and she
becomes a fellow rabbit in the enchanted forest
where we play gin and talk business,
while the young couple playing chess a few
tables down, go cross-eyed from the concentration.
Today I reflect on an idea,
that playing chess with someone you’re afraid to love
has nothing to do with the pieces on the board.