What song served as your soundtrack
The day these were composed?
Which refrigerator-magnet poet
Were you out to beat
When you allowed these words to meet?

How long and how blonde and how straight
Was your hair?
What gel, spray or fruit-scented mousse
Held it loosely in place
While "Wind" whispered itself into you
And coaxed that one-sided
Smile from your face?

I know you might think it should be enough
For me to see likeness and loveliness
And loving-kindness
And kindred-spiritedness,
And I do.

But I also know that these words
Don't belong to any of us now
Or ever.
They belong to feelings that seek us
When songs and partings and
Fluid and dust penetrate our surface
They don't come from
The things that hurt us
But neither pass entirely through.

There was inspiration, and gestation
And a painful crown and birth
On a very specific Earth
Someone was there in the room
With you, when you wrote them down.
Don't expect these words alone to remember
The miracle of their arrival.
You don't own them anymore.
You stand over there now,
(or over here, I don't mind the warmth)
With your inciting moment -
Your consolation prize
While I get to decide
If I will own them too.

Belle Weather
If your sister
Acted like this weather,
You'd have her committed
Faster than we both could say
‘Bipolar.’

If her doctor
Told you her behaviour
Was a natural cycle,
Would that make for
Better living with her?

If you'd admit
The hardest part would be
To change the things you do
To make her crazy,
It'd be a start.

Dish Soap Opera
Each time you ask,
"Why can't you just put it
(The coffee cup, the spoon...)
In the dishwasher now?"
I realize I've failed-not me, but you.

I know my reasons-and
I need not list them here-
(And anyway, I'll do it soon)
The point is that I'm being asked
To justify myself again
And I thought we'd made clear
That "understanding" isn't tasked
With covering for your demands.

Perhaps the ritual
Of testing my defence
Is more important than
A confluence of need.

If what you're really asking is,
"Why can't you just want things
The same as me?"
Then I suppose that we're agreed.

Not Quite After
Your red wine breath on my face:
A slash of winter moonlight
Mocks the window’s gauzy skirts
And divides the waking from
The sleeping sides of our bed.

Paradox in Two Verses

Verse One
Who is being watched,
If the whole world is on the other side of this glass?
What is under “control,”
If nothing I see can I touch?
Where need I go,
If the Q waits on me?
When did I get “disconnected,”
If the cable still comes through just fine?
Why is it “remote,”
If it’s always here in my hand?

Verse Two
Delete Space? Lofty promise.
Six weeks and four techs
Just to install two sets.
U-verse? My ass.
More like vs Me.

25 Things

1
I have trouble setting priorities,
Not least of which are the items in this list.
So this is in no particular order.

2
Having a February 29th birthday
Makes me kinda insensitive
About everyone else's birthday.
If I miss it by a day or two,
I don't really see the big deal.
Unless I'm married to you.

3
I am trainable. But I wouldn't try it.
Unless you're married to me.
In which case, lighten up a little.

4
I snore.

5
Grey's Anatomy seasons 1 and 2
Were guilty pleasures to me.
Now I just watch to mock it.
Prom?

6
I lived on a LOST-TV message board for 2 years.

7
Having read that, it shouldn't shock you to know
That I played Dungeons and Dragons
Religiously in high school.
I had a mage named Raistlin
And a warrior named Daryl.

8
I have annoying compulsion
To try to sound clever.

9
I used to try to write text adventure games
On my Apple IIe.
Nothing ever really beat "Pirate Adventure."

10
With my guitar on hand,
I do a serviceable "Let's Get it On."

11
I've been to or through
All the US states (and the District) except:
Arkansas, Alabama, Rhode Island, Maine, and Alaska,
But outside our borders
I've only been to
Canada, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Israel.
It's a little embarrassing.

12
I'm not a hoarder per se,
But I keep random small collections of things
On the gut feeling that
I might use them interestingly someday.

13
Some call it non-linear thinking,
But having ADD
Diagnosed earlier than age 31
Might have made some
Things easier along the way.

13
I'd like to shave my head
And grow a really long beard.
Not necessarily at the same time.

14
I've recently taken to wearing two pairs
Of heavy wool socks around the house.
Necessarily at the same time.

15
About fifteen years ago,
This girl's dad told me this joke
About a guy taking a truckload of penguins
To the zoo, and now it's pretty much the only joke
I ever remember. Ever.
That, and the "why was 6 afraid of 7?" joke.

16
I really, REALLY don't like watching me
On video.

17
I still treasure my autographed cast photo
Of the "Diff'rent Strokes" gang.
Dana Plato (RIP) signed it,
"Dear Adam, Love Always, Dana Plato."
Short, but very, very sweet.

18
cf. #13 above,
I just lost the last 15 minutes
To the Wikipedia entry on Dana Plato.
I love the Wikipedia.
More than Dana.

19
I love, love when my kids
Wake me up in the morning.
If it has to be anything,
It might as well be them.

20
It's been almost/at least four years
Since I joined Facebook,
And I just lost another fifteen minutes
Trying to find the exact day.

21
I sense I'm leaving out significant details here.
That is, however,
A significant character trait.

22
I desperately want to convince my wife
That going skydiving
Again
Before I die is probably a good idea.
(I mean, not RIGHT before I die.)

23
Kingsbury,
Bay Point, Cherrywood, Willow, Pelham,
Sherman, Lincoln,
Prospect, Lydell,
Foster, Agatite,
Talbert,
Marine, Seminary, Orchard, Lister, School,
Greenwood.
All the streets I've lived on,
Geographically separated,
In chronological order.
Oh, and let's never forget
Old Highway 70.

24
My brother and I share an affinity
For singing TV sports show theme music.

25*
My wife deserves many medals
At least a dozen dozen roses,
A Sweet Mandy B's cupcake, and
A serious vacation for living with me.

Epilogue
Because 7 8 9.

Own
This age of free agency fails
To teach what being ‘owned’ entails.
Yes, I confess I want to see
Possessive pronouns used for me.
I'm asking not for flags nor borders
Nor for rules nor marching orders.

Whether ‘lover,’ ‘partner,’ ‘friend’
Works best for you, I understand
That none perfectly captures how
Connected I am to you now.
It's not the noun it modifies
That pounds my heart or wets my eyes;
So I'll just ask the smallest sign:
That you consider me your ‘Mine.’

Reflection in an Hourglass

When we are young and top-heavy, feet stab floors with balance rare as disinterest;
The hourglass sand appears to never drain, days dilating into years;
And yet, beneath the weight of great potential, fourteen thousand
Feet above the firm and verdant lawn of recollection, each cohort
Of grains confined confront the present portal, chutes packed,
Shuffled forth by nervous elders stacked behind. Standing
- in their primes - feet squarely rooted to the floor,

Ears ring with curdled howls of those poured
Through the jump-door, until they’re
Hurtled out with a gruff

"Go! Go! Go!"
Now! Now?
NOW.

Into
The narrow
Breach of moment,
All cascading into
Memory at thirty-two
Feet per-second per-second,
Exactly as each precedent’s freefall.

The parachute blooms, the flash blinds:
The instant ends with a skyward jerk, once
Familiar sounds lurk far below this place, this
Softer time for quiet minds. Now we are old, unsound,
Top-heavy once more, groping two and three and four legs
At a time for flat ground and hard floor. As the pile grows
Of grains below, the gathering gains its own gravity; a greedy,
Rasping chorus calls, “Down here!” In trance, time appears to slip
Away the faster, the dance crescendos as the coda nears; isn’t that the
Funny thing with years? They count more in proportion than duration,
And we count each less with accumulation.

Still Life

What intrigues the watchers of the fish?
Is it the effortless fluidity?
Their endlessly self-scouring memory?
What bliss, to feel always renewed
When floating – un-pursued - in two feet cubed,
To dart about for never-changing flakes of food,
Companions, fixed and constant
(seeming so:
the mostly orange uniform obscures
who comes and goes)

Thus viewed from inside, does our cube of atmosphere
More or less trump theirs?
With jagged, fretting struts of our daily anxiety
O'erdrawn so blatantly before their bulbous stares unblinking,
Our manic, clamorous troubles
Slightly muted by the droning pumps and bubbles,
Who lives a life more sheltered from fear?
Who should envy whom in here?

And with its end, there are no dreams to come,
No mortal coil to shuffle,
Just a gentle roll and sinking toward the surface;
Only We soliloquize on action, future strife, and purpose.
Yet, to continue this forgetting, birth 'til death,
Is that still life?

It's my secret pleasure to watch in fourth dimensions,
To sit beyond, at right angles to both ogler and angler
And watch the symbiotic tension
Of mutual voyeurism
As a separate, living organism.

Pura Vida

All the Costa Rican locals
Flip their thumbs and pinkies wide,
Smiling "Pura Vida!" at you
While you bask in tropic sun.

In the tree canopy above
Our rum and pineapple-graced
Infinity swimming pool,
Three-toed sloths would chew all day, dazedly,
On Cecropia leaves
Known to alleviate depression,
While we bob and loll on a throne of liquid water
Overlooking the Pacific.

Would it change these Tico attitudes
To cross north of forty latitudes
And see this "Pure Life" frozen still,
Bottled up so brazenly?
Either that's what shocks me,
Or else my brittle moustache shivering
In minus twenty degree windchill.

Music Lessons

Don't listen to them, son.
They'll think it's fun to send to Leno
So he'll gloat and say how dumb
But you and they and he would miss the sweet irony.