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A sampling of poetry

Something hopeful

(Untitled ode to wonder)

Rain-speckled window thirty floors high
covers the office from the gray wall sky
Eyes fixed on a young boy across the line
staring out a window just like mine
His eyes seem to catch in the gentle breeze
and I wonder what I don't that he sees

Something silly

When love and words are all a-fluster

(Author's note: an ode to one of my favorite poets)

To let things flow freely
   with the art of a master,
is, yes, I admit,
   just a little bit harder
     and your wit must be quickened
        and slickened
And your lines have to come about seven beats faster.
And what seems random and arbitrary,
   jumbled like a bumbled mess,
   and comes out, let's face it,
   all willy-nilly to us,
Is some cleverly fixed,
   dressed and humbled
     way to stretch
         just for a rhyme
         and not fall victim
            to the supercilious.
-- But it's had my mind mired and tortured and bogged in...

Who the hell names their kid Ogden?

Regarding religion

This poem was the first in an unfinished series called !?: 40 poems for the wayward and the wanting, the wandering and the wondering.

Lost

in a torrent like a whirlwind like a windstorm like a stone without moss without mass without weight with all the weight in the world of the world on your shoulders.
Those shoulders made giants, they say.
It pains me greatly to be this tall and be expected to still be great. This lost is like a dream exploded, expressed in "the rest" and "the other" life. You could say it's like a mother to me, because I'm nurtured by the nothing of lost, because my milk is made of little hopes, of shrapnel dreams and wishing motes.
The air polluted of diluted dreams is whiskey to my breath, intoxicating mystery that nullifies the fear of death. I miss my grandma, yeah, I miss her good. My missing is a mission that I organize a brotherhood, that I tell the world my story, that I send my friends my fate because "Lord knows" no Lord of mine will be watching His calendar to check my date.
And when my blood has run my veins and pain is all I know, I'll know if I have spent my days in vain by never always losing.

And so in seven days, Good created light and dark, plants and animals, and He named them after Himself. And He created Atom and Evil, and cared about them most.
And Evil said, "There is much to gain," and Atom said, "There is much to learn," and yea, it was so.
By the eighth day, Good had given Himself to his creations, and existed in fragments, in the seeds of trees and the eyes of dogs, in the heart of chimps and the soul of man. And man's soul would be so Good that it was hidden from Atom and Evil, so that they may not find the essence of Good.
And Atom declared this the objective. And Atom and Evil would spend the rest of their lives searching for the Good in man.

If Atom and Evil find Good, turn to page 41.
If Atom and Evil find nothing, turn to page 1.

Eulogy to a girl who died before I could meet her

Untitled

(Author's note: When I was preparing to attend Colgate University, so was Merritt Levitan, a young woman I hadn't even heard of and now will never get to meet. She was on a cross-country bicycle trip when a reckless driver killed her. Everything I felt about that news went into this poem.)

Here lies Merritt Levitan, the strongest girl I never knew
Were I to boast that I'm still whole, then I'd be lying too.

And the waters calm began to rage
and swell a force upon this page,
no doubt the seeds of iron hate
against the murderer's mistake.

Move on, they whisper,
our story lies above.
move on, they whisper,
our story is of love.

A warrior beauty, a princess of dress,
a Raider, of course, the well-worthy best
she conquered the world.

she could have conquered the world.

and she did, and she did
they echo her shouts

the sun casts great shadows
but it never goes out.

the girl I loved but never knew:
a great within the mighty few --
i'll never rest, despondent of
the breathless heart, the brighted cause.

the city party chattered on
like drones oblivious to dawn
a pity (?) shame or tragedy
invisible to all but me.

colors dried
drained from her smile
and just for a while
we cried.

Regarding seasonal affective disorder

Thirty Days

Thirty days has September
April, March, and November.
Twenty days has May and June,
The longest season of the bloom --
July and August, three or four,
October's usu'lly variable.
But as November fades away,
No longer is there time of day
But rather, cold, eternal night --
Snow freezes over,
Wind breaks on cheeks,
And -- lest they touch ground -- She ices tears --
In those three months I live three years.