I wrote poems last night. They’re not good. They’re okay.

Telepast

Vrioom-vrioom go the motorcars
in constant motion on the deadbeat track
plunder and loot, a village pillaged
oil stolen and computers jacked
I had a dream last night and
it certainly was strange
I was the hero and the heroine
was the hired maid
but the maid was once my friend and I
didn’t know where to begin
in relating said story to another
because parts of it were still unripe
like yeti fruit plucked from a luminous tree
in my random access memory
I remember each TV show I have ever watched
better than the moments I have spent with you
and whispered imaginings lost their virtue
as they receded beyond the hairlines.

The eyeliner; I can tell you need it,
your eyes are red like dirt.
But I remember when you only needed
to smile at me to get me to see
a present-day princess reflected in my
eyes like television camera lenses,
wide and biopic.

One day they’ll write stories about you,
if one day your stories become famous.
Spin, rinse, dry. Not anymore, you won’t.
Vrioom-vrioom wheels spinning out,
one snaps and makes a descent into a pit
too deep and dark to see the bottom of.

Telepast 2

Children grow up seeing screen visions and wanting to be just like them;
guess it can’t be helped / It was like a bad dream that I soon forgot
and probably shouldn’t have / You spend your life looking at portraits
you forget that real people don’t stand still, you spend your life watching
action movies, you forget that real people aren’t always in motion.

Typo

We’ll wish upon the same star and then I’ll heartlessly forget that I ever knew you, because that is who I really am. Behind my masks and put-ons, there is a part of me that no fellow human being may see.

Behind me, Satan. In front of me, despondency and reasons for utter despair. If I stand still, I may forget that I ever wanted to move on. I am not a typo. I am not a mistake or the sum of my mistakes. I am not a doll. I am a means by which you can show God’s love to a fellow human being. If you don’t see me as such, then how dare you call yourself a follower of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness is the one thing in the universe that can make me cry. All people deserve to die, but only a few are gifted with the painful drawn out deaths that they deserve.

When you’re half-asleep there’s only one way to find out if you’re awake, but sometimes that way is not available to you.

The Rash

Ten plus seven and now there are too many
because we don’t have enough work for all of them to do.
We waste this time together and it isn’t doing for me
any of the homework that I’d rather burn with ashen tips of incense sticks.
We have to assign seats and lectures to occupy their fervent
worshipful minds, and so we assign them new lives and lines.
Take, put on, try these hats for size, we suggest if you do not want to get suspended.
The uniforms are not guaranteed to fit and if they do, you might get a rash
if you stop wearing them too suddenly. Air flow and that. It’s cooler if
you let us run the universe in which you co-exist with us; cede your power.

Verdant

To live the life of kings.
Headdressed guards with trailing coats
on patrol aside the rose hedges.
You might run across a queen or future king
as you run between classes listening to voice mail.

Your hobby is finding perfect flowers,
then neatly cutting all the thorns from the stems and branches,
and when you make an incision too deep,
you regret and you won’t take that sort of risk again.

Only the memorable moments remain in the midst of your mind.
Only the moments spent with other people still exist,
continual, subject to recall and remembrance.
The ones when you are all alone;
even then there is another present (or the vision of),
closely attached like a liver or a spleen or a diaphragm.

You shone verdant, and we drank
ginger ale under a red awning at a useless cafe
with a name that I forgot but not the look
on your face. That will stay with me like the effects
of old age and the shameful choices I’ve made.

Provost

It’s appetite-draining like ten-day-old bread to have nothing to do and nobody to talk to. When you look all around and see only walls, empty and spacious like yellow dunes of sand, pastoral landscapes and portraits of yourself in frames, it gets unnerving. It makes you want to cry when you realize that this is not a dream–that this is very real and you get only what you bargain for and that you will always be a complete failure when it comes to bargaining to your benefit. You rip yourself off, essentially, and you are happy to let people rip you off, because you feel as if you are doing them a necessary favor. Secretly you realize that no matter what you do it will go unappreciated by the ones you do it for. It makes you not want to live, anymore.

It’s only that you didn’t want to feel alone that you went to the trouble of hanging portraits on the wall of the people that you loved. Your confidence was mostly sham to convince certain people that you loved them, and when it failed you found yourself moving to another town and another social circle of friends, friends all, the bonds between you as solid as the wind on a day when there is no wind and no sky to be seen.

It’s fun to hear from you. Explanations are forthcoming as a means of introduction, painless fearless fervent exchange like over-the-counter, no questions asked, eyebrows and voices raised together, spitting images, reminders of every single one from the past. It makes you so happy sometimes to talk that you can’t breathe. You run out of words to say how you feel because you want to be able to remember but can’t bear to spare your strength on such a selfish thought.

Purification. Stained glass distorts the light, but in such a way that you can see images via the light that would not be visible were it not for the filter of the murky glass. These images may guide you into a greater light. Impurification, like the way that God allowed the effects of the knowledge of good and evil to remain a corrupting influence. Truth ensnares us and lies make our hearts glad.

In your small world you are the king, the provost, the head and all the others are your subjects and tributaries. He made it sound so simple and you wanted to believe him, way back when you were young. You sound so confident all the time and people who lack social skills envy you for it and try to emulate your confidence. Suddenly you don’t want the meeting to ever end, and you think of new things to say only because you want to hear the other one speak. You stare and look for his reaction. You are oblivious to the obvious, like a sharp stone hidden in a morning fog. Clams conceal pearls, but you are a pearl concealing a clam. Very strange!

I always feel as if I have lost. That’s why I keep looking forward to what happens next. I live for and in the future because the present is always too full of painful memories for me to focus. I need to escape. It’s the confidence that attracts me to you, but confidence is what scares me the most. Can’t we all be pushovers and weak and indecisive and pointlessly selfish and unyielding?

It’s the ones who refuse to compromise who become dictators, and it’s the dictators that we tend to develop the most grudging respect for. Even if they are wrong, we feel as if they deserve to lead, and we choose to follow them despite our better judgment. We want to follow decisive people, not weak-willed people.

You’re mean and the wild animals retreat when the wind tells them of your arrival in their habitat. The wooden fences and stone walls are all in ruins. They lie flat after the passage of the hurricane. When things change they can’t ever be the same.