Month: February 2018

How was I supposed to know
That if I was using my heart
To play catch with someone else
I need to make sure they want to play first?

Night after night the dream would come again
Of the tin men who want me to become like them
They gift me instructions as to my functions
And how to operate throughout my lifespan

At ten I am to make many friends
At twenty pursue wealth aplenty
At thirty a life partner must be a certainty
At forty revel in my offspring’s glory–

Every morn I’d wake from my slumber
Only to lumber towards the mirror
And realize I had idolized
Someone else’s trajectory

For what has become of me?
Picky who I associate with
Enough money to live comfortably
But without spouse or kids

The tin men want me to live a blueprint
That I badly wanted but was never meant
Through choices and varying motivations
Side explorations and heeding different voices

So the blueprint remains a trinket
When my steampunk dreams seemed legit
Sometimes revisited like an old home
Whenever a tin man’s idle heart absently roams

And so I sing a sonnet
To help me find my voice
I sound better wearing a bonnet?
Not that I was ever given a choice

I am short some syllables
To keep the verse to form
Not meaning to be inimical
My efforts do not scorn

Slay the frogs in my throat
So my words are fresh as dew
No heroes fording the moat
Don’t want to be last to meet you

Because every great poet
Is inspired by a muse–
I’m running long I know it
Poetic guidelines I refuse!

Let me be steadfast to the table
Please no leftovers for me
I can plead that I am able
To write on behalf of thee!

Dear reader you inspire
I will continue to sing my song
Of my histrionics you may tire
I bear gifts and mean you no wrong

And so I wrecked this sonnet
Just to prove my point
That with poetics I am always on it
Because inspiration on me you anoint

Parents sent package
Full of food stuffs and kitsch
I did not know which

I dare to eat first
And the rest to work disperse
I wanted to share

Open box with care
Raisins crackers ramen prunes?
Bring to work I dare?

Grail at the bottom
A holy treasure to eat
Fortune cookies–sweet!

Some broken open
Contents shifted during flight
Purge defects from sight

Rather than throw out
Broke ones and fortunes they flout
Stuff them in my mouth

When I was in the military
My call sign was
Mask

What more can I do
But craft sentence after sentence
Until I have no more words left?

I’m a puzzle too
Just like you are to me

I’m afraid the person who finally gets back up
After being knocked down
Won’t be me anymore

They’re only words on a page
But seem very real to me
More so than the routine reality
That I regularly engage

There my role will never change
The teams have already been chosen
The rosters locked out and frozen
Configurations cannot be rearranged

Some think me sullen
Others may say I’m quite aloof
How small talk leaves me spooked
That I’m unrelatable to no end

So a myth I must become
Given the company I keep
Using deeds to defeat
And unexpected wit to stun

Soaring above the boring
With a literary bravado
Riddling others like a quiz show
Twisting words and meanings

But gamesmanship goes only so far
I prefer strength in solitude
To contemplate and allude
Rather than being a blaring quasar

When the myth has drained my so-called batteries
I cloak myself in my secret identity
And the question becomes who’s the real me
If the only clues I leave are my poetry?

I have no choice but to stop
I am trapped at the top
With no way down
But now I am cornered
That together they stick as the tower stands taller
Hoping the words are sturdy as bricks
So I keep rambling away
In the reader’s imagination
Lacks meaningful depth to take purchase
But the power encoded on the surface
Elevating the babbling tower like no other
Chains engaging sprockets
As the verses rise like a rocket
So let me change metaphors
Because I wasn’t paying attention
My poetic flotilla will run ashore
That the words will flow no more
I am fleeing the possibility that it’ll stop
Running from bottom to top