Category: Poems about Thinking

Prickly branches, stickily soaked in sap
and little leaves; sticking out like sticks
that stick out from the ground. And such a stick
is nothing but a stick, unless beheld
by brainy and/or brawny men, in which case
not beheld as in the sense as been
bespoke before; but as in that of
banderoles and birch batons, borne
with brazen animosity in bloom;
and no concern
for branches plucked and pruned.

Our lives,
though they do at times seem tangled,
frazzled and chaotic and unmatched,
are symmetric about a wonky axis,
curving and veering and returning and nearing
and ever in order, that is,
from the current perspective.

I’m happy to live on a line like that,
weaving through other people’s lines and such.
It’s delightfully confusing and it makes me wonder,
wasn’t there a plan?
at one time? a direction, a vector of sorts?
But it’s more like a wave,
like a field of directions,
crossing and merging and
passing
but never impacting.

Never impacting,
and I guess that’s the reason we live like this
without knowing, without planning,
without thinking.

So as I waft in this obvious direction
with no clue as to whether or where I’ll continue,
I know at least that however far away I pull from you,
I will with equal and opposite tenacity
launch back towards you, and
you to me.

And perhaps in this knowledge I can relax my fears
and follow this axis of ours
to its logical end.
Whatever that would mean within this metaphor.

A raggedy brown rabbit came to me and whispered a tiny truth.
“I love you,” she said. “And that should be enough.”
I keep her hidden in a tiny box now,
with air holes and vegetables and everything
a rabbit needs.
She lives underneath my day job,
where I smile and learn from people who know much more than I do
about some things,
but far less about rabbits.
I take her out for long walks when the weather is unique,
but put her away when strangers come a-threatening.
Rabbits take no risks and
rabbit-dangers are abundant
in this world of rabid businessmen and gods.
She’s my raggedy brown secret who neither fears me nor frightens me.
She only speaks the truth
and thus,
she rarely speaks.
But such is the nature of rabbits and yes,
It certainly should be enough.

There is no record of this.
No subject to do anything to any object.
No perspective to be had of any aspect.
This like so many other nervous impulses.
There is absence
of any substance
of any notion.
Forget
with no qualifier and without pause.

My right hand tells my left what to do,
and I call her you.
and she says,
“sorry”
but it’s cool, and I tell her,
Do that and I’ll do this.
You hold that still, and I’ll twist.

Blind

Dreams are very fragile friends.
Good stories at the best of times,
but frequently
they only leave me
shaken.
Please,
fade to black and do not reawaken.

Let my eyes relax
and sleep,
and do not wander back,
and keep the pretense
that I might have been mistaken.

Deferred

I used to have a lesson learned,
so undeterred, I earned it,
but the words are locked
and in my pockets,
burning holes and
yearning
to have turned into a journey,
into anything
that’s better than they were.
But what’s the word?
I wonder.
Search me,
burned away before I ever heard.

Awake

Strange, awkward. Perfect.
I climb in bed again.
Hope for peace, but it’s a gamble, and
I don’t really mind.
My eyes glass over and I descend.

…

Ascend.

…

At last.

I am awake in a thousand ways,
when judgement waits behind
the brittle glass.

I walk among distracted clay faces,
Their clay bodies colorful and plain,
Going about their business and ignoring me,
And I wonder whether I should be ashamed of having described
My friends and neighbors as made of clay.

As I meander through the crowd, I recognize the scene.
I’ve read this story once before,
I know the man who wrote it…
What’s his name though…? It’ll come to me.
The story goes, that a man finds himself surrounded by people
Who are all made of clay, and they pay him no mind.
But then he spots a door, to a room
And through the door’s glass window, he can see inside…
Human faces, in the flesh,
Smiling, laughing, talking to each other.
And I see the room before I see it.
Sure enough, along this hall,
The door is red, the room is full of people.

I try the door although I’m sure it’s locked to keep me out,
To keep me longing for the warm and living faces it conceals.
I knock so loudly on the door that surely they would turn their heads
If they could hear it.

I’ve read the story many times, cannot remember the author’s name.
But I know it’ll come to me, just as I know
That I’ll get no answer when I ask politely
of a clay passerby,
“Excuse me sir, do you know how to get into that room?”

I point at the window and wonder if clay people can even see in there.

“They’re different, in there,” is all he can say, before he walks away.
I know that it would be no use to ask of any others
How I could join the people they don’t know or trust or like.
I knock again and stare for hours
Through the glass, at life the way I want to live it,
Stuck out here among the clays,
And after days, walk away in search of some distraction.

What’s the name… I know I know it…
If only I can think of it, I might remember the secret of the room.
I know the man gets in the room, somehow…
I turn around, face the door, and it all comes back.
Yes! He leaves,
And returns to find the door wide open,
And follows someone in.
The door is open for me now too.
And a man in red, more bright and fake
Than the fakest of the clay men is,
Walks inside, and so do I.

And all those people, so alive, are gone and in their place
Are bright red plastic men just like the one I followed in.
But I don’t mind, it doesn’t matter now.

I remember the end of the story
Though the author’s name eludes me…
He enters the room, but all his life was outside, not within.
So happy that he made it here, he finally settles in.
A plastic person holds his hand as he closes his eyes,
And the room dissolves and dies.

And I take the hand of a little child,
Close my eyes, take a breath, and scream.
Not a fearful, but a happy scream,
Satisfied– at long last, I can rest.
But it is a little chilling, to hear a noise I never make
Escape my soul so uncontrolled as this.
I’m trying not to shiver,
As I’m drifting slowly out of my perspective, and I wonder,
What will happen to the child
So bravely holding on to me
While all the room collapses as I scream?

But this is all my imagination,
I scream a little louder, kind of singing.
Drowning out the final remnants of the vision I’ve created,
Hoping it’ll end before I convince myself it wasn’t ever real.

Tiny life, with bits of me
and bits of the one I chose for you,
strung together, underneath
the inquisitive eyes I see you through.
Wily little smiles, copying us,
testing our knowledge, outwitting our words.
Questions I haven’t asked in years,
and answers I’ve never heard.

Keep us young.
Bring us back–
to finding joy in parking lots,
spiral stairs, magnolia trees,
checkered floors, and concrete blocks.

I promise you

I will not lie,

hide the truth,

cover your eyes,

use cute little fallacies to shut you up,
or doubt your ability to understand,
or pretend that I’m listening when I’m not,
or pretend that I’m not when I am.

Years before you’ll be conceived–
you are already more of me
than I am.

Annoying lights and noisy cars and full of stress and people,
on a boring street between two rows of dirt and grass in disarray,
the rocky sidewalk lifting, dropping me awkwardly as I trudge
among a slew of ugly buildings tossed about on either side.

I squeeze between a shaggy and protruding mess of bushes
and a rotting wooden pole that’s in my way and has no purpose,
and here the sidewalk ends and starts again across the street
and so I anxiously prepare to rush through lanes of busy traffic.

I’m agitated by the wait and angry at the scene, and then
I notice someone standing there across from me and staring,
but not at me– at all the dull and dirty things around me…
looking through his lens at something I have yet to see.