A solid place to stand;
Smooth stone for soft feet
Enough light to see;
Warm sun for weak eyes
Truth behind lies and
Silent grace beneath the noise.

I need what’s been given
But am reluctant to grasp,
To listen,
To read,
To daily choose.

Don’t need more time,
More convincing;
Just reminders for
A stubborn brain:

Blue behind clouds.
Water running through
Breeze-blown trees
As dirt is hidden
by new growth.

Illumination by fools
doing it wrong,
By friends doing it right.
Clarity in furthest wanderings.
Correction. Foregiveness.

I crossed the street without looking today
Granted, it was just a quiet one-way
Avoid eye contact when there’s nothing to say
Don’t turn if there’s risk that she’s looking

Eight or ten steps from one curb to the next
A short twelve feet further from nothing, at best
And to think, push time backwards twenty steps
I thought we had chances or something

The world is wrapped
in a thin blanket,
impatient for morning

Like the east,
my eyes are heavy
with possibility -
possibilities that are exciting
and ones likely to come true
and others, always empty,

My imagination tries
to pad the spaces
to warm my head
As the sun now warms
the Midwest through
a layer of fraying flannel

Little may still be exciting
when I open my eyes.
The decision to delay
is all it takes to
scatter leftover dreams;
they dissolve like burning clouds

But my mind is not
as sharp as the sun…
all morning I will chase
The fading fog of chances
unrewarded which I did
or did not take.

In clearest day
I’ll fight to fill
these phantom hopes.
Something into nothing,
patience with no time.
To save myself trouble

Not much left is exciting
I’ve looked and have not seen
I’ll squint a while longer,
Since it’s harder to
get out of bed -
but life won’t meet me here

Plucked fresh from the dealership floor
like eggs still warm with henhouse straw
proudly bearing temporary tags until
the vanity plates come FedEx from daddy
These girls drive cars worth more than
the rapidly disentegrating houses
rented to them in this college town

And how they love it.
A city small enough to get drunk
and lost without being shot or stabbed
- but within its limits, thousands of
stupid young men!
They might as well be goddesses
in Greek fairytales

And don’t they know it.
They dress expensive, too
showing off enough to turn our heads
faster than even their cars do
Shredding most hopes that we’ll
ever pay attention in class
or get through a meal at the dining hall
without choking half to death

And they would kill us with their looks,
if they could. They wield this
twisted power like a toy,
making victims of everyone
including themselves, however indifferent
and out of reach they might act.
But there they are, unchanging
and growing slowly cold
tangling their emotions around guys
false as themselves - being vulnerable only
at the very times when they should not

And they have no idea
And still we hang helpless
on their every step and word
equally ignorant of how much time,
thought, misguided emotion
we are wasting.
Thank God for cigarettes
thank God for beer weight
and irritating cell phones
Only with help do we glimpse
shallow girls for what they are.

crrchunk chuk chuk cheeeee
No more semis
stopping in the night
air brakes popping and squealing
as they roll to the stop sign eighteen feet
from my window

skkrreeeeeeeeeeeeecccch
Enough with the buses!
pads worn from constant braking
screaming at the pavement as they drag
the noisy monsters to a halt - all too close to the
room where I sleep

assorted ridiculous noises
All day long,
through the night,
and hey, why not some more the next day?
Growling SUVs, speeding Porsches,
those idiotic noisy-mufflered Hondas
pass by in constant succession

One of four busy streets
in a small town
where everyone wants attention
…And leaving the window shut
would result in overheated
air-conditioner-less death
So open it stays, which is great
but for the intersection being
one very small lot away

When I graduate I will go back to the country
after a hopefully brief trip up
the ladder in some city web design firm
I can get used to the noise
I have gotten used to it
unless “used to it” means that
it no longer drives me crazy

Living in town is interesting
because there’s more activity
with people around and stuff going on
But then, i’m boring
and don’t do a lot one way or another
So i’ll take the squirrels, hawks,
and a dozen acres… For now,
I’d give an arm and a leg
(ok, how about fifty bucks a semester)
to live just one block to the north

I feel the tension of a familiar
clothespin at the base of my nose.
From the edge of my hair
to the bottoms of my cheekbones,
my head seems packed with wool

But with cool air slipping onto my arms
through our gloriously open window,
I exult that winter is finally dead
despite the discomfort in my head
that comes with changing weather

What are aching sinuses,
compared with spring breezes?
The dusty screen also lets in
chattering bird-song, lively and joyful noise
far outweighing painful distractions

So often we take the bad, grudgingly
accepting our world’s imperfection -
and forget that the bad is only
a side effect of a stronger good

Sweat because you feel the sun
Suffer because you can feel
Hurt yourself because you’re
free to do so…But don’t
hate spring because of a stuffy nose

I got back out of bed when the storm first moved in
But not quite so dramatic, it was just the wind
at the windows that shook off my late midday nap
as it rattled then rushed on its way down the street

And so it goes with my time. Here’s another day
ended rather uneventfully. Another
evening blows by with homework before bedtime.
I’ll wake up to frosted windows, cold sky, classes.

No two days are the same but they’re all too alike
hurry off, hurry back. Take a break - eat a snack
and off again. Three years almost done; one more left
And then off to hurry at something somewhere else.

What if this were it? Sun and rain, air and classes
tearing past towards… nothing. Money saved for seconds
that will also pass too fast. Hope would be insane!
Bleak as this world is, hope is more real than the wind.