“He was remembered for kindness
While his kindness endured
He will be remembered for cruelty
Until he is remembered no more.”
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Immemorial
Grover Learns About Opposites
Grover is near
Grover is far
Sometimes opposites
Are about where you are
Right now, Grover is very close
Grover says, “Near!”
Grover runs far away
Grover says, “Far!”
Grover is hot
Grover is cold
Sometimes opposites
Are about how you feel
Grover feels a chill
Grover says, “C-c-cold!”
Grover puts a thermometer in his mouth
Thermometer says, “Medical attention is recommended for fevers over 106 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Grover is standing
Grover is sitting
Sometimes opposites
Are about what you are doing
Grover is standing in the waiting room
Grover is sitting in the waiting room
Grover is standing in the waiting room
Grover is sitting in the waiting room
Grover is standing in the waiting room
Grover is sitting in the doctor’s office
Grover asks a question
Doctor says, “Yes.”
Grover asks another question
Doctor says, “No.”
Grover is sad
…
Grover is mostly just sad
…
Sometimes opposites
Don’t happen the same amount
Grover is afraid
Grover is trying
(Opposite of not trying)
To be brave
(Opposite of afraid)
But it’s hard
(Opposite of easy)
Sometimes
A word has more than one opposite
Another opposite of afraid can be
Accepting
Grover remembers being near and far
When Grover was near
Grover was Grover
When Grover was far
Grover was still Grover
When Grover was hot, cold, quiet, loud, above, below, laughing, crying
Grover was always Grover
Sometimes opposites
Are just different ways of being Grover
Grover takes a breath
Grover says, “Here.”
Things That Melted
It was one of those window-only, walk-up ice cream shops
Where all the flavors were named after black-and-white movies
Citizen Kandy Kane
Goodbye, Mr. Chocolate Chips
Some Like it Hot Fudge
We ordered the same Bogart and Bacall flavor
Me quietly, obliquely
“The, uh, the espresso one”
You insisting on the name on the sundae marquee
“Well, I’LL have The Big No-Sleep!”
Too loud, and with the look that said this was all to get a reaction out of me
That fifth-date stage of playful obnoxiousness
When we pushed each other’s annoyance sliders to see how far they’d go
The ice cream was colder and sweeter than plums from an icebox
It tasted like finding the person you’d been waiting for your whole life
That place closed several years ago, though
And nobody makes that flavor anymore.
Constalgia
There needs to be a word for
Missing someone you’ve just met
All the past absences preceding their present presence
That temporal ache of
Never will have having had
The sequoia-root connection
From knowing them your entire life
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Missing Someone You Just Met, Poem, Poems, Too Late For Lifelong
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I Love You Like Iron Man 2
Sometimes
I wonder if love and sex and ineffable human connection are at their core, just
Fine
Like a B-tier Marvel movie
Something pleasant and inoffensive enough to pass the time
But blown out of proportion by centuries of bottomless marketing budget
Books and movies and Broadway musicals and Taylor Swift songs
Slow-motion women eating yogurt in commercials
Shirtless men on paperback romance covers photographed from the mouth down
Hallmark holiday movies and Pornhub
All saying, “This thing,
This exaggerated, perfect version of the thing
That you only find in incomplete, temporary, compromised
And ultimately somewhat unsatisfying forms
Of course it exists
And it will find you
As long as you ignore all these versions of it that are only
Fine
And while you wait, to help it find you, why not buy
A Car That Will Advertise Your Sexual Prowess
Cosmetics From Your Friend’s Multi-Level-Marketing Enterprise
Premium Subscriptions To Every Dating App
A Stranger Who Trims Your Toenails For You
Another Car Because The First Car Didn’t Accomplish What It Was Supposed To
Ripping Out All The Hair On Your Body With Hot Wax
A Membership To A Gym Where Every Wall Is A Mirror
Shiny Gems To Attract The Magpie Gaze Of The Opposite Sex
Okay, You Know Where You Went Wrong With The Other Cars, So This Time For Sure
A Neckline That Goes All The Way To Your Butt”
Maybe it’s okay for these things to be Marvel mediocre
To leave you after an hour or two going
“That was pretty fun, yeah?
I liked that part at the end where they said the thing”
And mostly forget the details by the next week
Maybe you’ll end up with a big wedding crossover
(“I was so surprised that they made an appearance”)
Spin off a few kids
(“Well, they can’t all be winners”)
And inevitably come to an anticlimactic end
Due to cancellation or contract renegotiations
And maybe that’s okay
Maybe that’s enough
Maybe that’s
Fine
Food Poisoning
It changes you
Being food poisoned
To trust something enough to let it in
And feel it stabbing like a knife
Twisted from within
The physical pain gets you first
Doubled over on a couch
While in the kitchen, unbiased third parties
Go through the cupboards
Taking what needs to go
Later it’s the emptiness that gets to you
All the gaps left behind
You don’t even know what used to fill some of them
But you feel something missing all the same
There are old staples you thought would always be there
That you find yourself replacing
With the cheapest options
Not getting attached
Knowing they’ll be replaced again someday
You try to get back out there
But find yourself focused only
On expiration dates
‘Best by’ stickers
And all the other red flags
You find yourself quick to distrust
Ditching half a gallon of milk
Before it has the chance to go sour on you
Taking just one morning’s worth of eggs
Before throwing the rest of the carton to the curb
Some you give up on entirely
Seeing mold and parasites
In every speck of discoloration
Sure, that loaf of bread seems nice
But you’ve been burned before
And you start to think
As one by one you let every possibility drop
From your weak and thinning hands
That maybe you’d be better off without it
This untrustworthy stuff
That always hurts you in the end
Maybe you don’t really need it at all
Maybe you don’t need
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Food Poisoning, Love, Poem, Poems, Relationships, She Used To Bring Me Flours
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Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels
Peanut butter
Filled pretzels
Are never
Quite as good
As I think
They will be
But I still
Keep
Eating them
This could
Probably
Be a metaphor
For lots of things
In my life
But it’s also
True about
Literal
Pretzels
The Time Portal Is Opening!
The time portal is opening!
The beautiful time portal is opening!
Gateway to fantastic futures and marvelous memories
The time portal is opening
In my bedroom
On a Friday evening
What delights shall it bring?
And here they come
The time travelers!
The wondrous time travelers!
There is a boy who looks
Very much how I looked when I was twelve
And an old man who looks
Very much how I might look with a little more gray in my hair
And a top hat
And a monocle
And a little robot squirrel
There’s quite a lot going on with him, actually
And he’s saying
“But if you remain on the path you’re on
This is the future that awaits you”
And the boy looks at me
With deliberation
Until they leave
And the time portal
The beautiful time portal
Is closing.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Cautionary Tale, I Thought This Was A Funny Poem When I Started, Poem, Poems, Time Travel
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Hypercube Vision Board
With your left i
You spy
An imaginary world of lies
While likewise
Your right i can devise
A world in equal shape comprised
Of concepts that may try,
But cannot, truth deny
Now if two i-lines
Should intertwine
These dueling visions do not make you blind
Rather you find
They are combined
And come together in your mind
To form a world of negative incline
As so do mine
But if you take the world your i‘s have spun
And do not run
As we bring both our visions ’round
‘Til they compound
It might be found
That we have shared a bit of most uncommon ground
That i times i times i times i, when all is said and done
Could see this world as one
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Imaginary Numbers, Math, Poem, Poems, The Square Root of Negative Thought
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Pretty, Only Pretty
You are pretty, only pretty
And I love you for it
Not pretty and kind
Or pretty and funny
Or pretty and good at cards
You are perfect
In the only way that can be seen
Without knowing you
Upon the screen of your perfect image
I cast all other perfections
Perfections of mind and heart and personality
And see myself perfected by you
And know that the only thing wrong with me
Was not being with you
Not some misalignment of my mechanisms
That might require adjustment
You turn and smile at me
And for a moment everything is as it should be
For you are pretty, only pretty
And I love you
But then you approach
And with dread I realize that soon I will know you
Your perfections interrogated
Your flaws, so uncomfortably like mine, revealed
And what then?
When fantasies like scabs are peeled away?
If you are pretty
Only pretty
Will I love you?
I don’t know what I want
And I only want
What I don’t know
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Infatuation, Love, Poem, Poems, Pretty, Unrealistic Expectations
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Mindless Productivity 