Laments of A Pen

My ball-point rolls over
pages lined with lists.
Is this what has been written?
My computerized counterpart,
the keyboard, has relegated
me to menial things. messages,
notes, groceries, schedules,
lists. I miss my days atop
the literary chain. Days when
typewriters were too much work
for typical transactions,
when laptops were nothing more
than future science fiction.
And amidst my lamentations,
all it seems I still have left
is I'm not rusting like the sword.
No, I am still the mighty pen.

Reading Between Shelves

This library is a beehive, honeycombed,

that student has a set of wings,

translucent, buzzing, flimsy, like burnt sugar,

they smell of honey's sweetness.

Yet they're bitter like Garfunkel's failures,

because this building is not a beehive,

she's rather more a concrete castle.

But one fucked up, not one majestic.

We're trapped because the printers buzz,

while Arjuna approaches awakening.

The crumbling plaster.

Enlightenment.

Our progress is the man in quicksand,

he devours books and atlases

while Déscartes sautés encyclopedias

that the workerbees will someday eat

in a morbid feast of frantic serenity.

All fragile wings must become mouths.

La rue de victoire, ce n'est pas vrai.

We're paved by the labor of lesser wings,

clinging to the catacombs of this library.

How much is lost?

Is it the words or the writing
that are extensions of the self?
Because I can't quite tell if
the phrases that I'm reading
represent what I really felt.

The question I can never pull
from my mind's stuck drawer
is one concerning who we are
compared to people we once were
and if we become more.

If I turned the pages backward,
revealing fresh what's been before
could I look into a mirror
by looking through the keyhole
of my younger bedroom door?

I'm not sure if I'll ever grasp
what all goes into growing.
But there's one thing that I know
and that's that the self's
not static but it's flowing.

green city bench

he leans back in his long plaid jacket
and watches the traffic as it practically
melts down the blacktop street
in the summertime heat
that knocked him off of his feet
and keeps him fixed to his seat
where he listens to heatwaves glisten
and his friends are all missin'
the barely audible brilliance
of the millions of miniscule breaths
breaking forth from lungs of leaves
that cling to the trees
as they try to not freeze
in the summertime breeze.

Role Model

I wanna be like Bob Dylan
and change the world I live in
I wanna sing songs about something
that people care about
for more than 3 minutes
and not care how I sound.
I wanna be like Bob Dylan
and be entirely myself.

Looking over my grandfather's shoulder.

I'm looking back at battles I didn't fight
and deciding who was in the wrong or right
and even though my absence gives me innocence
i feel a certain sense of necessary recompense
for the wars unwon by my ancestors indirect
because i believe that even if i'm correct
it's no thanks to my vision that's not so great
but only the lenses that history can create.

the heart as a hose

the pipes have been filling with pressure
yet it's taking less to fight off the flow
even though from what i know i should
begin to grow weak from holding on
and perhaps my eyes missed small drops
that slipped through fingers but failed
to leave traces of their trickling down
but small amounts mean nothing now
since i spread my fingers in the decision
to let the unquenchable rain down.