cdlxvi. social ambitions

i’m doing all the right things, moving in all the right directions, spiraling up all the right circles to my dreams in higher places. the higher i get, the further i have to go.

cdlxv. avoiding complications

don’t drink. don’t smoke. don’t sleep around. don’t take drugs if you can help it. do drive safely. stop when the light turns red. there are reasons for such rules.

cdlxiv. writing poems

some kind of hunting has been going on, and it’s the thrill of capture that i’m after, the victory of pouncing on a piece of life, trapping it in the net of language, pressing it down into black and white.

cdlxiii. the bureaucracy

we are a cold hard part of a necessary process: repeating through the years repeating.

cdlxii. photograph

smile, i commanded. you obeyed, and i caught forever that moment when something on your face disguised itself so well as happiness.

cdlxi. dreamlover

i must have forgotten what i wished for. perhaps it has come quietly.

cdlx. wet/dry

the best season is silence.

cdlix. days of confusion

it’s too warm for september. when the sun goes down, it goes fast. i confuse the cream with smoke but no one notices, and no one notices me.

cdlviii. hey, little bird

not that the poem has to make sense. not at all. god forbid. mercy. i love weird. it just has to work as a whole. please.

cdlvii. truce

the war is scheduled for next week. it will be a short war, possibly bloodless. and on the weekend, there will be dancing and birthday parties.