2017 Poems

[I don’t write poetry all that often anymore, but since sometime in 2015, I have been keeping a poetry notebook of sorts in (embarrassingly) Apple’s Notes app. For some reason, in 2017, there were a surprising number of entries. At the moment at least, I really like a lot of these. In a moment (this moment) of weakness, I’m going to post the best ones here.]

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Everything is a gimmick

In poetry, it’s all just words
That exalt exhaust fuming
Fumbling mind-forensics

Frayed-edged razor words
Bathtub scrubbed sentences
Clean as a gleam of your reflected eye

Reflexed rubber word bubbles
Popping rice crispy soft
On the cerebellum insides

Gullible and guilty words
A wasted breath-beacon
On your bacon bourbon belly brain

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It’s national poetry month!

Says the library shelf
So I paw through some disused books
Sniffing for turns of phrase
Like a dog who pisses letters

I decide that most poets aren’t
Using enough technical terms, or
Analytical enough
(anal being the operative syllable)
And resolve to write more
Poems for pedantic programmers

I’ll read a book of poems this month
Even if it’s snozcumber terrible!
I turn to a back page author’s bio
And see a woman I haven’t thought about
Since our shared poetry classes
Twenty professor-less years ago

The publication date is two years previous
This is her first book
Her dedication is the same as the photo credit
She got an MFA after I dropped out to write webpages

As I walk to get lunch I’m writing this poem
Breaking lines, cultivating, alliterating
Struggling secondarily, unnecessarily
to remember a single detail about her
Not already present on that back page

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Ambition

An ember, smoldering,
Buried behind my right eye
If I pay it too close attention
It sparks and the bright red pain
Flares for an instant
The color of burned paint
Peeling from a tin can

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Augmented

We have a perfect time
I’m
Heading over to pick
Her
Bus mother and real estate
Office is open at three
We
Look for the new best next
In
Theory we look under there
Inside
Reality

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Anatomical Geometry

Asses to elbows
in the club, it’s all
circles and angles

A fundamental efficiency
human bit-packed array;
analytical plasticity. / an encumberment of appendages.