30 Days and 30 Nights

are enough to finish reading a long book,
heal a cut on your thumb,
plan an anniversary trip,
eat 90 meals (and still have room for snacks),
grow grass on a chia pet,
use up a prescription of antibiotics,
order (and receive) a Bluetooth headset from Amazon,
log 160 hours on the clock at work,
watch the special extended edition
of the Lord of the Rings (but just barely),
clean up hundreds of messes,
settle a ridiculous number of arguments,
follow the first round of the playoffs,
live through a seven day week four times,
hug three children and one woman (repeatedly),
fill a notebook end to end with scribbling,
and drain the fullest pen.

Now for some sleep.

Revolution Never Dies

Today would be Décadi, the day of rest, tenth day of the month of Floréal in the two hundred and seventeenth year since the dawn of the republic, if the Calendrier républicain had stood.

I was there at the Bastille when we broke through. Léon, Gaspard, and I fought under Desmoulins, and even amid the gunfire and flames we felt the joy of new birth. Everything old would be wiped away! We would make all things new!

But the dream is never like the waking, n'est pas? And when the blood of the royalists was all spilled, we turned to drain the blood of friends. How could we think to write a constitution with such ink?

      Liberated from the monarchy, but not from fear.
      Equally able to kill and be killed.
      Brothers, but only once beneath the earth.

For me there is no day of rest. I must outlive it all. Forever forward, yet never fully alive. Is this the punishment for my crimes?

La terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible.

The Calling

Follow me, you said one night,
and though I knew I heard it right
I found a reason not to go
(which wasn't really saying no).

Follow me, you called again
and so I almost did, but then
I saw some things I had to do
and thought that I'd get back to you.

Follow me, you spoke once more
and then, unlike the times before,
I knew I had to make a choice
and not ignore your still, small, voice.

Follow me.
            What if I fall?
Follow me.
            And lose it all?
Follow me.
            But I can't see...
Just take my hand
and follow me.

Broken Soldier

I’ve bought three tubes of superglue
but all their claims have proved untrue,
and still your pieces lie here, strewn,
because you’re clearly glue immune.
Now what to say? And what to do?
I fear you’re lost to the platoon...

The Features of a Familiar Planet

The glacial pace of these global changes
mostly hides them from our eyes,
but still, the features slowly shift.
Tectonic plates drift, collide
and uplift the surface like bones.
Wind, rain, and rivers erode,
carving channels down through the skin.
Gravity sags at the furrowed brows, cheeks, and chin.
And our terraforming efforts, too,
like the repeated formation of expressions
across the geologic epochs,
bring on changes –
now pinching up these frowning ridges,
now spreading out these lines of laughter.

What stories will be mapped out in the end
over the face of this, my earth?

Automation Expectation

I turn away from the urinal
but it does not flush.

I hold out my hands for soap, water, towels,
but nothing happens.

What is this strange, archaic place
where I must touch things
in order to receive them?

24 (C)

you are speaking
soap bubbles through a wand
and the air fills
with rainbow-pearled pollen
I gather them in
to receive
your words

24 (B)

mounds
of shredded paper
loom around us like peppered snowdrifts
the detritus of documents
what is this place?
they are messages missed
words unreceived

24 (A)

words
like prayer beads
fingered gently and shuttling between us
or little boxcars
laden with freight
and steaming out trusted
to reach their destinations

On an April Afternoon

Laying on my back
in the shade-marbled grass beneath a maple tree,
I watch a lazy cloud between the leaves.
This messenger of rain, far from companions,
is tasked with taking water somewhere,
but clearly has an open schedule.

I take off my glasses
and the view goes soft, indistinct.
Edges and lines are replaced with diffused colors,
nebulous forms, and swimming lights.
I see the casual stirring of green amoebae above.
I listen to the whispering of phantom flagella.