I Think I Exist (Out of Time)

When it was time to
sign up for kindergarten,
they decided I wasn't ready
and so I waited a year.
I only remember cats,
nothing about what
that year was like,
and the cats were
there, in their test,
one year later.

At some point,
they decided I needed
glasses, and I only
remember bad vision
the first time those
glasses were broken.
They also decided
I needed speech
therapy. I got stickers.
But none of that is
important.

Or maybe it is. I
would recite every
memory I have of
how I've arrived here today,
but that's not the whole
point.

When I was young, before
I had reached third grade,
a girl kissed me on the back
of the neck. They used
to chase me. By fifth grade,
they made fun of my lips.
I had somehow gotten
stuck in my own time.
In middle school,
they told me to dress better.

When I moved to Burlington,
I ended up working at a movie theater,
where nearly everyone was
younger than me, including
the managers, most of them,
and the youngest and my favorite
was the last girl I wanted
to chase me. I'm told
she's not interested
right now,
and so I can only wait.

Waiting's the real thing.
The first girlfriend I had
pursued me, and I hadn't
really seen her coming,
and that's how it ended.
I will be moving,
and if I'm to be found,
she will need to pursue.
That's my whole life,
the chase.

I cannot be caught.

I'm out of step,
a tick of a tock out of time,
a tock of a tick,
I meet people I want as friends,
who have the same interests,
the same passions, but in the end,
I'm always alone. This poetry?
Tomorrow, I will write more,
tomorrow a thought fusion,
but today? Today is not
yesterday, and yesterday
is not today, but, as I began
then, I continue,
and alone.

The love that you make is
equal to the love that you take?
Why don't you make more
why don't you take more
why don't you make more love?

People are gravitated to me,
I'm common ground,
but the ground?
It is cursed. I cannot
share in what I give.
I make but cannot take.
Do you think you have heard
all this before?
Well, please, direct me to that
person down the hole to the other
side, because I need to meet them,
I need to see and know and feel
and know that they understand.
I write a blog? That's in the
public, but isolated?
That blog is me.

That blog is me.

Tick tock tick tock, that's a progression
that doesn't repeat, but inverts itself,
tick
tock/
tick

(tick tock/tock tick)

as I've already written. I notice
the squirrels, I told my brother,
not as something cute and novel,
in this world we only see humans,
but as another mind, minding
itself. It does not need me,
does it watch me?
I don't watch nature,
I don't watch through
goggles, to know,
but to see.

I see.

I try and see.

That's a curse out of time,
the knowledge of existence
because I have seen it,
not because I believe or
I want to believe,
but because it is there
and I have bothered to see it,
the magician's slight of hand,
his trick,
his prestige,
the moment you make
the ordinary
the extraordinary.


Did you see it?

Romance

It's not knowing that
two more girls
think,
despite what I'd thought,
they don't want boyfriends right now,

it's that,
as much as I've wanted it otherwise,
it's almost a relief.
They're not tugging.


It puts some relief
on other concerns.

Y'know, I think.

Call It Ishmael Today

After Agha Shahid Ali, and his contents

I have loved
Arabic,
for you,
by exiles
of it all
in real time;
of fire
things;
shines
my word
from the start;
angels
of water
as ever
land;
not all, only a few return,
even the rain,
water
of snow,
air,
about me
in marble
bones;
in,
beyond English
of light
stars,
for time
God;
forever;
after you,
in Arabic,
tonight
existed.

What A Future Is

what a future is
may be found out
easily enough

but if you're looking
for a definition,
look elsewhere

Metaphysics of Zen

after "Zen" by Kenlee from Urbis.com

Zen is a wonderful thing.
Zen is the thing you achieve
through that philosophy
some mistake as a religion.
You can understand, because
they're identified as a group,
those who follow it,
like a religion.
They even have monks.
Zen is not about
religion, or belief,
or practice. I think
even they get it wrong.
They're caught up in its
Hindu origins.
Zen is a way of life,
not a way out of life,
Zen is a Value,
and a Quality,
because it's so
hard to define,
easy to mistake
for the butcher boy
lying in wait.
Zen is,
it just is.
Zen is,
because
Zen is
Zen is
Zen is.

Z-en is
like the blue oose,
like the students
who think it's
okay to ignore
someone else's
tragedy,
oh can't you see?
Zen is.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics are details
that are hard to define.
You don't actually have to be
or have been crazy
to see them, but
it probably helps.
Crazy is a subjective
term, which the
originator of the
phrase I've been using
explains better
than I could,
because I suffer
from a lack of
diagnosis above
all else. I think
that's the best way
to go. I alone
am telling myself
that there's got to
be something wrong,
and that's probably a
good thing.
It's funny, because
when I hear people
chatter about things
being wrong, I figure
they're usually wrong,
because they aren't
seeing things clearly.
I have bad vision,
but I see just fine.
I chafe when
people around me
call themselves
acknowledged geniuses,
based on IQ tests,
and feel a compulsive
need to batter them
to prove otherwise,
even though my tests
have more to do with
personality. The
Metaphysics of Personality
describe how one's
intelligence can be
determined by how
they react to others,
whether they understand.
If you understand,
that's the key.
If you understand.
Most people couldn't
care less to. Most people
couldn't care less about it.
I understand, and I'm
hobbled by a periodic
black cloud around me,
so that I cannot always
show it. But I think
the eyes have it. The eyes,
the Metaphysics of Eyes,
that may be the most pure
of them all.
You either get it
or you don't.

Metaphysics of Value

If the Metaphysics of Quality
are jacked up,
then the Metaphysics of Value
are even moreso.
They simply cannot
be shared, and it's
that very Quality
that leads them
to become universal.
Quality is elusive,
Value is everywhere,
Value in the things
we place it, Value, as
a result, in our very hands,
the mutual hands of Value.
It's hard to talk about it
and not get caught up in it.
Value is the thing we don't
see, and the thing we
see everywhere. Quality
is intangible, Value tangible.
It's the thing we hate to
have, the thing that traps us,
and the thing we can't live
without. You can define
Value, but not Quality.
But it's still a Metaphysical
study. Because people
refuse to believe.