It Only Gets Harder To Be Respected, If Everyone Knows You're Right

Last summer I scored "good" all across the board
But by last fall, I was a fallen ace
A bruised and broken dream
Through the winter I watched the ice creep
All through the windows in my eyes
Every day, in the newspaper, the cover story claimed to be
"Young, Smart Boy, Cannot Find His Enemy"


Well, you're all just breathing water
And I join you, though it's making me a clown
'Cause I'm the only one who knows he's drowning
Even though my voice just spills and makes no sound
Some say if you rhyme a poem, it loses all its soul
Well, I say that a rhyme-less poem
Just rasps out what is not whole

Now I don't mean to hurt you
I just want to live
But it's so hard to play the game
When all you want to do is give
Just give everyone else victory
And let them win the game
Though to the rules, that is not fair
That's losing, acting lame
I know this makes no sense
But I've done the best I can do
It hurt me to write this, dear reader, just as much
As it hurts you.

Hearts Beat In Union With The Dissonance

This is a love letter to my heart's one true enemy
The one who can always strike it down just a look of the eye
I cried on your couch till I woke the house up
And when I had to explain why I was there,
The poet and hypnotist in me was laid bare
I was lost and won and lost again, like a crown or an island
Still my heart beats, though by all rights it's a dead heart

And my all wrongs are set apart
From all the deeds I didn't do, and all the loves I thought were true
This bullet, dear, I dedicate to you
The powder smells as the bullet tears through the roof
I smell like a sinner, low and aloof
And this letter still writes itself, though by all rights
It's just something I'll put back on the shelf

I'm Reading About The After-Life, When I Should Be Working On This One

Shouldn't I know by now that poems are just a headless hammer?
A failed and broken cure for growing older?
All they're good for is showing everyone the way the poets are
Even my best rhymes can't cover it up
Can't cover it up
But I still say
Give me two more weeks and ten Saturday's
And I swear I'll make everything feel ok
I think you're showing me open doors
But the key is still in the lock, and I have no idea if they're open-ended...

On a summer day, you and me
Making our own paradise
But not the one that really matters
I smile when I think of my accidental genius
And frown at all my goodly contrived mistakes
I'm trying to cast off the skeletons on my back
Just remember to remind me why we came before the last song plays

...

Well, that was a nice poem. I think that it's funny, how often I write. I hear lots of good things about my work, but...Sometimes to me it seems like I'm just massproducing sentiment. Is it still meaningful if there's a million other near-copies of the work? Is it still possible to be original, in a world like the one we have today, where the Internet spreads everything out over the entire Earth? Can people still come up with some sacred scrap of cleverness? Am I being original, or just lying in a new way? I don't know. I just don't know. And I don't think I'm anywhere near to figuring it out. So until I do, or don't, I'll just sit here, typing on my keyboard, cranking out hopes, dreams, and words that other people don't have the strength or natural wit to speak.

I still have far to go...I haven't published anything yet. I'm sitting here in my tiny, rented room in the metropolis of the Blagosphere. And what am I doing? Whispering to the world. I really should try to get some of this between the covers of a book. There's far more out there then just a network of blogs....maybe I should try aiming for success in the real world, the one where you live and die. Well, dear audience, back to the play...

...

Is my heart a little more than you bargined for?
I can tell you wanted a cat, but you got a lion
You're taking yourself down, and dragging everyone with you on your way up
There's a loaded gun in the closet, and the crowd in the theater says
"Don't pull it, don't pull it"
Well, you make another notch in the wall to tell the time
But it's seven o'clock according to your watch
If almost none of my metaphors and witticisms make sense
I guess, incoherently enough, I'm still making myself known
Even if it's only through mystery, like why I'm listening to the same song
Three times in the half hour

Abthirdly Personal

Could you love a man
Who loves with a diamond?
A hard jewel he holds
In the palm of his hand
He's luckier than most
He can take his heart right out of his chest
And look at it
And he sees a man, who has a heart of diamond
He sees it reflected, in the palm of his hand

Would you believe me if I told you
He doesn't want to hurt anyone?
Maybe you could believe something like this
"He just wants to get along, to actually be friends
You know, the kind that never ends
He just wants to say what he really means
And wait for an hour, or more
Just to see her once again"

He'd pick you up when if you went down
If you're knocked down
He's just the one to get you on your feet again
And, he just wants you to know
He lives his life, just dancing on
Hoping all the time for a partner to join him
For just the very next song