Rights (a found poem)

Movement relying upon us
Beings bound for selfish purposes
Human nature serves our nature only
Masters may decide
if animals are created by God

Crashing in Reverse

You and I
Were like a car crash played in reverse
We were wrecked when we approached
And our collision put us back together
Our metal parts crumpled out smooth
The scattered shards of glass were blasted off the ground
And melted back into our window frames
The light spiraled down from who knows where
And jumped back inside our headlight bulbs
And by the time we'd stumbled off the way we came
Somehow we were good as new

Locker

It's funny how the place with your stuff in it
Becomes your home base,
The place you go back to.
It's funny how despite all our power,
The Kings of Nature,
We still rotate around
Some textbooks,
A mirror,
A tube of
Chapstick.

Outer Space

In my daydream I lived on the moon, alone
I didn't need a space suit or an oxygen tank
The laws of science looked the other way
And as the days and nights ran together
I walked for hours over the rocky ground
My feet were cushioned in the thick gray dust
Quietly in the distance the earth twirled, adorning the night
My only sky was outer space
The stars and the endless unknowable darkness

When I was tired, I laid down and just watched
On a scratchy old record player, I played low ballads
Violin and cello chords

Society forgot me, and slowly I forgot it, too
I knew the universe outside
In all its peace that we have never shared

The Real Problem

You told me once that you’ve never understood poetry

And I laughed today on my way over to give you back your key

Because I realized so supremely and so instantly

how true that is.

You’ve never understood poetry,

Not while it filled the pages of my notebook

As we sat side by side on the airplane to Tucson last summer,

Not when you saw it spilling from my tired eyes

That day two weeks ago when we had our last fight,

Not even when we danced at that wedding

And it wrapped around us like a warm fog,

Was like dew against your skin,

And I reached out and touched it

Couldn’t even speak

And when the song ended, you walked away

Like you were leaving a grocery store.

No, you’ve never understood poetry,

Not even when it was all around us,

Not even in the moments where we became it.

And there, all along, my dear,

Was our problem.