Tepid is the Sin

Tepid is the sin
Cautious, undecided, neutral –
Damned.

Better to sin boldly
Or not at all
Than to dally in ambiguity;
To count your chickens
And analyze why they didn’t hatch

And why someone else’s did;
Why you didn’t measure up
Or down
By standing still.


Better to tack
Than to stay the course;
To make your destination
Standing up or on your knees,
But never lying down

Tread upon by the world
Because you never told it no,
Or yes and doubted with the ferocity of belief,
A doubt turned to purpose better
Than an appeasing whimper, a stodgy agreement.


Stand up, stand up
Burn brightly and shine loudly
Or go plummeting down in flames
To rise again a phoenix;
Whatever you do,
Don’t forget your lighter –
It’s easy to Fall in the dark.

Narrative Dabbling in GRE Vocabulary

She assiduously studied antediluvian history to assuage her mother’s demanding educational expectations and simultaneously attenuate her ties with her unwanted banal boyfriend, whom she longed to aver as her ex. Instead, she allowed her hatred to burgeon until it reached a caustic stage in which the tension was almost corporeal, as if it could be cut with a knife. She began to long for the use of corporal punishment, but instead relied on deprecating comments. The craven young man had such a dearth of courage that he failed to stop her belittling of him. He adopted a feral outlook on life, both Hamlet and Tarzan, as he thought his gloomy thoughts out in his wild cottage in the woods.

Walking in the forest one day, he became the target of depredation by a desiccated old witch, who otherwise spent her time issuing diatribes on the present state of her profession and the diffidence of young converts that led them to try so little. She preyed upon him in his own lack of confidence, taunting and scaring him. In reality, the woman longed to disabuse the general population regarding the nature of witchcraft, but instead she dissembled as a traditional witch, and was sure to be entirely dogmatic on the subject whenever questioned.

Suspension

He climbed the narrow stairs,
Forced the swollen door,
And tossed aside his keys;
Sluggishly kicked his shoes, one by one,
Onto the wearied wooden floor boards;
And took three slow steps into the kitchen.

Empty.

He closed his eyes
And drew one strenuous breath.
His sigh ruffled the calm of the cool, drafty air.
Blind fingertips skimmed a dusty countertop,
One hand reaching out as two feet stayed planted
In darned socks, once healed by mother’s hands.

He pushed his toes, hard and slow, into that roughhewn floor,
Lifting tweed heals, millimeter by millimeter.
As his head crept toward the tired, cock-eyed fan blades,
His hair began to ruffle in the calm of stale, artificial breeze.
Higher, Higher.
Follicles drawn upward as if by static, helpless in midair,
Palm pressing hard an already battered counter space.
Lungs laboring to sustain some life.



Melancholy is a lifeboat,
A deserted bus stop between Happiness and Despair.
But Melancholy is no place to live.
It’s merely a rented room, with an empty kitchen.



He breathed in (the pain! – crisp and worn)
And it meant he was still breathing,
Strung up by poignancy,
Suspended by feeling,
In that damned unfeeling kitchen.
He just hung there. And hoped.

The Lives of Strangers

Black square tabletops hover
Over splotchy sunlight on a tile floor.
Backs of strangers rest
Against dark wooden slats.

Conversations over laptops:
Late afternoon’s soft light falls
Past murmurs of chatter.
Headphone-hugged eardrums,
Showered by strains of the grinder’s grumbling,
Bend toward inky pages.

Sweet warmth wets silent lips
Quietly inhaling the scent of
Coffee,
Cheese soup,
And companionship.
One woman is an island
Filling her chest with the lives of strangers
On black satellites
In one softly lit constellation.

Tossed Together

Cork popped; swirl; sniff; sip.
Delicious. The bottle is tipped again
And again . . .
Until empty. And lonesome.
One last glance of appreciation
And then . . .
Tossed aside.

Liquid black ice, moving, shimmering;
A shining sliver between dark, heaving clouds
Breaks onto the rolling waves, whitecaps, wind-blown athwart.
Water crashes over piers: billows and spray consuming
Where tourists once strolled,
High-fiving rocks, and pulled back out to sea . . .

To the center, the womb, the sweet jelly filling:
Ruby red, intoxicating Freedom.
There to swell like a muscle, caressed with love --
Tossed together.

On the Extinction of Blackboards and the Advent of Parking Tickets

A blackboard, asphalt
Thick lines of yellow
Hem us in

Extinct in the schoolhouse:
No more strokes of cursive lines
Repeated in punishment

Just tracks of tires
Rolled into place
Orderly, Regulated, Safe

Until, like a rebellious serif,
One wheel takes root across the line.
A defiant stroke not to be quelled
By a ruler to the hand or a hand to ruled lines

Instead, a hastily scrawled slip of paper,
A curse, an empty pocket book:
New punishment on a new blackboard.