Troubles come in new and changing ways, but
Character defects are forever.
I can always count on mine to provide
Endless variations of heartache arranged around
The same themes.

From the outside, of course, other people's faults are
Easily fixable: we should just quit doing
The same dumb stuff over and over.
But we don't quit doing these things, or at least,
I don't. 

There's nothing quite so alarming
As realizing the degree to which
Habit rule ones life:
We shake our fists at would-be external overlords,
While the ones within us
Move us around like marionettes.

But in our occasional wakeful moments, we ask
'Are we back here again?'
And can, at least maybe,
Erode the power of our proclivities
Through the cleansing power of
Laughing at our own foolishness.

tomorrow’s seduction comes like this:
we wonder what’s behind the glass,
and climb to find a place within,
then hide our face so we can pass

as someone that we’ve never been —
it isn’t right. but is it wrong
to give up and give in when we
would give it all to just

belong?

To be vain
In vain’s
In my veins.
Nonetheless

I show my
Spacious vanity
And hope there
To impress

But why —
I cannot tell you why,
It is both
Fact and shame,

For though some bathrooms
Glow and shine,
They all still

Smell the same

I talk too much, I always have,
Much to my family’s misery;
The rare days that I’m quiet are
When they can see the best of me

And so I took up blogging — writers
Are forgiven monologues —
To write of common things, and see
The glory in the underdogs

And yet, I have a real life, too,
With work and bills and banks and such,
And a long-suffering wife who knows
Just like my dad, I talk too much

I do not seek the music of violence,
For I know only too well that
The world will bring it to me, anyway,
And too soon.

For so long, my eyes have been unclear;
For so many years, have I strained to see —
This is the dim mirror of my regret,
These are once new tools grown useless.

Somewhere, hidden from light and sound,
A boy sits, fresh-faced, expectant:
He calls to me as from a distant room,
He bids me to bring him his promised life.

These are not negative thoughts:
This is the way Reality smells,
Like too familiar fabric, well used,
Where rain and stain are just events, not

Misfortunes

I wish I was the summer sun
So I could burn my enemies,
And cause them to rethink their lives,
Regret the extra calories —

But I am more like a balloon:
One may not notice that I’m there,
And I’m archaic, overstretched,
And filled with nothing but

Hot air