On The Workbench

I labeled you an empty jar,
air tight, to conceal
a time and place worth
conveying in the afterlife.

The seal was never fit though,
you escaped, and I rattled
around in old coffee tins
filled with screws and bolts

as we worked to repair repercussions
in both our lives—nuts
that never fit, and sockets
always one size off.

You usually tried to fit in a pair
of my hand-me-down shoes
attempting to correct your life,
though they never were as snug

as you expected.  I suppose
I cut the laces, demanded you
switch to velcro in your old age.
I never meant it in heart even if you did

take the best of me and digest it, tossing
it aside like loose change in a guitar case.
It was always like looking into a mirror,
never knowing when to give in

or when to give up.  So I set another jar
up on the workbench, labeled it me,
and every now and then I try to fit inside,
but the seal is never tight.

Lessons in Leisure

She spit on the floor
demanding a confession,
tossing dead-rose vases
and half-empty liquor bottles

towards my shrinking composure.
A life well lived is a life
worth living I thought to myself
as glass shattered inches

from my head.  Then I imagined
my own past—the girl on the floor
of a friends parent's house,
one in the park after midnight,

and one whom I could never name
at a random University party.
It's the American way: get laid,
get paid.  But this story is off;

she had done no wrong
I had not done myself.
And these days are filled
with old decisions: to honor

thy Mother and Father; do not
cheat, steal, or kill. Rules
passed down through generations
who still stumble upon the lessons.

She was remarkable in her leisure,
holding fast to some Arthurian legend
where the guise of life's macabre
could never exist.

Swaying of the Willow

Here I am, time-stilled,
the procession of marriage
halted halfway to the altar,
rose petals firmly frozen in air

and I am lost within you,
without you. The pigeons sent to find me
were lost too amongst the willows
swaying in the seasons of change,

the crows nestled on their perches
waiting to revive, or devour.
Though who is to decide:
a God of reason or repentance.

We are all equal beside the willow
and the crow, where sand ceases
to flow in the hourglass and we are left
with our own devices and maladaptations.

Yet even still with broken timepiece
the seasons do not stop to wonder
whatever did happen to the man,
or the crow, or the swaying of the willow.