We don’t just vote on election day.

We vote in every way we live our lives

Give our lives to others in sacrifice

Or vice versa.

The chains of a day don’t limit my voice

In a ballot cast, now past.

My choice is freedom now.

Can’t take that away

To lock in a day,

Preserved in results.

Results are unfolding,

Molding our understanding of society

How we want to be as a culture

A giver or a vulture.

I vote everyday,

Choose the way I say hello

To someone I don’t know,

Choose the smile across the counter,

Or choose the retraction of eye contact,

letting the impact keep us apart.

But I want to start fighting the me

That cares more about looking down

Than looking around.

That me that cares how I’ll get ahead

Instead of seeing who needs me

To be someone today in the way we interact.

The impact of my vote is in action.

Snooze Bar

I roll over to hit the snooze bar
which is all in all, kind of bizarre.
Rather than getting up late
I rise early to procrastinate.

Hope you enjoy… and sleep in or something tomorrow.  PS, I’ve missed you guys.

I have poems that I started ten or twelve years ago that I’m still working on.  Well, actually, I should say that I have one poem from that time in my life that has remained definitively unfinished, and a spattering of non-consequential unfinished poems.  With regard to the one though, I don’t think I’ve taken a stab at finishing it since I’ve been married.  Now, four kids later, my writing style has changed and I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it.

Does it matter if I finish it?   No.  Robert Frost comes to mind and just as way leads on to way, poem leads on to poem and I can’t see as I’ll ever make it back to that one.  So what is it?  What is this thing that’s hanging out in my journal from ten years ago?   It’s not a poem, but I refer to it as a poem that’s not finished.  Maybe it’s a pre-poem, or a potential poem.  Or maybe just an unfinished poem.

Now, what about a poem that I start right this instant, it takes me an hour to write and then it’s finished.  At what point in the duration of the hour does it become a poem? What’s the moment that it transforms from poetic lines to an actual poem.

If two weeks from now, I decide to edit the poem I write tonight.  The poem is at one point fixed as a poem, and then changes are thrust upon it.  The fact that I change it two weeks from now doesn’t make it less of a poem now.

“what you doing?” someone might ask me.

“Writing a poem,” I answer.  Which might not be true if the lines of verse that I’m scribbling never become a finished poem.  Is a finished poem different than an unfinished poem?  Something poetic isn’t necessarily a poem.

I do know that when I’m writing a poem, there’s a point where I stop writing and look at the poem and know that it’s a poem.  Not only do I realize that it’s a poem, It’s a poem that I created.

Something's coming...

… hope you’re in suspense.

I love nature
But those damn birds
Keep chirping
Burping hamr outside my window
The charm of letting me know
That it’s morning.
Not quite yet, its still 5 30
But soon the sun will rise.
And the demise of my sleep
Will continue with their peep peep peep.
Good morning birds.
Thanks for the warning birds.

Carpet on my bare feet
Soft enough that dry toes meet
Little resistance, and almost no snags
As my foot drags lines
And carpet designs
For subconscious entertainment
Gliding arrangement
In the side show
Of our conversation.
Un-breaking your focus and making mine
In line preservation.