If I Could Eat My Words

If I could eat my words,
I think,
I'd be a better poet.
To really get a taste of what I mean,
beyond the salt,
beyond the loud distraction of its content,
I'd need to read the poem with my tongue.
To ponder on the mouthfeel,
the secondary spices,
the subtle nuances,
the hint of oak.
I'd swirl it around like a rare liqueur,
let my nose do the tasting
and lips do the smelling,
and breathe before I'd swallow.
For though I am an editor by nature,
it's far beyond my eyes,
beyond my ears,
to be a chef.
But if words were delicious
then at lunch I'd have a sonnet,
put a pinch of pepper on it,
and for once I'd be the poet and the pen.

Symmetric About a Wonky Axis

Our lives,
though they do at times seem tangled,
frazzled and chaotic and unmatched,
are symmetric about a wonky axis,
curving and veering and returning and nearing
and ever in order, that is,
from the current perspective.

I'm happy to live on a line like that,
weaving through other people's lines and such.
It's delightfully confusing and it makes me wonder,
wasn't there a plan?
at one time? a direction, a vector of sorts?
But it's more like a wave,
like a field of directions,
crossing and merging and
passing
but never impacting.

Never impacting,
and I guess that's the reason we live like this
without knowing, without planning,
without thinking.

So as I waft in this obvious direction
with no clue as to whether or where I'll continue,
I know at least that however far away I pull from you,
I will with equal and opposite tenacity
launch back towards you, and
you to me.

And perhaps in this knowledge I can relax my fears
and follow this axis of ours
to its logical end.
Whatever that would mean within this metaphor.

Reined In

Reining in the rebels
rained in by all the rubble
like rabbits wrapped in rubber ribbons,
trapped and troubled, and constantly constrained
defamed and unconstructively detained
who mustn't muster up their fairly flustered, flubbing fibs,
but for reasons unbeknownst and unannounced and mispronounced
should simply stop
should settle in
behave like bees, be busy being,
not bothered by their brothers and not baffled by others,
and not basking in the bounty
of their brains and bread and butter.
Better than to let them win,
better than to let them in.