I Don't Care

Do you think it fair to say I may care
When I care enough to say: "I do not care."

I think it depends on how I may say it,
With distance in tone or rebellious gait,

An arching of eyebrows, a smile forged in hell,
Or the weight of the world in the sighs I expel.

I hereby do gather the silence you spare
Is a deafening statement that you do not care.

On His Weakness

A ten line stanza in iambic pentameter following the scheme ABAB and a Miltonian sestet CDEDCE. Styled after the first stanza of Keats' Ode On A Grecian Urn, and guaranteed to fall short.

Warning: Elizabethan tone ahead

...all for the want of Short Rib Ragù.

What magic doth transpire tween mind and pot

That warmly welcometh what once formed cage,

But now is seasoned, salted, shredded, brought

To tenderness thy hand hath come to gauge.

I sense the bay leaf draping sprigs of thyme,

Its fragrance courting parsley laying soft

Upon a bed of blushing carrots and

Rosemary aromatic, wont to waft

Toward my sense olfactory till I’m

Impassioned forth to rise and kiss thine hand.

Punishing Clockmakers, And Other American Pastimes

We're hurting bad, America,
You know we're hurting bad
When a schoolboy brings a project in
That sends us kicking mad.

He just made a clock, this thing that tells
The time with gears and wires,
But we see the clocks that brown hands forge
As objects starting fires.

Doesn't matter what you learn in school,
Let me tell you what makes dumb:
Is when prejudice and fear
Fashion every rule of thumb.

You say guns don't kill, people do,
Yet a schoolboy's doing time.
Need a license now to make a clock?
Now, learning is a crime.

If we really don't like bullies
And the weapons that they draw,
We can't let bullies run our schools
Nor let them press the law.