moot. moot/ verb 1. raise (a question or topic) for discussion; suggest (an idea or possibility).
To imagine is to prove the impossible.
Warp Drive
There are three lanes on this super-sonic highway
and the clouds are my mile markers.
Fellow travelers catch my stardust
as I blaze past,
a single frame branded into the retinas
of their windshields.
I chase myths and things improbable
in a light-fueled capsule that transcends space
and renders time obsolete,
like Phileas Fogg on a mission
to prove the world’s insanity.
For the past nine months, I have occupied a basement room in a four-story residence hall on my college campus, and it’s been like living in a dank cave.
A dank cave whose walls soak in and regurgitate the smell of your neighbor’s spice-heavy vegan food.
I wish I could tell you that it’s been cave-like in a super mysterious and magical way. That I found a portal to Narnia by pressing a certain cinder block with two fingers of my left hand. That I’m actually a superhero with an underground lair.
I wish I could tell you that I got through this year without having to defend myself against the spawn of Shelob in the middle of the night (although, I suppose fighting demon spiders would count as “mysterious and magical”). But that dream was not to be.
When I wave this place goodbye tomorrow, I will have no regrets about wonders I’m leaving behind.
Cave-dweller
My cave has none of the usual charm.
Where gleaming stalactites might hang, ever reaching,
my cave boasts, instead, blinding fluorescent bulbs
that leave no corner unexplored.
No shred of battered sunlight struggles to meet my eye
through volcanic fissures ascending to unknown heights.
Rather, ergonomic strips of rotating plastic
are its filter.
My cave holds no grotto, no
untouched cavern with raw gemstones glittering,
no long-kept secrets of shadow and flame.
No dwarf worth his salt
would deign to glance twice at
my cave, with its lack of gold veins ready for piercing,
or columns of granite on which to carve
the grim, stony faces of his forefathers.
He would move on to distant lands,
where mountains’ steep cliffs rival skyscrapers-
palace walls for a subterranean king.
Cold War
A tear is
a time bomb,
an acidic bubble of nitro-glycerin,
essence of everything incendiary,
set to self-destruct
until oxygen diffuses it.
