Password Blues

 

I’ve got the password blues:

can’t remember what I’ve used—

hardly know what to choose

deep in the password blues.

 

I’ve run out of children,

I’ve run out of pets,

used up old addresses..

What’s more, I forget.

 

Is it alphanumeric, or simply generic?

Keys to accounts? Anxiety mounts:

Too much to remember, those user IDs—

I’ve got more passwords than my dog has fleas.

 

Password for the internet, password for traveling,

Password for payroll..my life is unraveling.

One for my messages, one for my mail,

One for my bank account, one that just fails.

 

Elephant memory is what we need,

or a list, if I pay the experts no heed.

Turn on the computer—my heart drops to my socks.

There’s always another log-in box.

 

It’s a bad, bad feeling, 

like rain in my shoes.

I’ve got no memory—

and the password blues.

 

 

 

 

Poetry: A Definition

 

It’s not just words, it’s words as art.

The shape and sound and texture of language:

not meaning alone.

And that’s where people miss the boat.

 

“Express yourself” they say...

but poems are sculpture and music and vision as well:

structure and vacuum,

the whole AND its parts—

what’s missing, what’s implied:

a workout for the mind

strengthening the muscle of invention,

bulking up on vocabulary,

improving on creation.

 

Perhaps a way

of being god.

Memories and Visions

 

The white space that refreshes the eye.

The oasis in the desert of the workday world.

The pause in the ticking clock of everyday.

The reset button on our mental computers.

The splash of color in the black-and-white columns

Of the day’s events.

 

Art: renewable and renewing in lives

that are not; turning the everyday

on its head, giving new perspectives

on the ordinary.

 

Vibrantly focused, bent by visions

Reflected, distorted, embellished

By a human lens,

The light of living fractures

Into a million crystal shards.

 

We are the prisms

through which the world bleeds.

Born out of storm and sunlight,

we are the makers of rainbows.

We build our visions.

We make art.