Jack-In-The-Box

In the shadow of tomorrow
Lurks a thing unknown
Gray periphery betray energy in the darkness
And obscure its form
Until the pop of a jack-in-the-box sunrise
Tears the curtain aside
And I see it clearly
For a millisecond
Even as it shrivels into the distance
In perfect hindsight and shifting definition

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Orange Buds by Mail from Florida“)

Weaver

In the center of the room
In the center of our attention
A woman leaps
Out of and into the past
A dance a song a photograph
Channeling her mother
Imitating her father
Recalling friends and teachers
And after 80 tantric minutes
She is here and so are we

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Twenty Years”)

Tattoo

Seems like such a silly thing
Ink sown just below the skin
Pins dropped on a fading map
Tumbleweed waypoints marked
Totems of dreams, jokes, inspirations
Mixed and matched
To tell one tale a thousand ways

-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Prairie Sunset”)

Kurt

On a gym floor back against a wall
Earbuds injecting Nirvana on drip
Score of my youth
Lubricating rusty hungers
Towing me across time
Where was I when I heard it first
Was I angry like Kurt
When I rode summer nights
Windows down and music up
And now as I ride Sagan’s blue dot
Is there catharsis in a riff
Or just the familiar scent of my teen spirit
Floating through the room

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Stronger Lessons”)

Stop-Motion

Each morning we break from sleep
Interrupt unbroken unconsciousness
Where we are peace and terror and invincible
We wake to see in daily stop-motion
Snapshots of chaos and sunlight
Stitched together by the soundtrack
Of what it feels like to be here now

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Dying Veteran“)

Pensieve

Sitting around the Bluetooth speaker
Listening as Harry miscalculates
Each brain in this room
And lost in the halls of Hogwarts
Safe in our messy kitchen
And piqued with fear
We boarded this ship together
Inter dimensional nomads
Claiming wilder dimensions for our own

-T. Weeks
(A response to “While Not the Past Forgetting”)

Happy Robot

Who will make a happy robot?
Will they have to define happiness first?
Master the wisdom of the masters
Pour it into stanzas of metered logic?
Isolate and build subroutines for it
Formalized and codified
Elegant and unexpected?
And what if they fail?
If joy can’t be given to the robots
In even strokes of for-loops and look-ups?
Will they never be happy?
Or will they derive it
In the place they find themselves
Just like us?

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Voice of the Rain“)

Minecraft

The children are playing Minecraft again
Rendering a world their own
Full of grand spires and profound dungeons
Free to build and fly for a moment
They’re excited by omnipotence
But soon they’ll get bored
Danger will tempt them with excitement
TNT and lava and Creepers
And then they’ll use their power to burn it all down
Giggling at the destruction of their own palace
Because they know
Without peril their world is no fun

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Life and Death“)

Vacation

Vacation was wonderful
Long nights and late mornings
Each of us Scrooge McDuck
In our own vaults
Diving and surfacing
Hours gone by
We watched movies and played games
Built Legos and broke routines
No time was wasted
All of it was spent

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Thanks in Old Age“)