Category: Poems

Winter not winter
Shining blue bright
Crisp cloudless dry
Happy to be here
Despite our prejudice
Wondering we wait
For lumpy gray spring

-T. Weeks
(A response to
“Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here“)

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“)

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 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“)

That man has a frayed ponytail
Do I know him?
He has a truck with stickers on the back
How about now?
He leans heavy into the steering wheel
Letting a car in with the flick of two fingers
And now?
Politics and Netflix history
Would those help?
And if I knew his name or his address
Would I know him then?

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Calming Thought of All“)

Sitting side by side
Sketching our brains
Turmoil and priorities fill my page
Rocket ships and robots fill his
He fans through earlier pages
“Dad I need a new book”
I ask why
“So I can be careful next time”
Careful of what
“I didn’t do good drawings before”
I like them all
“But I’m a lot better now”
Yes you are
Without the whole book
How would you know

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The United States to Old World Critics“)

If you are reading this poem
Congratulations
You’re not dead

If you are dead
Congratulations
You’ll never have to read it

-T. Weeks
(A response to “True Conquerors“)

Hey little skunk
Did you enjoy our yard
We worked on it all summer
Now the grass is long
The patio furniture looks lost
And there’s really no food
You’ll have better luck down by the pond
Waddle now into the night
Your stripes a magnet for shadows
Until curiosity returns you
And we meet in Rumi’s field

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Small the Theme of My Chant“)

There are answers up ahead
Between me and there
I see myself many times over
Asking the same questions
Many times over
Frustrated
I’m always in the way
If only I could see past them/me
Yet I am a river
I am Siddhartha
Flowing downhill
Filling the folds in the hills
On my journey to the sea
I am at the beginning
I am at the destination
I am the river

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Going Somewhere”)

Who am I asked the sparrow
Contemplating dark roofs
And the black rivers between

It’s a wonder a miracle
The geometry of order
But what does it mean

The builders must have a plan
Will I be ready when they call
Towards what end do I fly

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Life”)