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”)
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”)
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“)
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”)
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“)
Life Immense 