the sieve and the sand » Roger Mugs

in fact it’s a LOT like that.

Roger Mugs — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:15:33 +0000

a different life source;
something from inside this
time, and i picture the kid
who just found it staring
down at his chest and thinking
“that was different.” wondering
from whence it came, and if
it plans on staying around
because there are a few fields
he can think of sprinting through
a little faster than ever
before, if this after-burner
is going to stick around.

and that bmx track? he bets
he can fly around the graded
corners a little bit different
than he has before.

and he just stands there
imagining the possibilities
(if this is going to last)
for a few minutes as the revelation
of what just happened is a bit
much to take in right now.

but that grin, as he stares down
at his chest, that grin just keeps
growing on his face and it’s
like a light has been
turned on inside.

An overused word I couldn’t use less despite my best efforts because the topic required this one specific word.

Roger Mugs — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:34:08 +0000

and no one who was awesome was
ever awesome by their own merit
they were awesome because You were awesome Lord

Lord, be awesome in me.

the attacks of the nameless on the named

Roger Mugs — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:41:52 +0000

oh the horror of the mold
on the edge of the cheese
which wont be removed with
the swift slice of a knife
despite your prowess in
wielding objects of the
sharp assortment because
the mold is merely a metaphor
of something much harder to
extract from your worthless
life. the kind once valuable
but stored for much too long
in an environment much too
stale and humid, hence the
mold. you were asked about
this at 17, when you admitted
you knew not the meaning
of life, but you chose to
live on anyhow. like that
cheese — under-refrigerated.

oh the horror of the
worthlessness of meaningless
life rubbed in your face on
this long drive between home
and your old home where your
parents live but you were too
ball-less to move far enough
away to make a clean break
and find direction and do
something worthwhile.

yes
your life is meaningless.

and not because of your
dead-end job at the local
coffee shop. but because your
passion dried up in jr. high
when you turned down the only
thing you ever knew was
undeniably true.

walden pond was a cop out

Roger Mugs — Thu, 24 May 2012 23:59:51 +0000

i dwell on invincibility
when time is short
and worthwhile thought
will probably drive useful
conclusions but take
utterly too much time.

so i stand in front of busses
and fly off of cliffs,
out of airplanes and
underwater
in my mind
because it takes me nowhere
of any value

my favorite place to be

sometimes you sacrifice for the sake of making new friends. sometimes those sacrifices are things like… caffeine — the kind you know you shouldn’t be drinking because it’s much too late in the afternoon for your low tolerance

Roger Mugs — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:20:57 +0000

coffee at three
and new friends
(more than i can manage)
bring new conversation
and a schizophrenic (my first experience)
who brought…
new conversation.

and coffee at three
to keep me up till two.

mormo

Roger Mugs — Sun, 20 May 2012 12:22:49 +0000

contrasted with truth
the lies are just a bit
overwhelming
the burdens
too real.

can’t win them all.

Roger Mugs — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:28:43 +0000

a bout of gilbert’s syndrome
(a flare up if you will)
to remind me of my out-vincibility
and the likelihood of death
(1 in 1)

a reminder i could have used
just about any other tuesday.

but then again, such flares
are specific to such days.

ode to me pantaloons

Roger Mugs — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:01:10 +0000

and their single-layerness
their supposed callus-inducing
zippers (a common misconception)
and the way they bend and grow
and mold with me

from youth
till now
and furthermore
my friend
my pants will
ever be

and that love will be demonstrated in a once-each-month ritual cleansing process less religious than one might think, though certainly not lacking ritualistic practice. there will be a soak, a wash, a rinse, and tumble dry cycle — religiously, almost as if by machine.

introspective: wherein, i use an oft-unused four letter word in my poetry — mold.

Roger Mugs — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:05:13 +0000

turning it off like a faucet
is possible and almost just as easy.
however the sudden lack of
flooding in my mind is not
nearly so black-and-white
desirable
as an un-flooded kitchen.

sure things would be clearer,
cleaner, and less work to keep
mold-free.
but shutting out the chaos
just sounds so damn boring.

hefty ambitions

Roger Mugs — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:45:19 +0000

a morning to contemplate
to dwell
on truth for a change
and seek something
of worth
a morning to spend
not uselessly in bed
for a change.

you live void of beauty for a while and i’m convinced you’ll all end up chasing eternal life. just read john 17 and try to tell me (once you’ve lived void of beauty) that you’re unmoved. just try.

Roger Mugs — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:37:35 +0000

i recall youth
and fields where i asked my father
to explain the minutiae of the
grain my family called ‘wheat’.
i’d run through with broken
shoes on skinny paths past
harmless snakes and burst past
sandstone while chomping straw
freshly picked and void of
grain as it’d already been chewed.

i recall smiling as the skies were so
bright my mother feared for sunburn;
that and my father’s smile of delight
on his boy and his utter obliviousness
to the complex world around him.

i was there when snow fell and filled
the dirty fields with redemptive white
long before i understood any symbolism
i appreciated the beauty, even the cold.

and the mountains i took for granted?
now i regret my lack of understanding.
regret my granted taking
my youth leaving
and my lack of picturesque memory keeping.

new year’s resolution

Roger Mugs — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:15:50 +0000

my most brilliant yet
wait till july to resolve
and change things half a year.

long term is overrated hence
my most brilliant yet

void of the one thing most necessary

Roger Mugs — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:12:32 +0000

your model is broken
but we’ve got a fix for you
a tweak here and change
in philosophy there and
you’ll be on the road to success
in no time
having hopped over from
the road to nowhere
(where you’ve been for
a while now).

and boy, have we got a fix
for you.

i remember when the world was smaller and my goals much less lofty. there was a certain ease in believing my life mattered only as far as i could throw it. there was pleasure in finding my only joy in the sun on my skin. the afternoons were filled with barefoot walks through grass wearing nothing but shorts, followed by inhaling large slurpees with expressed brain-freeze intent. but back then i owned the world because the world needed an owner and everyone was too caught up in their own crap to notice i had already seized power.

Roger Mugs — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:49:22 +0000

put the front glass down
and don protective eye-ware
then cruise these streets
like a badass in a badass
car.
foldable front windshields
don’t win the favor of the ladies,
but leather flying helmets
and bottle-cap glasses earn
the envy of the idiots
(your target audience).

put the front glass down
and don protective eye-ware
in the rain like you own
this street. smile like
the cold doesn’t chill you to
your bones because you’re already
much too cold inside.

cruise these streets like
a badass in a badass car
because the shops are closed,
your friends are all at home
but your pipe is firmly
planted between your teeth
and you own this street

the calm before the storm

Roger Mugs — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:25:02 +0000

like when standing in the eye of the
tornado is silent
in a deceptive way.
deceptive like a woman with it’s beauty
and seductive powers.

in america we just say trash

Roger Mugs — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:16:51 +0000

i wrote a poem twenty lines long
with repetition, alliteration,
and a few other fancy elements.

but then in a move so poetic,
my words can’t describe

i erased it because it sucked
and saved you the pain of reading rubbish.

you may be an ass, but at least listening to you speak provides me with fodder for a later endeavor i call writing

Roger Mugs — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:37:24 +0000

nothing of note
just a few thoughts
you shared i wrote
down because of their
poetic nature.
your speech was beautiful.
your main points?
not so much.

yea this old thing?
this napkin from the diner
where we sat to discuss
life but really you just ranted
against your friends,
politics, and everyone else
you blame.

just a napkin with some
scribbles.
nothing of note.
just a few thoughts
you shared and their
poetic nature.

real life sometimes demands ugly things. like breaks. too bad they’re not as easy to take as they are in on-stage performances.

Roger Mugs — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:02:20 +0000

a brief interlude
(a break if you will)
will now be taken
to give the actors
a break for a few moments
as they re-adjust to
life outside of their
character.
to kiss their girlfriends
instead of their in-play
wives.
to use the bathroom facilities
because opera with the
tension of diarrhea is less
than enjoyable for the singer.
thus the interlude.
we apologize for the break.

i don’t rant often enough. hereby resolved: rant if you can (but don’t make any extra effort, certainly do not promise you’ll rant more often. what if, after all, you forget to rant tomorrow or throughout the whole week and it turns out you resolved to do something you would fail at? what then? well, i learned a long time ago never to make promises in writing unless i was absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that i was 100% likely to keep said promise. but such promises are extremely-awkwardly rare. so i settle instead to resolve things in my head instead of writing and then when i succeed i say, “hey me, good job. i’m proud of you”, and then i pat myself on the back — physically, not mentally, and continue my life slightly more satisfied with myself than i was a moment earlier, which is to say, extremely satisfied as the amount which i find myself satisfied with myself is probably sickening to most people). whew.

Roger Mugs — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:27:01 +0000

it’s that time of night
where the night before
you didn’t really sleep
worth beans
and you’re still up
because of that thing
you don’t need to do
but have no power over
yourself to keep yourself
from doing it
and you’re dreaming of
writing something long
and valuable and worthy
of your fingers hitting
the keyboard
but you know it’s too
late for coherent beautiful
words and so you settle
for something much much
less. something like a
rant where your sole
goal is a column of words
nearly uniform in size
but even that you
fail at in several
lines. but seeing your
comfort in failure you
resign yourself to bed.
and sleep comes, but much
too slowly.

our lovely government

Roger Mugs — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 08:50:27 +0000

idea swapping
behind every vaulted wall
but that’s where it ends.
they all got here with lofty
goals, dreams of change.
but they stay after selling
their souls, minds, hearts,
for power, prestige, foolish
green sheets of paper which
bring them no joy. no peace.
no change.