My shortest poem

Why I fail

Because I try to succeed.

63/100

Failure, horticultural-style. Every spray of green you see is a crape myrtle. The tallest one which grazes the top of the photo, is over five feet tall. Other than the columbine you see in the extreme lower right, and the yellow tassels of goldenrod peeking through the crape myrtle, everything you see in the foreground is a crape myrtle. We paid last October to have the one crape myrtle which grew here removed. August 2026.

In some ways that’s a pretty cheap get I’ve put up there, but here’s what’s been playing on my mind:

Recently I’ve been attempting to not over-plan my days and then just hope I make good in-roads on completing some of them, nibbling at some others, and just feeling crummy about all the important ones that didn’t see a bit of my attention. “Wow,” I’ll say to my wife, “I really need to get to [insert important item].” I’ve found I use it as subterfuge. I’ll plan 6-10 tasks, a good handful of them all-day-and-more projects, then I’ll cherry pick the ones I want to work on. That one I’ve “really got to get to” becomes the sacrifice day after day. Plus, if you condition yourself to not getting things done, you begin to feel only superficially guilty about not doing them. Instead, the past two weeks I’ve estimated the amount of time certain tasks will take, generally held to that regardless of them getting completed, and planned no more of them than there is time in my day. I try to learn where I need to get more accurate on projecting how long a task will take. And just to keep it real, I plan 90 minutes called “personal time/time sucks” to acknowledge there are just unavoidable interruptions in everyone’s day. Thus, I’ve been failing because I’ve attempted to over-succeed.
In a larger sense, it’s difficult these days to go more than a month or two without encountering “you’ve got to fail to succeed,” spouted by some motivational type of person. (Gah! I thought I would get away from cheerleaders when I got out of school!) While I can quibble a bit with the mentality—I can point to many people, many situations where they will continue to fail, never experiencing success—it’s true right down in the gut that quitting because you’ve failed once isn’t a very good strategy. Date someone and they break up with you? I guess you’re not cut out for love! Put all your money on red and it comes up black? “I guess I’ll never win at roulette.” Or how about, “I could never make myself write. I guess I’m just not a writer.” Now look at the boy. Shooting for success almost always guarantees encountering some failure.
And last week I read “These 20 Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures” an article about a very short poem by Ezra Pound. (I hope that link gets you behind the paywall. I’ve never tried to share an article to the entire world before.) Let’s dispense with the fact Pound collaborated with the fascist regime in Italy in WWII. Ernest Hemingway seems to have been a pretty good male chauvinist, and Michael Jackson, well, where do I start? All have undeniable artistic talent. Coming back to the poem and the article, I realized poetry takes a multiplicity of forms. As a writing friend told me a month ago, “It’s a poem if you say it’s a poem.” I hope the person saying it’s a poem (me) has enough artistic integrity to adhere to his idea of poetry. I think 25-40% of my poems have not been very good in this 100-poems-in-100-days thing. Poems condense meaning. They are to literature what a fine spirit is to alcoholic beverages. They seek not the pretty good word, but the right word, the best word. One doesn’t find the jigsaw piece which closely fits and just hammer it into the puzzle. One seeks for that piece which perfectly fits the hole. I’m going to continue to attempt to write successful poems. I will fail…but maybe not all of the time.

Say goodnight, Gracie.

Keep trying

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, likely female, on Anise Hyssop. September 2026.

One of my new favorite plants is the anise hyssop. Anise hyssop grows to about four feet with long flower clusters at the end of each upward branch. These clusters each have what looks like about 100 flowers. The large one in the photo above has approximately 50 clusters. (I had to count them for a pollinator study I participated in.) The weight and height of the branches causes them to bend a bit, making them look like a flower arrangement to me. The flowers don’t bloom all at the same time, but over the past two seasons ours has peaked in late June through mid-July, after which some of the flowers begin to do whatever propagation chores the plant must do.

Same bee, different photo from July’s. Note more flower clusters in the background. July 2026.

The hyssop attracts many pollinators. I participated in the Great Southeastern Pollinator Count two weeks ago, choosing this plant because it had so many flowers. I counted mostly Eastern bumblebees and a little wasp about a half inch in length. Others included a very small bee, ants, another kind of insect I’ll just call a beetle, and the biggest dang wasp I’ve ever seen! I looked it up, and I’m sure I saw a Great Black Wasp. I’ve seen three different maximum lengths ranging from 1.4-2.0 inches. I swear it was about 2.0 inches in length. Absolutely huge.

Yesterday I saw our lone species of hummingbird here in the SE United States, a ruby-throated one, also checking out the hyssop. It seemed to prefer the similar-looking flowers of the obedient plant quite near me. And both yesterday and today the several hyssop plants in our yard have been caught the attention of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies.

When I began the census count, I lamented to my wife that most of flowers have long past their peak. I expected to find few pollinators compared to June-July. The purple coneflowers have lost all their petals; the spiky centers remains, attracting goldfinches to the seeds, not pollinators to the pollen. Similarly, the black-eyed Susans and Indian blanket flowers have mostly disappeared.

But strangely (to me), the hyssop seems to have popped out more flowers! Over the past three days bees, most of the Eastern carpenter variety, have been madly jumping on the hyssop flower clusters. From a distance they’re visible by watching the ends of the stalks bouncing up and down in a non-existent breeze. And then there’s the apparent delight some butterflies have taken in finding yet more flowers on the hyssops.

We need to keep trying, keep putting out those flowers of attraction. It makes a difference. Perhaps “carpenter bees” aren’t your thing. Perhaps you dislike benign-but-huge “wasps”. No matter. Our purpose is to flower. Let the rest take care of itself.

Belated 62

Unbelievably, I simply forgot to post yesterday’s poem. I broke the chain. (Hangs head in shame.)

Loss of control

narrow your focus for
life comes easier with
fewer rules: single 
minds, simple minds,
bringing finally non-
thinking minds. thus
we lose control.

62/100

Equanimity

Life hits lulls where everything seems
"Okay"—
Not "Good" not "Bad" just
beautiful balance, something which
seems more normal. Those highs
match lows for extreme stress on
emotions, on health, on mental
well-being. "Give me equanimity 
or give me breath!" Thank you,
Patrick. Always thought you were
too wound up, but now I see you're
just like all of us: wanting to keep
our heads down for fear of getting
whacked in some cosmic Whack-a-Mole
game without rhyme, reason.

61/100

Waiting

Old folks get “procedures”…lots and lots of ’em. Is it worse to prepare for where cameras should never go, or wait for someone else’s? (Said “someone” adding two hours to the wait because the fine print for drinking liquids addressed certain drugs which said “someone” might have been taking.)

Was this grass gone to seed when I entered the building? August 2026.

Waiting
[.....]
Never my strong suit, worse
when it's unanticipated. 
Need to blame someone. Hope 
we're at fault; hope we're not. 
Then again...what did you
plan to do today? Nothing
Much. What ARE you doing? 
See? If two roads lead 
to the same place, how can
one be better? (However: 
could that dude perhaps
lower that video's volume?)

59/100

Found poem 25August

Different voices have defined “found” poems differently. Here, I started with the opening line of a poem I drafted over a dozen years ago, then used random web pages to suggest a few words from which would spring the next line. I let whatever revealed itself in my creative half exist without immediately squashing it, merely shaping it, translating it from my interior language-without-words to a poor imitation in English. My Editor insisted on punching meaning into it, which I allowed. At the end I decided it needed to come full circle, thus lending meaning (I hope) to the final lines. In a way, this process worked similarly to something I’m getting ready to post (non-poem) when time allows.

We wear patchwork clothes, stitched by sadness
not to have seen snow leopards through our
blizzarding genesis. Inspired by writings we
don't understand, we personalize them 
to make everything obtain meaning 
where none existed. Welcome to your mission:
to drive home meaning to others while 
pathetically struggling to find your own,
exhibiting your confidence which betrays
your lack of understanding. "the mic is yours,
Ken," as if he thinks I'm important. Games,
games fill cracks left when motive, meaning
dried up. More valuable than playing? Being.
Staying within where we find nothingness
imbuing everything-ness. Boldly facing it
without doing, comfortable in this. Yet,
in here we wear patchwork clothes,
satisfied they're stitched by sadness.

56/100

Friendly strangers

My friend in 2019, already 18 years toward strangerhood.

People become semi-strangers over

time, distance, lack of shared 

experience. Reacquaintance 

brings pain, ripping some kind of

bandage from maintained relationship.

I can't pull this string-can telephone

any tighter due to Earth's curvature,

certainly not through Einstein's
 
space-time fabric bending thingy.

I want old things to pop from

just-opened cans, fresh, familiar,

just as tasty as before. Is that

too much for me to ask?

55/100

Summer ’76

Pop quiz: young man below (who hopefully will not be recognized because I doubt he will be flattered) was a real-life grad student. This photo represents what?

A. a waste of his parents’ money
B. proof “too much education” actually is a thing
C. the dangers of drinking
D. the empirical method at work, determining remaining quantity of beer
E. a complete lack of hand-eye coordination
F. pick any two above and provide a complete argument for your choices

Summer, nineteen seventy-six,
living my self-realized dream of
poverty, danger, emotional
confusion combined with
dead-end work. No car.
Walk two miles to work,
six days per, rain, shine.
Three of us with Crazy
Pete supervising(?),
performing work long since
killed by technology's steady
advance. Loaned co-worker
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance precipitating
his mental descent, believing
himself to be Jesus. Nearly
killed my roommate, here now 
first confessed. My defense,
your honor, has to do with
his pistol-waving girlfriend,
sister to his wife—plus their
side business, stealing pills
from our state mental ward
to sell them later. Thinking
America's Bicentennial 
would prompt Jefferson
Starship plus Grateful Dead
to perform freely in
Golden Gate Park, headed
south with friend Ray, driving
one-oh-one down entire coast
(nearly killing us when his
bald-tired Vee-Dub spun
circles on twisting roads
through California's
redwoods). No concert
transpired but our good
friend entertained us
from his expensive digs 
above Oakland, serving up
ridge views with top-flight
drugs. Returning, faced up
to first failure as freelance
writer of fiction, looked in
my mirror, predicted, "If
you don't get your ass back
to college for some kind of
degree, you never will."
U-Dub to my rescue,
restoring my transcripts,
enabling graduation
in five college quarters.

Postscript: afraid to take
summer off (because I'd
drop out again), attended
said institution for nineteen
months, grabbed its
sheepskin after Christmas,
proving to myself how one
can be right/wrong 
simultaneously.

52/100

Wanted

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheat’ed?”

—Johnny Rotten on “No Fun (excerpts)” from Troublemakers, an anthology album

Author’s brother (left) and author Seattle Center, September 1965

This should be my
second childhood.
I remember
childhood, or I
think I do. Days
shimmered, each one
full of promise:
unbounded time,
more valuable
than gold, silver.
Complaints only 
when I heard THAT
call: "time to come
in"—"time for bed,
young man"—"c'mon
it's time for church".
I still rail, still
complain to The 
Adult, but he 
lives in my head
now. I want to
subcontract my
adulthood so
I can play through-
out my adult
childhood. This role
requires timely
attention to
details of my
life without one
whit of bother
to me...ah, but
then I would need
to hire someone 
to watch that first 
one. Where would it 
end? No, better
to restrain my 
adulthood to
its bare, needful
minimum, let
my child command
ev'rything else.

51/100

Riding currents

To celebrate my 50th poem in 50 days (technically fewer than that), I wrote an electrifying poem.

Riding currents presents
particular demands
first, avoid feedback,
second, don't overload
your established circuits 
which crave more input
than they can handle
third, befriend surge 
suppressors but make
sure they know their
threshold for cutting in,
fourth, remember those
legacy circuits which
support your healthy
function, even if they've
become touchy, in need
of constant maintenance.

Keep in mind voltage
may vary. Assure your
optimum performance
by under-promising
this circuit's potential.

50/100

HALFWAY THERE! YIPPEE!!