This is a Poem Shaped Like a Circle

                                                                             This is a poem

                                                                 shaped like a circle because, w

                                                           ell, you know, symbolism and all that g

                                                      ood stuff. You see circles can mean lots of di

                                                   fferent things though. Where’s the fun in a poem

                                                 that tells you what it means. Leave it up to the reader

                                               to decide why this poem is shaped like a circle. If I tell

                                             you this circle is a symbol for something meaningful to m

                                            e what do you care? Are you suddenly going to care for tha

                                            t thing as much as me, or are you going to move on with yo

                                            ur life and the only time you’ll ever think of this poem agai

                                             n is when you accidently flip to it while you are looking fo

                                              r your own poem or story. And you’ll say, “Oh there’s th

                                                at poem shaped like a circle for a reason that means a

                                                  bsolutely nothing to me. But if you give this reason

                                                    then you may read it again… and again and agai

                                                        n and again. And do you know why you we

                                                             re flipping to you own poem? Becua

                                                                   se it has meaning to you. Gi

                                                                           ve this meaning too.

Cassius' Suicide

If this was to be the place of my fall,
during the climax of a soon to end brawl,
then I’d rather it be at the blade of my sword
than at the hands of the enemies with which we now warred.

My sword already knew the taste of horrible gore.
The skin of our own leader, it had earlier torn,
and now it avenged the death it had caused
a nonstop killing feast, without even a pause.

But my honor was overthrown as my hands did grow weak.
I could not stab myself, my blood refused to leak.
So I went to my servant, who all the while stood by
and told him my wish: that I wished to die.

But before he could drive the sword into me,
I promised him one thing, that he could be free.
On the same day as my first, I do take my last breath.
I’ve learned to accept my fate; this date is my death.

The Search For Poetry

I can only come up with so many rhymes
before my poems become worn, forgotten with time.
So is that all I'll be? Am I in my prime?
Will I one day have no more ideas in mind?
Some would say yes, that we're all assigned
a fate that decides when we shall resign.
But wait, does that mean we are all just confined
to a straight-forward path that we must follow blind?
So what happens to those few who choose to decline
to follow the path, to stick to the bind?
Will they get to explore? Might they get to find
the rhymes that I need to make poems sublime?
How should I ever know if I don't stray from mankind?
Is this still my fate, to leave them behind?
While this new way is unmapped, and it may be unkind,
it seems right to venture with an open mind.
I still do not know if leaving that line,
will help me, or was just a waste of time,
but no matter the outcome, no matter the finds,
at least I can know the decision was mine.

Kings of the Jungles

It wasn’t the first time I’d
gone out with friends.
At the time, I’d assumed it
wouldn’t be the last either.
My friends and I were
crazy.
The lives of the parties,
the kings of the jungles.

That crazy went farther than

just parties though.
That crazy went with us
on the road, in school, in public
where you wished for nothing more than to
have an off switch,
to finish the night with the flick of a wrist.
Unfortunately, you can’t.

That night we were driving to one of

the parties.
This one was a big one, an all-nighter,
the kind we’d skip school for the day before, the day of and day after.
For some reason, as if believing there wouldn’t be
enough beer at the party, we brought our own and
drank in the car.
We were a mess.

Barely dodging car wrecks,
moving swiftly out of the way at the last minute.
And then laughing.
We laughed at death.
We laughed in the face of death,
spat in the face of death and said,
“Not today.”
We thought ourselves to be gods.

We were not gods.
Never would we be gods.
Nevertheless,
we thought ourselves gods
and we acted accordingly.
And, our entrance to the party had
to be nothing less than
godly.

We came through the door
like a raging bull,
blasting into the party
and announcing our arrival.
“Don’t worry,”
we had said in
slurred voices,
“We’ve arrived.”

Most of it from there was blurry,

dancing,
drinking,
the entire world
tipping and spinning
with my every step.
The world listened to me
and I commanded it that night: we danced.
 
Next thing I know I’m on the ground,
headache,
burning white light in my eyes.
I felt as if the light would burn me
if I stayed any longer so I
rolled to my side only to
realize that there was
someone next to me.

Anyway, I tried to stand,
the world was still spinning but I
was no longer spinning with it.
Some of my friends were in the room
too. I sighed.
Sometimes I feared that this was it for me.
The high point of my life would be my
reign of terror as the king of the jungle.

To this day I fear that.

I still fear that I’m no better
than I was then and
never will be
because it’s so easy to
get it in your mind that since
change is so hard it’s
impossible.

As much as I hope I’m

wrong I can’t bring myself
to face my fear
and just grow out of
the “king of the jungle”
I used to be
into the father
I’m supposed to be today.
 
And when I stood up,
head
aching,
eyes
burning,
world
spinning,
I realized that.

It’s odd that I’d had
the fear all along,
had been to
more parties than I
could count,
and yet this one,
the same as the rest,
had been the breaking point.

Was it just that this party
had been one to many?
Or that the pain in my head
and eyes had been enough
to change me?
Had the idea always been in my
head and I just then chose to
listen to my own thoughts?

It doesn’t matter.
What mattered was that
despite my remaining fear,
despite my inner lion,
despite the feeling like I should
just collapse and
call it quits,
I left, and I’d like to think I changed.

I think maybe telling to you
helped.
Hopefully, it ended up having
meaning,
it didn’t come out how it always had in
my head:
the nonsensical story of a man who was so
scared of change that he changed.