Another installment of poems I wrote some time during college:

Anticipating the Equinox

Tonight we lose an hour.

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches.

Five, six, seven of us

Collecting memories in blue jean pockets.

As the wind picks up

the temperature drops;

We sit, ageless, loveless, and drowsy.

It’s still nice outside…

It’s still the indecisive pre-winter.

The air is a brand new breath mint,

The sky is a cosmic cradle,

The stars seem different from the ones

She sees in California.

I catch frigid explanations of the hour.

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches

I'm up for a sweatshirt,

And five more beers.

Tonight we lose an hour,

Work comes that much sooner.

As the conversation calms,

I consider calling it a night,

Unfortunately,

My bed is cold and empty.

The shadows grow earlier,

We no longer grill with our shirts off,

We eat in the moonlight.

Our appetites rushed by prime time programming.

Tonight we lose an hour,

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches

We gain two bad jokes

About sex with animals and a priest.

Reflection: I'm trying to determine what I was attempting to do at the end and realizing that I was probably just waiting for someone to ask me that question so I could shrug my shoulders at them and talk about how poetry needs to lighten up a little. Either way, I remember Mary Karr, a teacher of mine, telling me I needed to think in stanzas and progressions and add a bit of formality to the structure of my poems if not the theme of my poems. This is about as close as I got to writing in stanzas. Re-reading it now, I quite like the breaks. 

I have a bunch more poems I want to post, so check back soon.