I wrote this poem in they days before my recent 30th birthday party.

Here follow the potholes, worse than curves in this lane,
A couple couplets to express the speed of this strain.

We stay old too long, set on our climb to the peak,
Three decades before we learn a word to misspeak.

I wonder sometimes if never we return like the fall,
One instant to reach, come up short or stall.

The doubts more dazzling than any dream we could doze,
The joys of flashing buttocks and a yellow paper prose.

Chasing after confusions, for a knob we can’t try,
Finding the unknowable fracture behind every loci,

Too blinded by figures to see the lay of the land,
All hidden beyond lines in the analysand.

But I’m sure there’s a world, for heads not to rest,
I’ve seen it in dreams, too full of wit to digest.

A life that’s been kind, every moment for toasts,
Full of friends gathered round by all friendly ghosts.

Nor know how to thank, or who, for this one chance,
Of thirty years gone by of blessing and abundance,

Life in a dream, a planet’s psyche to heal,
All I can say is it’s sure been surreal.

I had a bunch of other clever lines and a big list of what I call “bywords” (words that end with another word to give the sentence a double meaning) that I lost in Burma. So I wrote a quick program to look for all English bywords (and then took out some of the non-useful ones). You can look at the results.