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Acme Dec 2021
We watched from a rooftop
across the great city
4 in the morning
lit up and pretty
a little drunk but
mostly just tired
dawn broke and
I was inspired
in central park
we made our bond
you said I love you
now and beyond
I said I love you
you answered ****
love floats in jetsam
drifts in bad luck.
Acme Nov 2021
I told you I was broken
you silenced my spoken
word like you were dead
I stared inside your head
and wept at what I saw
the barman said last call
I offered you the drugs
you said you wanted hugs
I said they've sharp edges
you went to find tall ledges.
Acme Nov 2021
Each click of the second hand
    validates my life. It's seamless.
    I'm here and now. Maybe not smooth
    as time can be reduced to billionth
    of a second.  Slices of time we can't
    even begin to imagine. An incredible
    number of snapshots! Life continues.
    We desperately try to slow it down,
    somehow tame time.  This a beast we'll
    never defeat. Nothing lasts forever.
Acme Nov 2021
Love is a 4 letter word as is ****.
   I've given both like the ***** I am.
   If I were rich I'd buy the sweetest
   wife I ever wanted. I roll poor man's
   dice and live in walk ups with you
   and work a ****** city job bringing
   home the bacon and beer to survive
   panic attacks that last until I sleep.
  Oct 2021 Acme
Thomas W Case
Just in case you
couldn't
guess, it's not a
a fair fight
or a level
playing field.

It's you with
boxing gloves
and them with
machine guns.

It's Van Gogh
throwing his paintings
out the window
to stop the hecklers.

It's Janis falling
down
the stairs, lonely
and
broken
looking for love.

It's Morrison seeing
the game for
what it was,
wanting to disappear
in France and
write poetry,
then dying in a
bathtub with a
witch in the wings.

It's morphine dreams
and thorazine days.
It's the tiger
declawed and lobotomized
at the zoo.

It's the lobster
cursed with
precious meat.

It's the statue of liberty,
burning her bra
and impaling
working class men with
her stiletto heels.

It's Gogol
dying after a
prolonged fast,
because a charlatan
told him
it was evil.

It's the elephant
domesticated by
the cage, but
still dreaming of
the Serengeti.

It's the dolphin in
a Hollywood
swimming pool,
a shark in your
coffee cup;
it's the criminality
of releasing the insane
from their cages to
wander the streets of
Santa Barbara.

It's pathetic and putrid,
a setup up;
the perfect tragedy;
a crime that goes beyond
denunciation.

It's what they will continue
to do to
you and me
until someone or something
intervenes.
Acme Oct 2021
Now I love low light and shadows.
     Night is my flattering friend who
     understands the ugliness of aging.
     My skin turns purple as my veins
     capture hold on my thinning skin.
     Onion skin. Thin translucent, like
     strong wind could rip it off bones.
     I was a fetching beauty not too long
     ago. Full sun on the beach I had
     men staring agog. I strutted and
     knew they didn't have a chance. I
     decided who would plant their flag.
Acme Oct 2021
Coworker on a bus after nightshift
Waltham to Boston. He said he was sick
in a serious way. Doctors baffled and
he feeling worse by the day. I told him
not to worry because he'd be better soon.
They always figure it out. He died. AIDS.
Several years later at an AIDS hospice
I heard the rattled breath at deaths door.
Barely able to hold his cane he stood then
struggled mighty to make it to his grave.
Rod. I wish you had known him.
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