You can't be too rich or too thin.
A throw away line from your youth
that took root in your psyche and
made you our anorexic beauty queen.
Porcelain skin we bow at your feet.
Reed thin and just enough love to
keep the masses at a safe distance.
You hold court at the discotheque.
You bring lovers home every night
but never feel that spark you need.
Trapped in your depletion you're
doomed to die already a skeleton.

We met in a bar called Ulysses.
Our puzzles fit perfectly.
I was your perfect shadow
in your perfect mirror and
you seduced me but forgot
to silence the sirens on shore
who called me to the rocks
love was eaten by a *****.

He was a cousin born with a brain tumor
they removed but left him most befuddled.
He came to visit in Charleston's edges where
we didn't have a **** thing we didn't provide.
I was the girl who worried about everything.
Petty Bette they called me but **** them all.
What if he falls off the porch and gets hurt?
Don't fret, child, give him a piece of string
and he'll trouble nobody. Amen. He spent the
rest of the day pondering that string like
it held the answers to the universe. I think
that string might be the boy's God almighty.
The lord works in mysterious ways I'm told.
When I die in my fog I'll ponder that string.

They heft the scull like a tortoise
shell and gently touch it to water.
They hold oars and take places and
wait for commands. Soldiers willing
to die for greater good of the boat.
Row. Poetry comes to life as the light
reflects 8 men rowing as 1. Like poetry
it looks effortless. Smooth and smart
it's a ballet of boys rising against odds
to become men worth rowing crew.

You can't rush a still's chemistry.
Mountain folks know all about
revenuers and they're reaching
for our wallets. Taxes is just a
word for robbery. Leave us to
ourselves. We scratch a living
from the rocky soil and barely
eat from day to day. We dance
to banjos and fiddles and love
in the hayloft to fill our needs.
Our mountains cradle our hearts.
Hardscrabble is our legacy.
We have hearts of coal
and love our mountain!

We met at mile marker 237.
Maine. You were tough enough
to go the distance and we both
dragged us to the final mile.

Appalachian range older than me
was where we played our music
to a bunch of college kids high as hell.
We miss our beds and loves and normal.
Porch 40 is where we hang our shingle.
Sylva is where our mail stacks up
and our true loves hold our hearts
gently in their own until we're home.

a poem by Howard Nemerov

A Primer of the Daily Round

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens, just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

My liver is leaking.
   My heart escaped prison.
   I've never felt more alive.
   I'm in the combat zone where
   ****** sell love and queens
   give love away for a song.

can you save me from fires of hell?
were you born poor in a lean to barn?
do you talk to the animals and heal sick?
are you celibate? are you a catholic priest?
who was your father? was he a pharaoh?
was your mother really a ******?
did you attend Catholic School?
are you a time traveller without a watch?
are you mostly carbon, mr. christ?
did you die ****** nailed on that cross?

Now I put a pencil mark on the
page and call it art. I splatter hate
on watercolor 300 lbs paper and
in a frame fools will pay fortunes.
My monkey paints and ***** on the
paper and it fetches small fortunes.

The righteous quote their bibles
  the sinners quote their poetry
  the desperate quote them both
  The suicides quote Van Gogh's
  stars he set afire and French Blue
  skies of birds cawing invitations.

Promise me. Not a word to anyone.
I think I'm in love with the nanny.
She's young and vibrant and dark.
I'm blooming in her midnight garden.
My wires spark. My heart's ignited.
Keep it secret. Not a word to anyone.

I have no need for any God.
I rule my garret just fine.
I perch on tattered throne
broke springs drink box wine
from a chipped plastic chalice
writing my own drunk scripture
on the back of the final notice
envelope of my certain departure.

I don't pray
per say
I hold hope
in my heart
and do what
I can to help.

My girl favors sweatpants and sweaters
  like a nun. Under her armor she hides
  Victoria's secrets and pierces my heart
  and slays this dragon with her thong.

You fell in love, my girl, I'm
happy for you and open the
champagne to celebrate!
We welcome the Scotsman
to our clan. I see how he
holds you like I did years
ago and know he'll keep
you safe and warm and
make you happy after all.
Let's toast your Love!

Attica

At the edge of consequence
razor wire upon the fence
captured in our human cage
heartbeats full of rage
inside we all adjust
to fragile realms of trust
Attica was hearts of stone
Musketeers none left alone.
We swelled in riot as one
beat the guards and won
the right to be heard on TV
passion play on bended knee.
Some died on both sides.
The ending was denied.

The mad dog foams and hates down
  the dry street in Maycomb and we
  need Atticus to put the bullet in
  its skull to put things right again.

She lived in a big house with her sister.
  They'd been there all their lives in Glendale.
  Ohio.  She was a dear woman who thought of us
  as her own children.  She was a spinster Aunt.

  She spoiled us and had a wicked sense of humor.
  She always welcomed me, even with my ***** wife.
  Seduced away from my 2 kids by this wicked beauty.
  She seemed to understand men's devotion to lust.

She always had a place in her heart just for me.
  I don't know why but she never judged me. She had
  me and my ***** wife stay at her mansion open arms.
  She knew things about my life I was too young to know.
  My war torn father had PTSD anger I was too young for.
  She was gentle and kind. She knew things I never knew.

It plays out on a stage by the sea.
  Violence, money, *** and drugs
  paint the scene blood red smelling
  of copper and naked angels die again.
  I'm left with your artifacts as proof
  you loved me when I was still pure.

The summer of love broke vows and
choked promises from our throats.
I grew my hair and quit robot jobs.
I wore carpenter jeans and earth shoes.
I ****** and called it love and loved
and called it *******. I'm always leaving.

I drop my frozen tears into
my cup of wine for comfort.
I pray for your soul and visit
you often at your grave to
share gossip and heal my
heart just one more time.

I remember your touch and I hunger
like the night we became us on the
back stairs as the party faded away
into white noise and my heart beat
into yours and I knew my world just
fell to pieces and broken promises
and broken children were coming.
I relive it one second at a time.
I still look for you everywhere
hoping we can find the back stairs.

Back in the day when our
grandparents were swimming
in ponds and kissing girls and
dreaming of them in sleep we
were yet to be imagined as a
possibility. They still had to
fight wars win or lose and hope
to come home whole enough
to keep horrors hidden from
those they loved most of all.

It's not a place you can get to by a boat,
or a train.
It's far, far away. Behind the moon,
beyond the rain. *

I'm homeless in California. Everything's free.
I fly barely over the rainbow every day when
I fill my blood with ****** and die for a day
or so. I rise like Christ and feel the same pain.

Lets have beers and shots and
share metaphors and broke hearts
and write poems to bring tears and
laughter and bury the dead finally.
Barkeep, bring us similes and drinks
to keep this wild madness alive.
We'll dedicate one to suffering wives
and suffering children and ourselves.
There's always something for us.
Poems cease at last call with periods.

Men sweat. Woman bleed.
Both are beasts of burden
until their bodies coil as one
ready to strike cruel masters.
They float upon love's breeze
and feel no pain, just healed.

I **** and call it love.
    I love and call it *******.
    What can my ***** tell me
    of feeling love in my heart?
    I step over the dead still
    looking for a beating heart.

We're cool
  we're hip
  we're writing everything
  you wish you'd been doing
  all along. We live in attics
  and drink cheap beer and wear
  clothes of the proletariat.
  we smoke anything, defy death.
  We're the Beats back again.

Launch your poems into unknown
waters. Pick your top 10 faves and
send them off to the great beyond.
Leave this nest and find true flight.

These are just horrible God ******
truths hidden behind the curtain
of The Wizards of Oz.
Soldiers fed to meat grinders of war.
Generals in the rear play chess
with cavemen from Boise
with no skin in their game.
They drink and **** and live.

There must be someway out of here
   said the patient to the shrink.
   I can write a script for ******
   that might help you think.
   Give me your magic I said
   maybe I'll find another door.
   Don't be in such a hurry
   just be grateful for the floor.
   I'll need to see you often
   you're in a fragile mind.
   I'll write your script forever
   as long as you stay blind.

I broke the chain of cruelty
    from father to son beatings.
    I was cruel to a dog we had.
    I set him free in a rich place
    he'd find love and kindness.
    I'm between time and Timbuktu.
    I see me in a thousand mirrors.
    One of them might be perfect.

Before time and matter and
love and hate and you and me
a movie started it all. Why not?
Big Bang on the biggest screen
we call universe. In a pool hall
the gods racked their ***** and
Zeus broke and sent nothing
into an acid trip of everything.
Some find their paradise.
Some find comfort dying.

I watch the ****** on 5th St. dressed to ****
  circle over the wounded with starving appetites
  for all the sweets on display and perfume to up
  temptation for another 5 or 10 for Waffle House.
  Love is easy with fixed price and no strings.
  All I want is someone to hold onto. I still wait.

There's a calm in chaos
  silence while the world
  fades and clarity of
  reason in madness.
  "There's more good than
  bad in this one", is the
  best they can say over
  this bleeding out corpse.

"I've been with saints.
I've been with sinners.
They both ruin my knees".
She told me that later.

Blink and you might see yourself in madness.
Spent years are stacked like ash beneath you.
You notice the hourglass is almost out of sand.
Mirrors are cruel reminders of sagging flesh and
missing hair and canyons in aged faces.
Death is the final madness after all.

Blink and you might finally see the truth.
Perched on a throne of wasted years you're
out of time. Your machine is broken down.
Are you scrap, cremated or buried?
Did you have a god? Were you an atheist?
We'll pray for your soul just in case.

It's a beauty of a red rose.
  It's a watercolor on a bed sheet
  petals bloom from his wound.
  She'd had it and found a gun
  and courage and anger enough
  to put him out of her misery.

It's a creator's diary of our
life's times start and stop.
He keeps meticulous records
like an OCD god might do.
He might die. A bigger god's
bigger book has his entry.

I'm frantically looking for my *****.
  It's hiding behind my chair like a cat.
  Like old lovers we feel comfort again.
  Don't tease me like that. I need you.

You fool no one but yourself
  with ***** and peppermints.
  You slur words and stumble.
  I will love you always.
  You're the funniest man I
  will ever know and kindest
  and fiercely loyal to a fault.
  You're broken and know it.
  You don't know how to fix it.
  I'll keep your broken as best
  I can. We'll live in a crooked
  house on a crooked street with
  less and less. Our world is
  small. It shrinks often as our
  friends and family drink into
  their early graves as sure as
  you will or give up on us as
  too broke to bother with.

I was ****** into a womb with
love's angry *******.
A terrible spark set me afire
on my way to Greenhills.
1949
I was born in March like a mad
hatter with no name in anger's nest.
Dad screamed discontent PTSD
yet to be diagnosed. WW2 flack
floating in our home unknown
we found foxholes anywhere.
You won't remember me.
I won't remember you as well.
Our features were melting into
the surrounding darkness.

Got you worrying from your gate post
to the cane fields. Got you fearing for
your life while the yellow eyed
black beasts stare with hatred at your
whips and ******* cruelty without
an ounce of fear anymore.

Teeming steaming city where everyone
  is looking for lovers everywhere.
  Women dressed in small dresses naked
  and men strut straight and tall and point
  to them one by one and **** them and
  go home to family's who ignore naked truth.

I have no time to listen
to your supposition
of the conversation
of your observation
when you found her ****
swimming in an attitude
she thought it amusing
and started refusing
to name her admirer
who set her on fire.

Throw the stone tablets from the
mountain top and break the only
chance to pass on lessons learned,
who we were and disappointing
expectations. I miss my *****
time machine and touching you.