Born on the eve of a blue-yellow moon
Days and nights spent looking for you
A fool, a wretch, at best a buffoon
The seas are alive with the memory of you

The sailors they talk of your beauty and grace
But warn of your loves sweet deadly embrace
I’ve won and I’ve lost at the gates of your feet
So my father promised me he did on that day
My quest for your shores would not fade away
He said, you'll die a young man, and he promised I’d meet
An Atlantis to live for, to match my conceit

So I beg and I borrow
I scavenge and rave
Before my own birth was I already your slave?
So my head will rest on eternal tomorrow
As the search stretches on I question, Atlantis, my sorrow?

Alone and at sea, yet still I rejoice
After all of this time the manifest of your voice
and I see it now
It is just in view
Atlantis my salvation
I am coming to you

The way you move around my room...

you're all left turns and great big thoughts

Your fingers wrap around every corner of my brain

I think about...

how I want to trace every inch of your body with my hands

and

take a single ice cube and watch the smolder of you melt it in front of my eyes

I know that I shouldn't stare at you the way that I do

...but i cant stop thinking of your skin, and how it reminds me of strawberries being dipped in cream

I'll do all sorts of devilish activity
I'll play
I'll touch
I'll explore and discover
And eat and worship
I'll ****** and grab and pull
I'll ******
I'll lick and bite
I'll whisper
I'll be gentle
And then strong
I'll be deliberate
I'll be firm and then relent
I'll love and I'll Lust
I'll teach and I'll learn and I'll give and I'll take
All that I have will be yours if you do the same

A sea of ivy engulfs -- the house has grown comfortable in its plot
The specters are horrific even in victory
The door hangs heavy in hand
Idyllic -- I am a twisted tornado of hope  
We’ll scratch the pyrite off the laughter when we're  done

A conveyor belt --
Plate fork knife
Knife fork plate -- a hedonism of silverware
The shift and rise of the fear
Confident and full of splendor
Dancing on the edge of a dime between Cool hearted emptiness and the heated vitriol of truth
The dime continues its dance

Plate fork knife
Knife fork plate
We were here once long ago
A grandiose thought and a barren action
I was you once, once until the river flooded
I would be you again and that's a promise you told me
This maze outside our house is filled with friction and of our own design
Bolts and warped wood are the entry to our kingdom

Always entering the field of battle with stone in a field of steel
A warrior of words meant to leap the abyss between your joyous abuse and her scathing affection
Crumpled letters stapled to shields
Their words --
The hope they have is false -- the promises destined to go unfulfilled
The iron rises from the field and fills my mouth
It soaks and stains my smile
None of the enemy combatants can be trusted
There's blood on the table
There's blood on the table in all its grandest forms  




We're all in this separate reality of our own design
No one exists in here it's just us and that is the truly terrible part of it all
No one else wants to watch because we don't want them to

This is for us -- our amusement our self-hate our deep dive down into the mundane complacency of it all
This is ours -- our pain and sorrow and joy and false hope our faith -- our sit there smiling and laughing and talking about how your day was and who you are and how you have been. Remember that time when ... no, I don't remember and I never want to again because all of the laughs have been cheapened by your artful lies and the threat of your anger and the hulking shadow of your violence.

Accustomed to staring straight ahead, the color of your eyes the curves of your face I have forgotten them all. Your voice is mine and without it, I don't have one of my own.

So here is my great proclamation to a table of ghosts with shattered silverware and rotten delights.
I've tried and been true. Failure has come far more often than success and yet I celebrate you all. The wrong you have done has made me stronger. The right you have been having made me kinder. The hate in my heart will die and fade. And a man willing full of this world's wonder will remain.
And although....

Our imaginations have long since fled this land and all we are left with is our cold ****** selves and the fogged glass of our memories. We are one. We have shown up here in this world -- ready and willing to do and be something.  

Make no mistake we have all failed -- and maybe there lies the true miracle -- the true beauty behind all of this wretchedness that hurts so **** bad.

But then again, I excuse when there is no excuse to be had. I proclaim the guilty innocent and those that are innocent enough to stay by my side risk the cloud of my wrath.

And so maybe, maybe just this once I will fade off -- I have retired my horse and there are no sunsets left for me. In the best possible way, I hope to become the ether -- the nothingness that the universe has yet to put a name to.

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.

I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head-
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes-
then she drops her hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the pointsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.

it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market;
it sits and watches me,
it sweats nevously
through wire and fog and dog-bark
until suddenly
I slam the screen with a newspaper
like slapping at a fly
and you could hear the scream
over this plain city,
and then it left.

the way to end a poem
like this
is to become suddenly
quiet.

I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue *******
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?"
and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog."
she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.