In a maze of endless death
Every turn is love and war
Any wall can constrict any man’s sinful neck
Life leaving his heart’s cold core

A twisted, greedy man appears,
Seeing a tangled man with a lustful expression
His eyes see the treasure, gold and bright
And is caught within a poisonous suppression  

A fierce woman soon approaches
Bitter and angry, her maw and claws sharp
Burning through the coils and gas
Falls to endless sleep with the help of a harp

A wistful child comes forth
Living in envy and through a disguise
Treads, like a thief, past the harp
To fall into the ground through his shadow’s demise

Five have failed and five faced death
So an animal consumes his way through the vines
Through the gas, harp, and trap
Only to die by it’s purposeless cries

Now a small ant rises
And slowly makes his way through the maze
He reaches a gate and opens the door
And sees a figure that brings endless raze

Who is left in this cold cruel world?
Who can become the seventh to the prize?
A god, a hot-headed braggart, reaches the gift
And loses faith through his guilt and his lies

We look for Satan with the same intensity
that my mom and dad looked for God.

In retrospect
my parents were always pushing me to expand my consciousness
by huffing glue or gasoline
or chewing peyote buttons.
Simply because they'd done their time,
wasted their teen years
lolling in the muddy fields of Vermont
and the salt flats of Nevada,
naked except for rainbow face paints
and a thick coating of sweaty filth,
their heads festooned
with fifty pounds of fetid dreadlocks,
teeming with crab lice
and pretending to find enlightenment...
That does NOT mean I have to make the same mistake.

Sorry, Satan,
once again I've said the G-word.

Without breaking stride,
Leonard nods and points
to indicate the former deities of now-defunct cultures,
now warehoused in the underworld.
Among them: Benoth,
a god of the Babylonians;
Dagon,
an idol of the Philistines;
Astarte,
goddess of the Sidonians;
Tartak,
the god of the Hevites.

My suspicion
is that my parents treasure their sordid recollection
of episodes at Woodstock and Burning Man
not because those pastimes led to wisdom,
but because such folly
was inseparable from a period of their lives
when they were young
and unburdened by obligation;
they had free time, muscle tone,
and their futures still looked like a great, grand adventure.
Furthermore,
both my mother and father had been free of social status
and therefore had nothing to lose by cavorting ****,
their swollen genitals smeared with muck.

Thus,
because they had ingested drugs and flirted with brain damage,
they insisted I should do likewise.
I was forever opening my boxed lunch at school
to discover a cheese sandwich,
a carton of apple juice,
carrot sticks,
and a five-hundred-milligram Percocet.
Tucked within my Christmas stocking
--not that we celebrated Christmas--
would be three oranges,
a sugar mouse, a harmonica,
and quaaludes.
In my Easter basket
--not that we called the event Easter--
instead of jelly beans,
I'd find lumps of hashish.
Would that I could forget the scene at my twelfth birthday party
where I flailed at a piñata,
wielding a broomstick in front of my peers
and their respective
former-hippie, former-rasta,
former-anarchist throwback parents.
The moment the colorful papier-mâché burst,
instead of Tootsie Rolls or Hershey's Kisses,
everyone present
was showered with Vicodins,
Darvons, Percodans,
amyl nitrate ampoules,
LSD stamps,
and assorted barbiturates.
The now wealthy,
now-middle-aged parents
were ecstatic,
while my little friends and I couldn't help
but feel a tad bit cheated.

That,
and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand
that very few twelve-year-olds
would actually enjoy attending
a clothing-optional birthday party.

Some of the most gruesome images in Hell
seem downright laughable
when compared to seeing an entire generation of adults
stripped **** and wrestling on the floor,
grasping and panting in frantic competition
for a scattered handful of codeine capsules.

Angry skies and gnarled trees
Fish fly by in the wind
Spitting out water
Unbreathing

Pavement's grand fissures
Bushes with briars
Five feet long
Tearing at the flesh of passersby

Grass of razors
Chairs of torture
Tables of barbed wire
Disneyland

Smiles that don't quite rise to eyes
Awkward chatter and white lies
Drab, plaster walls, and stained floors
Take a breath and sip some more

Lower walls and break the locks,
With fewer glances at the clock
Easy laughter and empty cups
Find a way to fill me up.

The bitter rind turns sweet with time
When empty glasses clink like chimes
The warmth of friends helps me unwind
The warmth of poison keeps me blind

Eyes that don't quite rise to smiles
But people love this guise of style
Play it smooth with refined class
Tell everyone about her fine ***

Oh, this nihgt will never end
Oh, the joys of plentyy friends
Teh best of times, never     forget
The

way


      that
          



                  the

neck·ing/ˈnekiNG/
Noun: The action of two people kissing and caressing each other amorously.


Both thumbs hanging on the back pockets of your jeans
while leaning against the wall and biting your bottom lip
enticing the oasis of your tongue, your breath dying of thirst.

Your flirtatious smile already knows that it’s entitled
to the mwah’s, ooh’s and aah’s coming the way of your pout
little did you know of the kisses you could fit in that mouth.

it’s the mathematical sum of everything that’s round
it’s dancing in the rain under an infinite fall of X’s and O’s
it’s nibbling on a bottle of Hennessy before taking a shot.

While I hold your face with both hands,
my eyes never wavering from yours,
I caress your cheeks, undress your thoughts,

feverishly going in, taking all the time in the world
to taste every bit of you and savor the moment so to speak
with our senses fogged, ******* in a tangled rope, in a kiss.

Then I pull some back to slowly feel your breathing into me
your clouded lips in my fingertips are a miracle of humidity
the stripped walls of oblivion is the last frontier with will see.

Before submerging deep into the point of no return
before your ripe apple meets the delicacy of my touch
before leaving in me, flower of skin, every last drop of you.

Already over the sea from her old spouse she comes,
the blonde goddess whose frosty wheels bring day.
Why do you hurry, Aurora? Hold off, so may the birds
shed ritual blood each year for Memnon's shade.
Now it's good to lie in my mistress's tender arms;
if ever, now it's good to feel her near.
Now drowsiness is richest, the morning air is cool,
and birds sing shrilly from their tender throats.
Why do you hurry, dreaded by men and dreaded by girls?
Draw back your dewy reins with your crimson hand.
The sailor marks the stars more clearly before you rise,
not raoming aimlessly across the sea;
the traveller, though weary, arises when you come,
and the soldier sets his savage hand to arms;
you're first to see the farmers wield their heavy hoes
and to call slow oxen under the curving yoke;
you rob boys of their sleep and give them over to schools,
where tender hands must bear the savage switch;
and you send reckless fools to pledge themselves in court,
where they take ruinous losses through one word;
the lawyer and the pleader take no delight in you,
for each must rise and wrangle with new torts;
and you ensure that women's chores are never done,
calling the spinner's hands back to her wool.
All this I'd bear; but who would bear that girls must rise
at dawn, unless himself he has no girl?
How many times I've wished Night would not yield to you,
the stars not fade and flee before your face!
How many times I've wished the wind would smash your wheels,
your steeds would stumble on a cloud and fall!
Jealous, why do you hurry? If your son is black,
it's since his mother's heart is that same color.
How I wish Tithonus could still tell tales of you:
no goddess would be more disgraced in heaven.
Since he is endless eons old, you rise and flee
at dawn to the chariot the old man hates,
but if some Cephalus were lying in your arms,
you'd cry out, 'O run slowly, steeds of night! '
Why should this lover pay, if your husband withers with age?
Was I the matchmaker who brought him to you?
Remember how much sleep was given to her loved youth
by Luna - and she's beautiful as you.
The father of gods himself, to see you all the less,
joined two nights into one for his desires.
I'd finished my complaint. You could tell she'd heard: she blushed;
and yet the day rose at its usual time.

Some days I stare at my hands,
Trying to find my singularity-
Individuality!
Lost in the muddle of plurality!
When you exchanged my heart,
And swapped in your own.