i used to wake up with sore eyes and black bruises i've never seen before
i'd look for long cigarette butts half full beers and forgotten liquor drinks
i had two cow licks that stuck up like horns
i had thick cigarette smoke like peanut butter and puddles in the kitchen that leaked from the trash bags into the rug
i'd paste cardboard boxes and ripped up comic books together with my drawings
in permanent marker and scribbled edges of ballpoint pen and colored pencil coupled with
writings of philosophic schizophrenic machine gun word salad
that ran off the page and
onto the walls
i had slippers i'd worn out months ago and shirts i washed in the shower
with dish soap
i had flies that flew around in circles until they got smacked or fell dead
i'd climb up on the roof in the afternoon
throw bottles in the street and ******* the side
i welcomed the dirt the bloodstains and the deep cough
i loved it but mostly hated it
and i'll never forget it

i will let large threatening wild animals loose on the cities of america
resurrect the dead and all the enemies of mankind cause havoc confusion and dismay to everyone who didn't see it coming -- grow a thousand miles tall kick over nuclear plants ****** planes out of the sky and throw warheads like lightning bolts life as we know it will be licked up by flames and smoke -- i will scoop handfuls of smoldering ruins and smear it over the earth like a smothering blanket -- wait -- for a beautiful calm when everything is quiet -- i will breathe it all in cough up a new world vomiting mountains tall trees rivers lakes and oceans hacking up dry deserts hot swamps and forests from the back of my lungs i will choke on my last breath as i lay down in a cold sweat -- i will be overgrown and swallowed up like a fallen statue and my crumbling ruins will be the mortar for a new existence -- cities will be built upon my ashes

Ugh!
they cut
half my tree down
the one closest to me
where the birds made their nest
which became my shelter too
screened and swaddled by boughs
so i'm mourning a myrtle today
as Jonah once grieved for a vine
appointed by God to grow up
and ordered by Him to
go to remind
us there are
things more
important
than plants
like poetry
and people
and maybe
its one of those
i'm really missing anyway

If I could blame it all on the weather,
the snow like the cadaver's table,
the trees turned into knitting needles,
the ground as hard as a frozen haddock,
the pond wearing its mustache of frost.
If I could blame conditions on that,
if I could blame the hearts of strangers
striding muffled down the street,
or blame the dogs, every color,
sniffing each other
and ******* on the doorstep...
If I could blame the bosses
and the presidents for
their unpardonable songs...
If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.

Perhaps for a death.