I spent my boyhood avoiding
      the disgrace of my differences.
Creating alternate empires that
      I ruled with stoic passion.
I gave out negative vibrations, as a boy,
      to control the level of association.
Built walls and lived within them,
       perfectly encased in sarcastic wisdom.
Does not take too long to understand
       that being yourself is not suggested.
Eager advocates educate the boy that his
      differences must be suppressed.
Be the same. Be the same. Be the same.
      Moulded and conformed, unaware
of the boyhood desiring to think for self.
       I spent my boyhood reading books
that opened libraries of imagination.
      Absorbing the solitary creations
of so many magnificent lives. They presented
      me with echoes of alternatives.
I never have understood the slicked back
      membrane of uncentred filters.
Solitary self-confinement made so
       much more tickled sense to me.
I passed out scented cigars of me
       to ear-drums inclined to not listen.
They agreed to, and supported,
       the numbness of not thinking.
Letting the self-declared prophets
       dictate how we must believe.
I spent my boyhood being the boy
      that did not fit the paper model.
Set it on fire. Set it on fire. Let the
       message always be that a man
must indicate his own set of standards.

for I ate all my peas,
minded my masters at school,
then learned to march manly,
and straight

to these trenches
that surely are maps of hell;
if there be such a place
beyond here

in this dead, grey pasture,
pocked by shells, and body parts
strewn about like pieces of a puzzle
that don't fit

Father said go, make England
proud, but I know you would not wish
this fate for me, or any of the children hiding
in these pits, waiting for the command

to become fodder for the Gatling gun,
the cannon; you would shed cataracts
of tears for all of us, if ghosts above
yet weep for the living

the ****** who will soon join you,
though none know when; surely you
will hear me cry your name, the way I have
seen them all do, with their last breath

life is a stone in a pond,
once
        we sink
                we never rise,

but the ripples of our life
       touch more than we know.

Different colored eggs are scattered in the grass
Children are running down the path
To see what the bunny has left
It won't be long but just wait for the mess
Easter isn't about candy and fun
He died and rose for us, that's the real story of where it has begun...

I have a son
not too far south
of me, close enough
to jump in my car
and go speak of my love

but I won't put a bit
in his mouth or saddle
him with my troubles

We could cut our palms
open with sharp knives
and be blood brothers
the rest of our lives

and I could find another
woman in the mountains
instead of staying here
with his mother he loves
while he swims his own
sea of life without me

instead I drive long drives
and count the keys
on the black piano
of the highways at night
passing beautiful women
who wave and smile back

but I'm only dreaming
keeping night watch
over my bed,  I dream
about old songs that sing
back to me like one
by Townes Van Zandt
about going down to see
a woman named Kathleen.