There she is:
naked and fickle on
the floor, *******
marrow out of
soup bones; her
*******
busy with
living things.

The muse plays
hide
and seek
like a spoiled
little child, as I
sit with
sterile white
paper.
I think I see
her from the
corner
of my
eye, but when
I look,
she is gone, like
the last Dodo bird.
I yell, "Are you dead? "
NOTHING.
And then she
appears
dimly through
the glass and
gives
me a hard one,
fierce, right behind
the eyes,
in that still small
place where sullen
shadows
dance to Wagner, while
sparrows burn and there's
a smell of
Spider Mums, and
funerals.

Then, she's gone like
the Cheshire cat.
(the grin remains.)
I get another
drink, hoping to
swallow and consume
her- to become one.
It doesn't work.
I get
frustrated, pace the
worn out
carpet, like a
caged tiger

Writer's block is
hell.
It's worse than
celibacy and
bologna.
Far worse than
constipation, or not
being able to ***.
It's like missing
the vein, or
dying of thirst in the desert.
It's like being
dead, but alive.

And
finally at
last
it's over (she consummates the deal)
and the words and
lines flow like
rain in Seattle in
the springtime.
I can
see the ***** in
the rose.
Taste
the sweet potato sky,
plant flowers in concrete, and
beat Mr. Death in
a game of go fish.
And
strangely,
it all smells like
home,
eternity,
and two-week old
puppies dreaming of
Mother's milk.

When I was a child
I had these strange febrile dreams.
In the blackness, globules
would form and float
and pulsate around the room.
And inside my addled brain,
they were terrifying, with their
whispered screams.
The sounds they made started
out low and small, and then
grew louder with every breath.
It was a horrid sound, like a
demented school teacher
scolding a blind student.
And I thought, in my
young feeble mind, that
angels were being tortured,
and that if I drifted off
to sleep, they would wake me with
their unearthly moans and
floating globules that would
grow and attack my brain.
It was as if they wanted
help, but they scared me.
So I fought to get well;
to make them disappear.
I don't have those sweat soaked
febrile dreams anymore;
but I still see the tortured angels...
under the bridge, down by the river.

I wish I had
a vein.
the highways are
under reconstruction.
It ***** like a
***** on 3-inch skids.
I did my time,
I'm part of the rhyme.
I'll stay lonely only
because of you..

It's all trial and error;
weighing heavy on
the latter.
When I feel like this,
I want to build an
exit machine;
walk through it to
a different life.
Too many irons in
the fire, I'm burned
beyond recognition.
The situation unfolds
like it always does,
I fall down, and
then get back up.
But I'm tired, and sometimes
the ground is comfortable,
and way too familiar.

On those 2:00 a.m. February mornings, when I get up to ****, death is in my
creeking bones.
As I thumb through memories in the old family photographs, death smiles back, in black and white.
He hides in the shadows of the lined up pill bottles, like toy soldiers on the nightstand.

But when I lie in bed and look for pictures in the smoky stucco ceiling, I see coffins and funeral pyres and I close my eyes and grin, because my friend conquered death and took the
fear out of
the grave.

The creative mind
never truly sleeps;
it naps 45 minutes
at a time.
Even, that which
appears to be
sleep, is a fitful
state of poetic creativity.
The brain is like
a patchwork quilt
that uses the scraps of
the day's events,
trying to fit symbols
together, like a
jigsaw puzzle.
Here's another one
from the vast
analog of the brain.

When I was an
ideal and dreamy teenager walking amidst the
trees in the backyard,
there, curled up beneath a pine, I discovered a small creature and stared at it.
I gently picked it up and held it to
my chest.
It opened its eyes.
I felt The power within .
It went back to sleep,
and I set it down.

The next morning
when I walked
out the back door,
headed for school,
the little creature
was sitting there,
wide awake,
looking up at me.
It had the most
unreal looking eyes.
They seemed to change color.
Apart from English and art class, I hated school.
I didn't quite fit in .
I had good friends,
but I always felt lonely.
Bouts of melancholia struck me at the strangest times,
soon after, I found
it to be the
terminal affliction of being a poet.

I stayed home from school that day and played with the
creature.
It seemed to
hear me, almost understand me.
I liked the feeling.
it became my
best friend.

I fed it every day
and it grew and became unruly and hard to control at times, but overall, it caused me much more joy than pain, way back then.
I missed it when it
was gone,
and threw my arms around it when it
came home.
I named it buffer
because it was an equalizer for me,
and the world, and pain,
It went inbetween the sharpness and vividness, in which I didn't know how to cope.

It got big
and became
a beast.
I had a love / hate relationship with
the thing.
I sacrificed a lot
for it at the
altar of idolatry.
It wouldn't let anyone get close to me,
My wife, my kids,
I chased them
all away.
I was alone with
the beast.

After years of
pain and degradation,
I put the beast down.
I shot it in
the back of the
head, like a rabid dog.

Life raged on.
Pain and joy came with equal measure,
but I no longer
needed a buffer to
keep living, laughing, and learning.
I finally figured
out how to
truly love.