I was helping my
son with his homework
the other day.
For one of his assignments,
he had to write a
public service announcement.
He has been visited
by the muse
at an early age.
His goal is to publish
his first book by the
time he's 18.

It got me thinking about
my life as a writer,
and the young formative
years.
As a boy, I had a
broad imagination,
and much time alone.
I remember coming
up with plot lines in
my head, and then
writng little adventure stories.
My dad was a drama
teacher.
He directed four or
five plays a year.
I grew up watching
the classic plays,
and developing a love
for literature.

In Junior high,
I saw the power
of my gift.
I wasn't a popular
kid; somewhat of a
loner.
But one day in
English class, I wrote
a story about a
***** headed hamster,
with an underbite like
a French bulldog.
The other kids loved it.
They listened and laughed,
and applauded.
Words became my
new best friend.

I grew, and leaned on
writing through the
good times and the bad.
They were my warmth
In the long winters,
and my rain in
springtime.
Through the alcoholic
haze of much of
my adulthood,
writing kept me sane,
and it gave me
the will to keep
living when the
pain grew into
a beast of its own...

My son hands me
his paper, and it's
brilliant--it warns people
about the dangers
of cyber hackers, by
portraying the average
person surfing the net
as a lamb walking along
in the grass,
thinking life is grand just being
a sheep, when along
comes the wolf that pounces and
devours.
He finishes with,
"Don't let this happen to you.
Protect your computer and files
with such and such software."

He asked me if I thought
he could be a good writer.
I laughed, and and told him
that he already was.

I've been so lonely
as of late.
I set out to
create a mate.
Oh, who am I
kidding, I'm not
a poet, I'm a doctor,
truth be told,
more of an alchemist.
Going to graveyards
for body parts, all
in the name of
science, I swear....
to create life....boy did
I **** this one up
royally.

My alter ego,
Thomas, seems to have the same problem I do.
He's in the hospital withdrawing from alcohol, and also has politicians
taking refuge under his bed.
The lice in Donald's Trump's hair
have demanded rice for breakfast
and it's 4:00 in the afternoon.
Bernie Sanders is under their clamoring free medical care for everybody, but every time I put the nurses light on and tell them what's going on they say no one's under the bed. I think they're in on it.  If this doesn't stop the doctors will think I'm crazy, but we know who the crazy ones are. Right?

I'm back in the psyche ward again.
It's my home away from home,
next to jail and the emergency room.
I sat under the bridge the other night.
It was January, and extremely cold.
I was jonesing for a drink—I knew what I had to do.
I had only been out of jail for a
couple of days for another public intox.
I narrowly avoided going back to the can today.
My nut-job girlfriend said,
"Why don't you get us some wine? " "Sure, " I said.
Shaking and sick, I walked a mile to
my favorite store that I steal ***** from.
I arrived, and had a bad feeling, but I
don't pay much attention to feelings anymore.
In and out is always the plan.
A bottle of chardonnay down the front
of the pants, and one in the coat.
I thought I had it. I was wrong.
A customer saw me and snitched me off.
I went with the manager to his office.
A cop showed up shortly afterwards.
I engaged the store-guy with talk of literature.
It turned out he was an
English major.
I wrote down the title of my book,
and slipped it to him. He put the paper
in his wallet. He told the cop that I was very cooperative.
Instead of taking me to jail,
the cop gave me a citation with a
court date on it, and let me go.
Sometimes, providence smiles on me.
On my way back to the apartment,
I was already planning the next store to hit,
I needed a drink.
The cop, from the store, pulled up along side of me,
and said,
"Your girlfriend called, she said she didn't
want you at her place anymore.
All your stuff is in front of her door."
I felt like I'd been run over by a rhino.
The cop said,
"I'll give you a lift, jump in."
When I arrived, there were two loosely
packed bags of clothes weighing around 100 pounds.
There was no way in hell that I could
have carried all that crap eight miles to Iowa City.
I grabbed a back pack, and stuffed it with a pair
of jeans, two shirts, my writing, and a copy of Don Quixote.
I went outside and waved to the cop, then headed towards town.
I finally made it back to the bridge.
I waited to get the nerve to make
my next move—steal wine.
I did it, and with no cork *****,
I opened it with a broken ink pen.
I'm not complaining, it was the needed elixir
and it went down like nectar of the gods.
I drank it quick, it was three degrees out.
Life had to change.
This was getting real old.

What's there to say when
your two best friends die a
day apart?

Greg died crossing the street,
smacked by a minivan.
Tibbs, from some strange
brain quirk.
I did C.P.R to no avail.

They're both gone.
They sailed away.
Gone like the last
spider of *****.
Gone like the songs we
sang together.

Sometimes
I still look for you two.
I turn corners and I half
expect to see one of you.
So ******* alive one minute,
so dead the next.

Both of them
fathers,
friends, and men
of valor.
Iowa City is a
******* place without you.
If there's a Brightside,
it's a brutal winter
and you don't have to
suffer through it.

I hope death is treating
you warm and well.
Your hell was
here.
Struggling for that
drink;
to be okay- to get that click,
to carry on, one more
grueling day.

It's over now.
You're gone.
Gone like the last Dodo bird;
gone like your impish smiles.
Gone like the miles we
trod with bags full of
aluminum nickels.

Words can't express the
mess
I am without the two
of you.
I know I'll see you again,
out there beyond the
purple horizon.
#friendship #death

I sit at my window and look out at the
snowflakes; they fall vertically, horizontally under
the grey black sky. I watch the dog break open the
bone and lick the marrow out. I watch the
big white cat sleep, snore, maybe dreaming of
a fat sparrow in his mouth. I think of taking
a bite of the sunset, living in a cave; the way
a marimba sounds when I’m haunted,
how Hamsun took bites of his hand in hunger.
My mind drifts to Van Gogh’s potato eaters,
the ***** that rejected his ear, Lautrec’s withered
legs and beautiful heart. I think of the falcon in
the city, the stranger in the mirror, the brutality
of man and the wonder in the doe’s eyes.

Anything but algebra, I took the compass test for
college, 99% in writing, 96%.in reading and 17% in math.
I have to retake the math and score a 25% or better.
I despise math, my girlfriend says, “You love math, it
gets you loans and grants.”
My brain bleeds with numbers and equations,
but she’s right,
I like loans and grants.

So I’m back at it, like a kid to
the dentist, and math does its job,
it pushes me back to
the word, the line, my dirt road
through the madness.