God punishes us forever
because we merely sought knowledge
in The Garden,
long before things were written down.

Did not the masters of the slave trade
demonstrate the same authority -
denying their subjects knowledge,
or simply the hope of betterment -
as they toiled in their gardens?

And are the descendants of those subjects
not still punished by self-proclaimed masters
who are little more than masters of none
but ignorance and inequality?

And yet, we pray that God may show us the way.

Are you afraid to write dangerously, fellow poets?
Is love all there is to talk about?
It seems that perhaps you have yet to find your voice,
and that's fine.
But, when I read your poems, I become worried.
Your heartbreaks are important, yes -
it's part of your experience -
but there is more happening in this world,
and I'm sure you have something to say about it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Having been brought up as Catholic,
I was always told that
God was a jealous god.
Jealous.
That there is no room
for other so-called "gods" in his churches,
and that there can be no room for another
in the hearts of his disciples, his children.
Children.
     Now, a man of twenty-six years,
I ask, I wonder,
why do we invest our faith in a God
who is jealous, when we ourselves
do all we can to abolish
the jealousy in our own hearts?
Is God so unsure of himself that,
were we to merely consider another,
he would reject us and hold us in contempt?
And yet, he is described as "perfect."
Perfect.
That he need not work to improve himself,
though we here on Earth
do all that we can to come close
to purity and perfection.
     As a man of only twenty-six years,
I can tell you with a certain conviction
that God is only a child -
a child in need of guidance, himself.
And I wonder still, more than ever, it seems,
why we look to God at all
and not to ourselves.

Your experience will always be less
than that of those for whom you write.
Therefore, don't write for anyone but
yourself.
If others wish to know you, let them ask.
If you wish to answer, read them your poems.

Breaking free from the line
I had formed in my mind,
I ran all the way to your door.
"It's been years," you proclaimed
as old passions inflamed.
"My dear, any port in a storm."

Pitch-black the night:
God is awake yet,
sitting on the hospital roof,
feet swaying, dangling from the ledge.

Bitter cold is the wind,
howling like a broken heart,
dancing in the doorway
around the newly-christened widow.

Hard are the hearts
of the bedside mourners;
the brother, the sisters, the parents
whose eyes still trace the floor.

And pitch-black remains the night,
God jubilantly whirling, barefoot on the roof,
little more than a mere child
with another new friend to amuse.

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

So I'm talking to this girl.
We're sitting beside a fountain,
people walking past,
it's busy and loud, but we stay focused.
I'm trying to pick her brain,
find out if it'll be worth it
for us to stay together,
being that she's a little batshit crazy and all.
And then I hear this voice from
way up above my head say,
"Tyler, she is not the one,
for my name is God and I know and see all."
So I says to God, "God, with all due respect,
I'm trying to have a conversation with this lady, here.
**** out."
So the girl, hearing me talk
to this voice inside my head, thought
I was completely insane.
"Well," I says, " I guess that makes two of us. "
We're still together, mind you, six years later.
I think maybe God retired after that.
He hasn't spoken since.

His name is Kevin.
His wife sits beside the bed,
twisting wedding ring.

Chemotherapy.
Hollow eyes, losing weight fast.
Choose this or cancer.

Just a month to live.
Declining quickly. Father,
uncle, brother, son.

Mother & father
fated to outlive their son.
Holding hands. A prayer.

New dog waits at home
for his best friend that he will
never see again.

Rain hits the window.
Kevin lifts an eye and smiles.
This is the last rain.

He knows these faces.
These faces, likewise, know him.
This is family.

Last beautiful thought:
his two sons playing in the
front yard in the sun.

Two kids in sunshine.
Their mother watches - a smile;
dad has become light.

I am scared for my nephew.
Indeed, for the coming generations,
I am terrified
that they may never come to know
the clean smell of a forest
wet with new rain,
or the sound of a cardinal's song
breaking the snowy hush
of a January morning.
-- So wrapped up in, so fixed upon a television
broadcasting images
of the apocalypse of beauty,
of replicated emotion,
of fabricated belief.
-- I hear my nephew ask,
"What's a rainbow?"

Come a little closer.
I want to read what's in your palm.
Yes my fire's burning
and the air outside is calm.

Your eyes in the moonlight
remind me of my sweetest dream.
When you touch me like that,
sends me floating in a stream.

Yes, I feel like I'm swimming
and the water is just right.
So kick off your shoes now,
let's both sink into the night.

And do you remember
how I walked you home before?
Just a timid boy then,
standing outside your door.

But we're all grown up now
with desire on our tongues.
And my mind is swimming.
I want to breathe you in my lungs.

Yes, I feel like swimming
and the water is just right.
So forget your worries.
Let's both sink into the night.

I have a friend I never see.
He hangs his head inside a dream.
Nothing is ever quite what it seems.
He is as lonely as a machine.

Some say that I was born too late.
My whole life I've beared the weight.
It's hard to tell good love from hate
and all these things we complicate.

And I have a friend I never see.
It's been too long, we both agree.
He lives his life inside a dream.
I hope it's big enough for me.

I myself was broken
long before I ever met you,
long before those words were spoken,
long before I could regret you.

So you don't get the glory,
can't lay claim to my sorrow.
I erase you from my story.
I'll write you in again tomorrow,

Or until I learn of freedom,
learn to bear the thought and smile.
And this you will call treason,
sentence me without a trial,

But I myself was guilty
long before I ever knew you,
long before you made me filthy,
long before I could pursue you.

"All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them."

I'm writing you this poem
as I've done so many times.
I hope a word will reach you.
I hope, at least, it rhymes.
And when I play my guitar for you
and let ring all the strings,
between each rusty, broken bar,
I hope to hear you sing.

She takes you to a clearing
at a place near the river,
and she tells you there is nothing
that you could ever give her
that could match the charm around her
as the sun pours down like honey.
And you're careful not to doubt her
for she has all the charm inside her perfect heart.

You take her hand and place it
on that space that holds your soul and
you ask if she can read you
like the tarot cards she stole, but
there is something in the way that
neither you nor she can notice,
but you dare never doubt her
for she has all the grace and wisdom in her heart.

And the sun by now is sinking
just as you beneath her glory,
so she opens up her novel
and starts reading you her story,
and you hang on every word
like the student you have been,
right there beside her fire
that is shining from within her.
And it leaves you feeling worried,
still you keep tugging at her yarn
because you know better than to doubt her
for she has all the beauty in her perfect heart.

What can I tell you my brother, my burden?
That I wish we grew closer as years carried on?
Or that all is forgiven, though I doubt you remember.
I carry on in silence, the conclusion's forgone.

What can I give you my brother, my culprit,
that you have not yet taken from me before?
My very own blood flows through you, too.
The blood of a toddler, the blood of a *****.

Look in your mirror my brother, my devil.
Notice the dimness behind your blue eyes.
Those cold pits of anguish you buried me in
where I learned how to crawl and I learned how to lie.

Come and meet me at your door again.
Let me in from the cold.
I'd love to try and read your cards again,
If I may be so bold.

Let's go walking by the pond, my dear,
Like we did where we made love.
Let our minds drift through the atmosphere
and mingle with the stars above.

Oh, you really were a lovely one.
Your voice, it lingers in the room
Like a thread left after the yarn was spun,
Dangling from our dusty loom.

Come and meet me at your door again.
Let me in from the cold.
I'd love to try and read your cards again,
If I may be so bold.

let us run naked thru time square
and wave insanely at the cameras,
or paint the white house pink
before we also burn it down.
     let us fill our wombs with cement
and lament the passing of sexuality
as it was and exist as little more
than statues at the mercy of the weather.
     and let us ****** our pasts
and those we knew
and engrave our portraits
on the sidewalks
which in turn will flood over
with the bitter tears
of the former generation --
     all to spite a faceless enemy.

I grew up listening
to my mother's sighs,
father's footsteps on the porch,
the harsh rattle of car keys,
and then the intermittent silences.
The salt-taste of tears
baked into suppers
was unmistakable and
I came to enjoy it,
because without it
there was no taste at all.
And without the sighs,
goodbye-again footsteps,
or the keys before the car peeled off,
what else was there
but those silences?

Perhaps I am yet unwise in most ways
and do not know the meaning of many slight symbols,
nor do I fully grasp the importance of free will.
But I have seen my share of death and life,
I have tasted the fruit and likewise spit it out
back into the palms of those who fed it to me.
I have heard one too many sermons desperately tempting me into salvation as it has been defined.
Short-sighted as I am, though, I have abandoned the house of the lord
to build my own here on earth.

The caterpillar
sheds all his skin to find the
butterfly within.

I've been staring too long
at the setting sun
remembering where I've been.
I've been pricing a home
where I can live alone
and start over again.
But if a man can change
his foolish ways
(and I know I can),
will you keep me around
and help us get back
to where we began?

I'll forget my anger,
my worries, too,
I'll forget my shame -
I'll forget it all
if you will promise
to do the same.
I know sometimes
you wish you could
just forget my name.
But please take my hand
and follow me back
down the road we came.

The way I see it,
we can both give in
and call it a day.
And who knows, maybe
it'd all work out
and we'd be okay.
But like it or not
I'm tied to you
in so many ways.
So if you feel that too,
and I pray you do,
let's agree to stay.

It's too sad to think
our paths could cross
some far-off day -
to see you with
a stranger in
some cheap café,
or in a bar,
brand new dress,
dancing your night away.
I might catch your eye
hard-pressed to find
the words to say.

So I'll say it now,
best to hear it early
rather than too late.
'Cause if I say nothing
and seal my lips
then I seal my fate -
I love you, dear,
and I'm only hoping
you can relate.
Won't you please
meet me outside and
let me through your gate?
It's getting dark,
but that setting sun
will have to wait.

Peering intensively through fog-marked mullioned glass
into a cool and conquering October sunrise
I am met with a profound and welcoming sudden awareness -
zephyrs breathing through each emerald green grass blade,
     brow of country hilltops, mountains materializing
with the passing of each era like wrinkles in a face,
clouds crawling the longitudes to reform over Pacific pools somewhere,
soil forcing upward making way for elm or oak or pine to tower,
rivers thundering wild down the backs of continents,
     cliff or crag breaking the maelstrom on occasion,
and all the while spinning, all of this and more, clinging to the frame of the earth
as it dances balanced on axis, pirouetting through the cosmos
in turbulent, beautiful, simply complex form just as I
back away from the window and extend an arm to brace myself.

Hair a mess from what she can tell
in the mirror.
Photographs lying face-flat
in their frames over the mantel
beside the urn.
She gets up, sits down -
"Oh, what's the point?" -
and dials for her sister who has experience in this.
After the grief they share a *** of coffee and make plans to do this again.

Nearer to the edge
                             I see.
Crawling through
          eternity.
Searching for the master key.
This is our reality.

Communication has de-
                                         volved.
None of our real problems solved.
  We have become      uninvolved
while the whole world revolves.

Spinning further from cont
                                          ro
                                            l.
Turn 'round and view it as a whole.
  Mother Nature's gifts we        stole.
This is how our story goes.

Once black and white.
Once dark and light.
To complicate.
Bring on our fate.

Our halos tilt.
Intentions wilt.
Ambitions great.
Never too late.

Turn 'round to see the sum of things.
Counting on the dead tree's rings.
Refering to ourselves as kings.
Soaring on the deathbird's wing.

She dreams in aqua blue,
seasons melting into one another,
dancing among fallen leaves
or beneath the golden sun,
     her fiery green eyes shimmering
     like emeralds in a jewelry store case,
     skin like water running through  fingers,
     dancing, dancing,
hands thrown to the sky
casting rainbows like ribbons
to celebrate the dawning of her joy.

Immeasurable ignorance,
you wear it like a golden crown.
Born without your innocence,
your only path will lead you down.

Standing like a rigid statue
before a crowd of hungry eyes,
hiding all your sins behind you,
feeding them your ugly lies.

Money makes you feel almost normal.
Without it you would turn to dust.
The whole world begs for just a morsel.
How dare you say you're fair and just?

Trusting in you is a blunder -
you and men who pull the strings.
Crumbling from the weight we're under.
Expecting us to kiss your rings.

You are just a ******* whisper.
Time will leave you far behind.
Soon your name will cease to matter.
Death will come and rob you blind.

You will suffer in the end, and
You will beg to die again.
You will reach out for a hand, and
this you will not comprehend:

You will find no peace or mercy.
No one to pull you from the grave.
You will be forever hungry.
Pleading on your knees, a slave.

Climb down off your ******* cross and
show us all a miracle.
We need it now more than ever.
The world has become cynical.

Mother Mary come to me and
give me virtue, give me grace.
None of these do I possess now.
I have lost them in the race.

In the moments before dawn I
lie awake and wonder why
people came to be at all, and
my conclusion is a sigh.

I have seen the hungry eyes and
I have had to look away.
I am so inconsequential.
An action met with sharp delay.

A blemish on the face of time, we
hide behind our wealth and lies.
Turning all our heads and walking.
Barely opening our eyes.

Climb down off your ******* cross and
help us to remember why
life is dear and should be cherished
before we’re made to say to say goodbye.

Mother Mary please remind us
what it’s like to love ourselves,
how we all are most connected
and here to foster love, as well.

There was a time, when we were young, when
colors and sounds were more bright.
We breathed the same air together,
our senses new and our hearts light.

But outside there’s a swirling darkness
gathering its strength and weight,
swallowing the light created,
as we just look on and wait

hoping for a hand to reach us,
doing all the work for free.
It will merely sort itself out,
we seem to foolishly agree.

Climb down off the ******* cross and
do something for we you have made,
even though we disobey you,
doing what you have forbade.

Mother Mary come to us and
lead us back where we came from.
Show us how we’re lazy children.
Teach us who we have become.

I remember you well,
your crooked spine,
and heart of a widow
that’s turned so black.

What’s made you bitter?
I wonder, now.
You look back on years, but
you can’t go back.

Have you forgotten
my face by now,
even as I walk by you
in a roaring crowd?

Does it ever occur that
you could be wrong?
For me, the guilt I have,
it screams so loud.

There’re two kinds of people:
one kind forgives.
But that isn’t you, no,
and you don’t forget.

As I lean over to whisper,
“you’ve dropped your crown,”
your look is so telling -
you remember, yet.

Biting my fingers
Watching the wall until the paint lifts
Legs twitch
Bass drum pulse in my ears
Smoke clears (now they see me)
Eyes red
Head floating in a cloud of worry
Hurry to lock the door
I’ve been here before
You live here
You lived here
Eight o’clock comes
I was supposed to meet someone
Hate written on the mirror
Eyes in pairs move past the window
Do they know?
Nine o’clock comes
Plans canceled
Deaf to silence
Television, yes
Sit down
Eat popcorn
Laughing while I witness
The death of my
Dreams

**** all you gun-toting hillbilly blowhards.
**** Mr. President - the First Lady, too.
**** your little pseudo-democracy circus.
All of you animals belong in a zoo.

**** your religions, I pay no penance.
**** what you've written and passed on as God.
******* for shoving it all down my throat.
I know better than to listen to frauds.

I'm tired of people waving their fingers.
I'm tired of giving, I want to take.
I'm tired of ignorance fed to the masses.
My eyes are open, I am awake.

When
she drove away
(her freedom, at last)
I let out a sigh.

Her
angry displays -
(it all happened so fast) -
my heart was defied.

I sat on the edge of our bed
and I hummed a soft tune.
I woke myself up on the floor
where our pictures were strewn.

She
must be alright
(she hasn't called yet).
I'm living alone.

And me?
I'm doing fine
(but it's hard to forget
that this bird has flown).

I remember when we were children
my sister and I used to go outside
and pretend we were stranded
in the wilderness
and had to survive until we were rescued.
On one particular day in winter
we went out and built a shelter
out of sticks and small branches
and we got inside and waited.
We imagined that there were
wolves outside that wanted to
eat us alive,
but we fended them off with our
sticks and stones and snowballs.
Now we are both in our mid-twenties
and, ironically, we still play this game,
and there are still wolves outside
who want to eat us alive.
We are still waiting to be saved.

(You)
You’re flying over my head.
(Now)
Now the sun’s in my eyes.
(I)
I have both my wings spread,
(But)
but never learned how to fly.

You’re supposed to wait for me, girl.
You know I’m scared of the fall.

Evening downtown,
listening carefully to a poem
read aloud in a coffee house -
sounds like an atom bomb.
     The world isn't ready.

The forest.
Fern and flower standing,
bending in sunlight toward it
like desperate souls
in their one tired moment
of beauty and grace.

I stand above a geranium,
kneeling as I pluck it
from the light.

So, you've been to Venice,
 kissed at sunset on the gondolas,
  sipped Merlot at
   Ristorante Albergaccio.
    You're very well-read,
     you know Tennyson and Tolstoy,
    Fitzgerald and Faulkner
   ("Always dream..."
  tattooed on your rib).
 You lived in museums for a year,
  you spoke with Van Gogh,
   his ear turned toward you as
    you crawled among the Irises.
     My dear, it is impossible
    that you are a realist.
   It is impossible that you
  speak not of love.
 It is impossible
that you have forgotten.

When I am dead and gone,
as the final note of the song
     fades and
the next ensemble takes stage,
may my spirit be resurrected
     among sprightly friends,
for that is the crowd I played for,
and the music never ends.

I don't forget that I love you
when we disagree.
My dear, I have learned humility
through my shortcomings.
Sometimes I sympathize with Pluto;
once a planet, taken seriously,
orbiting mysteriously
at the edge of what is known.
Now, demoted to little more
than a frozen rock
somewhere out there beyond care,
only locatable
by its relation to Neptune.
My love, I am estranged by you,
though I dare not speak it directly
for fear that I might
plant a seed of fault in you -
a **** that is hard to uproot,
I know.
So, you can go on being Neptune -
I'll stay at your limits
and hope you'll turn to me and smile.

June 19, 2019.
     CNN headline:
"Trump vows to cure cancer
and AIDS if elected to second term."
     Watching this on a television
     in a second floor hospital room,
     I ripped the IV and oxygen tubes
     from my body and danced
     into the elevator.

Do you remember how it felt
to be in love with the world?
The simple touch of summer wind,
the voices of the girls
who came
running from the grade school
the moment they heard the bell,
full of life and energy
and rumors they could tell.

Do you recall the writing
that you read on the wall?
You knew that things were changing
as you ran down the hall,
but you
looked back for the last time
and gathered all your thoughts.
Scared to solve the puzzle,
to connect all of the dots.

Did you ever learn a thing then,
or just unlearn all you knew -
how to love a stranger,
or the innocence in you?
Did you
ever find the meaning
in William Blake's "The Lamb?"
We all must face the Lion,
lose, and join the ******.

And did you learn a lesson, child?
Did you face your fears?
Did nature run its brutal course?
And did you shed a tear?
I too have felt the Lion's teeth.
I too have felt his bite.
But never did I stop looking back.
And this is how we fight.

I woke up on the wrong side
of the bed.
I washed my face, shook yesterday
out of my head, and I
opened up my curtains, thought
"what's so great about a blue sky
when it could never match the beauty
that I found in your eyes?"

But I hope you won't remember
how I was at the end, and if
I could go back now,
I'd do it all again
with much more grace and wisdom,
with a tender heart this time,
and I'd pray that'd be enough
to keep you by my side.

I woke up in another stranger's bed.
I looked at her and hated
that all her hair was red, then I
stepped into the city, thought
"*******, I hope it rains -
let the water all run over me
and wash away my pain."

I hope you can remember
how we were at the start, and if
I could go back now
I'd give you my whole heart
and trust you just to keep it.
I'd never be afraid.
Then we might be together
and you'd be here today.

I watched the morning newscast
and found my mind straining to
get out.
Out into a widening desert,
sky open and black above save for
the piercing light of billions of stars
like holes in a living room curtain.
You can call me crazy for it,
but I thought I saw Ginsberg
looking at me through the window
with a sunflower behind his ear.
In fact, I'm almost certain this was anything but an hallucination as my cat pounced at the window
(she never liked my poems either, Allen)
and startled me back into reality.
The television, right, the newscast.
Nuclear bombs and
tariffs on Mexican goods and
oh look, the president is playing golf with the Queen.
I turned it off when I saw he hit a bogey,
parted the curtains, and thought, "That's it, I'm pleading insanity. See you in Bellevue, Allen."

I woke up on a Monday,
met her on a Tuesday,
we married on a Wednesday,
crossed it off the list.

Honeymoon on Thursday,
I got drunk on Friday,
she screamed at me on Saturday
and kissed me with a fist.

Sunday morning rolled around
and I thought I heard the sound
of footsteps on the floor:
she was walking out the door.

I'm in love with a lady
and it's only been days
since she became my baby, now
we're gonna travel the world.
Though I suspect a lot of you
prob'ly think that I'm crazy,
but

I'm really diggin' this girl
and only moments ago
she asked to have my baby. Now
she's got my head in a whirl
and the next few months
are gonna be a bit hazy,
but

I'd do anything for love,
I remember how it felt
to have a lack thereof, and now
I'm bending over backwards for her.
And please don't ask again
because of course I'm sure
(of her).