No one wants to hear the truth.
That's why we tell stories,
invent personas,
make secrets of ourselves.
Lies are the currency of love.
A peacock is just a turkey with pretty feathers.

I was talking to a preacher,
he said God was on my side.
So I looked left and I looked right.
"Then why's he so hard to find?"
He invited me to mass
but I respectfully declined.

Next day I saw a billboard,
"God is on his way.
Put on your Sunday best
'cause He'll be here today."
Why should I go to church, then?
There's nothing left to say.

I could use a bit of saving, sure,
but I'm too proud to bend my knees.
A drink shared with a woman
will put my soul at ease.
You can call me a sinner,
and all the angels would agree.

Lavender candles and dopesmoke evenings.
Quiet enough to enjoy,
not so quiet as to shatter my high.
I light another joint and begin to read your poems.
I still don't understand, really,
but I never expect to.
When I'm done I fall into the mirror.
It breaks, cuts my finger.
My own blood runs.
This I can relate to.

O come to me daughter of peace
The songs you sing so soft and sweet
Your vision clear and near complete
Stand proud with open arms to greet

Another new year.
Whoop-de-do!
If I could, I'd blow
a big kazoo.
Yes, this year is over,
celebrate with your lover.
For me, it's just deja vu.

I search the sky for aeroplanes.
Her picture on my windowpane;
love lost, a spark falls down the drain,
drips into my eyes just like rain.

Caesar conquered the Gauls,
again uniting Rome
under the promise of total glory.

Napoleon, First Emperor of France,
escaped exile in Elba to return to France
as emperor.

Lincoln as president
issued the Emancipation Proclaimation,
bringing hope to those disenfranchised.

Better men than I.

Now I stand in the comfort of my home,
struggling to reach my own back
to scratch it.

Bedroom, her movements so arcane
with sparks that waltz across her face.
She won't be coming back today;
she loves in many different ways.

In my dreams
you run to me wildy, laughing
amid sunflowers tall as the sky.

In my dreams
we talk for hours letting the night
crawl past the window.

In my dreams
we are never uncertain and
all we have been is lovers.

In my dreams
your love didn't die.

The human ego is as soft and dirigible
as a child's balloon.
The pride of a poet is no different.
Criticize him and suddenly a hole spilling hot air,
watch him zoom about
deflated, adrift.

There is a
tenuous beauty
in apocalypse, I imagine.

I think by now we know,
nearly 250 years after her birth,
that our America nears her 11th hour.
The tubes fastened, pumping *******
straight to her stomach
need not remain.
Her crowd of bedside mourners,
politicians shedding imitation tears
need not remain.
Drape the flag over her emaciated frame
and get on with the ceremonies.

Harvey Weinstein is not in jail because of *******,
nor did the Devil make him do it.
Harvey Weinstein is in jail because of power.
He felt he had it - all men feel they have some.
Yet, Harvey Weinstein is the kind of man
who knows not restraint, who knows not respect,
whose little taste of power, he felt, should
be on the tongues of the women whose lives he polluted.
******* is not the impetus of abuse,
just as a gun will never be a murderer,
just as the Devil will never be anything but an excuse.
Men are their own devils.

I am happy to have lost my innocence.
If I hadn't, I would have never noticed
the devil you have always been.

Today I watched an eagle fly into the sun,
swallowed by a sea of yellow and red.
It's feathers caught light and burned and
fell from the sky above my head.

Down they drifted to my feet,
twisting like a lovely flaming helix.
And when, through the smoke, I squinted my eyes,
I thought I saw a phoenix.

They want us with our heads down,
hands tied, eyes closed.
They want us right where we are now,
their boots pressed to our throats.

Give until it starts to hurt.
Give until you like it.
Give until your coffin's built
and you gladly crawl inside it.

I tell myself
I'm never going to write another love poem,
but then I put pen to paper
and end up w/ a poem about how
you broke my ******* . . .
anyway, I guess I'm trying to say
there are more things to write about than you.

The longer time flows on,
the more diluted words become.
What was "love" to our grandfathers
is now "****" to ourselves.
"**** love" is what I mean to say,
but that would be redundant.

I'd like to get God and George Soros
in the same room for a while
and figure out what went wrong.

The hate between men
in view of a prize -
the bitterness of their hearts, then.

Two wolves circle a fawn,
a trophy - the eyes.
A hush in the forest at dawn.

The fortune and the glory,
the blood spilled, the ecstasy -
to be laureled in a light
of gold.

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."

Eclipse me.
Keep me from view.
The whole world wants to see you.

The desolation of artistic expression -
virtue signaling, mood pieces -
cheapens the message.
Daily I am deceived by what I read.
I thought not that I would struggle
finding comfort and truth in the house of poetry;
a house we all have had a hand in building.
Indeed, poetry is, at its foundation,
patient and playful, and honest
and yet, I find nothing more than disingenuity
creeping beneath the eaves,
pseudo-poets with no better avocations,
no real love for the craft.
It is a shame, in fact,
that one's concentration could be
so fixed upon the ego
that the heart lacks any good judgement.
Though, I suppose, every generation
has its fools, its phoneys.
Yes and even now, as I toil in my home,
persistent and earnest,
I can hear a window break,
see shingles strewn about the lawn.

History dances to me
on a whisper.
I listen to the echoes
of those tired feet on stone,
and to the choir of voices forgotten,
bowing my head in lament.

Just as well that it ended, frankly.
Now you'll write poems about how
the world looks dark outside your window,
how black ink runs through blue veins
and you bleed it on every blank page.
I guess you're brave
to be so open.
I guess you're brave
to jump head-first into that abyss,
that hole in your heart.
It may be tough to hear, but
maybe your lover left because
they were tired of
"your eyes gleam like jewels in moonlight,"
how you "only long to hold them,"
how they "saved you from yourself."
Sometimes we just need to be ******
hard, primal, endlessly
when we get bored with making love.
Some things have been said too many times
to mean anything to us now.

Before moving,
I left my apartment spotless -
no soap **** in the tub,
no hairs or crumbs in the carpet,
not even the linoleum had a scratch or scuff -
spotless, I can assure you.
Yet, I got a letter from my landlord
stating that my security deposit was being withheld.
O, the injustice!
O, the villainy!
Four-hundred dollars, that swine!
That crooked-nosed knave!
If this were 14th century feudalist Europe,
when men still had a fighting chance, mind you,
I would have half a mind to
drag his very name through each tavern and inn,
through the street muck,
don my longsword,
dress my horse,
ride through the dawn,
into the walls of his squalid garrison,
lay waste to his livestock,
enslave his first-begotten,
canoodle his wife,
torch his hens and roosters,
shave him bald,
form a rope with his filthy hair,
tie it to his filthy ankle,
and yank him along
from the back of my horse,
spitting in the eyes
of those who dare oppose me!
Nay, who oppose justice!

But, alas,
I merely read the notice letter and sighed.

I want to release my inhibitions,
feel the rain on my skin.
I want my Venus, my fire, at my desire.
But I'm not a woman.

I dug up your grave
because I missed you,
those nights lying beside you
watching your stomach rise and fall
with each sacred breath you took,
eyes open then shut then open, again.
I took those subtle movements for granted, I did.
Subdued I was by the present.
Now as I kneel at your stone
in the loneliest Spring I can recall,
beneath a pale and faceless moon,
holding your bones,
glancing them in moonlight,
I find they look nothing like you.
There is no warmth that I expected,
no memory coursing through them.
You have moved on from me
so that I may do the same.
Yet, now my heart is scattered
like the bones I kneel beside.

The pain that follows comfort.
The rain that comes with spring.
The snows that follow summer.
The chains which bind the wing.

I will never be as cool as Bob Dylan,
and neither will you
(don't try).

"I cannot go back,"
I think to myself driving alone,
early afternoon, Rt. 7 North.
The last time I visited
the house where I grew up,
I felt like a ghost
there in the yard,
as if something - some secret misfortune -
were tugging at my sleeve,
begging me to stay, to remember.
A secret not my own,
but one I have spent my whole life forgetting.
A secret as old as the great maple tree
under which I used to play and pretend.
That tree no longer stands,
though its branches remain
scattered about the yard,
causing me to remember.

One million angels
come to carry me away.
One million angels
and still I wouldn't leave.
One million angels
who ask me not to stay.
One million angels
whose gifts I won't receive.

we used to argue like children about
who loved who first
as if it mattered

how did I come to love you?

now that is where the story gets good

I can’t understand
She let go of my hand
An’ left me here facing the wall
I’d sure like t’ know
Why she did go
But I can’t get close t’ her at all
Though we kissed through the wild blazing nighttime
She said she would never forget
But now mornin’s clear
It’s like I ain’t here
She just acts like we never have met

It’s all new t’ me
Like some mystery
It could even be like a myth
Yet it’s hard t’ think on
That she’s the same one
That last night I was with
From darkness, dreams’re deserted
Am I still dreamin’ yet?
I wish she’d unlock
Her voice once an’ talk
’Stead of acting like we never have met

If she ain’t feelin’ well
Then why don’t she tell
’Stead of turnin’ her back t’ my face?
Without any doubt
She seems too far out
For me t’ return t’ her chase
Though the night ran swirling an’ whirling
I remember her whispering yet
But evidently she don’t
An’ evidently she won’t
She just acts like we never have met

If I didn’t have t’ guess
I’d gladly confess
T’ anything I might’ve tried
If I was with ’er too long
Or have done something wrong
I wish she’d tell me what it is, I’ll run an’ hide
Though her skirt it swayed as a guitar played
Her mouth was watery and wet
But now something has changed
For she ain’t the same
She just acts like we never have met

I’m leavin’ today
I’ll be on my way
Of this I can’t say very much
But if you want me to
I can be just like you
An’ pretend that we never have touched
An’ if anybody asks me
“Is it easy to forget?”
I’ll say, “It’s easily done
You just pick anyone
An’ pretend that you never have met!”

a loneliness surrounds her heart
her bridges twist and fall apart
green eyes cry wide beneath a sky
that's both too blue and far too high
her friends walk by without a word
to catch a glimpse of this rare bird
who only wished to leave her nest
sing all the love out from her chest
now her heart's crammed into a jar
the world looks better form afar

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

we built a tower up to heaven
reaching up and out to Him
curious to what’s beyond
united in our purpose then

and was it wrong to search the sky?
to know the angels, brush their wings?
was it wrong to meditate?
to equate ourselves to kings?

and when He deemed we rose too high
He brought the tower to the ground
colored flesh and broke our tongues
with a hard hand held us down

and was it wrong to search the sky
with all those stars we looked upon?
to see the truths eluding us?
to know what heaven lies beyond?

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.

As I walk
hands-in-pockets
to the edge of the parking lot
where the asphalt meets the trees
I think of you
my love with the kindest eyes
and how you climbed upon my back
and went with me
down over the hill
among fallen leaves
to that secret place
to trade secret kisses
and sway to the melody
of school bells ringing

And when in my daydream
I hear you say my name again
I realize where I am
and where you are
and wonder if you will again
come to love me
in secret

Some say we are all made of star dust
but I don't buy it.
How could we be
when stars don't bleed like we bleed?

The past is like a leaky faucet:
you always hear the drip,
though you learn to tune it out,
eventually.

Deep beneath waves -
salt and darkness -
a challenger emerges,

silver, streamline,
fins and flippers.
Tuna heeds no warnings.

Here to undo
all your progress,
mankind poses no threat,

on hands and knees,
weeping, crawling.
Tuna stands the victor.

God is dead.
That feeling you get
when you kneel by the bed -
nothing more than a wish
rolling 'round in your head.

Breaking bread.
The silly things that we do
after our prayers are said.
Idols we've chosen
to stand in his stead.

Where embers once burned
'neath smoke's blackened cloud,
a flower now grows
resplendent and proud,

for yesterday's wars
brought little but strife,
yet today all is calm -
may we celebrate life.

As above, so below.
In the end, where you go
all depends on who you know.

Bridges we once danced on
over waters we thought would drown us.

Photographs of friends
who have since become ghosts.

Candles that remind us
of our sweetest memories.

Oh, and toast.

I saw her pluck a strand
of golden light out from the air
and tie it to her wrist
like a chain so fine and fair.
She danced then like a child
caring not if I might stare.
I saw her and nothing can compare.