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

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.

No poem of mine will ever make me famous,
     especially not the ones about
god and the president.
Maybe this is for the best;
     you've seen what fame has done to
god and the president.

I get nervous when she comes my way,
her cigarette smoking in the glass ashtray.
My reflection in her emerald eyes,
I wonder what the look stretched across her face implies.
She's the kind to make me lie awake
contemplating what's to gain from this
and what is at stake.

She's known love at least once before,
and the feeling is one which she can't ignore.
It's a sentiment we both must share
judging by the way my fingers move through her hair.
But my heart is ******* in knots.
A good love is just that -- good,
until it's not.

She had a king,
a kingdom,
wealth and
power.
Yet, what is that
in the face of passion?
Forsook it all for
a stranger's love,
let crumble the realm
beneath the weight of
her stray heart.

Please don't get upset
when I tell you I've been drinking.
It's the only thing to do
that'll keep my mind from thinking
of the day we split apart
just as the sun had started sinking.
But I think I see it coming up, yet.

And please don't ask me how
I let the passion pass away
when you were always the only one
who could brighten up my day.
These kinds of questions have no answers.
Ain't there something else to say?
Just say it to me, here and now.

I know you think about me
when you lie awake in bed.
But you've got too much pride to call,
you just go to sleep instead.
And that's why when I see you now
it's lightly I must tread.
My whole wide world is hanging by a thread.

You can find me in the newspaper -
"Don't get too close,
this one's insane."
Yeah, you can read me in the paper.
"Don't get too close,
that boy's insane."
Didn't take me long to figure out
that the one's who wrote it
barely know my name.

Go ask the one's who used to hang around,
I'm sure they'll tell you some and more.
Go ask they one's who used to hang around me.
I'm sure they'll tell you some and more.
Sure, we had good times together,
but now when I see 'em coming
I lock the door.

Most of what you hear is a rumor,
the rest is really just a bore.
Baby, most of the talks are rumors,
and I promise the rest is just a bore.
Way I see it, there's two options:
believe them, or stick around
if you wanna know for sure.

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.

Here I can think
without hindrance or bother,
amid towering pines and
the cowering bramble and
the river that rifts the soil
into pleasant little hillocks,
made home for the wild
and the earthly and the pure.
Here I am not harried by the
howling song of man,
no motorcades of lunacy
can touch my private ear,
traded for the placid, honest
sounds of earth (a song
that can't be echoed).
Here I'm left to ponder
or not ponder, just the same,
the truth of my soul or
the meaning of my given name.
Here I have not lost myself,
though should I do just that,
if I follow the bends of the river,
the road that isn't crowded,
I'll be brought back to nothing
but peace.

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?

we don't sleep much around here.
the nights are too precious to squander.
we wander streets and alleys,
fields and fairways, looking at the moon,
begging the sun to never come up again.
drunk in our ways, in our loves and hates,
feeling with broken fingers
for broken hearts to mend.
when we find one, we keep it hidden.
we shut off the lights to make love,
moon dangling above our pillows,
smoke billowing out the window
to show we are done.
and we don't sleep much around here.
we make secrets of ourselves.

Rain smacking the glass.
White light, automated doors.
The hospital blues.

Waiting room TV
showing Caribbean sands.
Forget where you are.

A black man and child,
lonely wife, poet, vegan.
Guess what happens next.

Elephant painting.
You can tell a child made it.
Elephant, it smiles.

The elevator
opens and I step inside.
The sick frown. I frown.

Once back in my car,
the rain stops and I put it
in drive and floor it.

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.

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.

By now I know you're hungry
for your god,
and not the painted porcelain face
hanging on the cross
above your doorframe.

You want more now that you're
struggling,
a voice that you have conjured
in the mind you know
he gave you,

an image blended from
your idols,
arms you once learned love in,
eyes you never from which
could part.

But that's the best you'll get,
and a shame
no one told you sooner.
An idea of faith or
more like
a dream of salvation.

Starved.

My therapist acts like I'm normal,
like changing my clothes
four times a day,
or locking the car doors and
screaming at the top of my lungs
because people keep interrupting
my cigarette break at work is
what most people are doing
with their lives.
When she asked me if I ever
thought about hurting myself
and I said, "at least twice a week,"
she just nodded while smiling.
Hurting myself - it's always me
that hurts me, no one else.
I guess that's something
to smile about.
I guess that's normal.

Would you dig a tunnel to me -
one that's wide enough for you -
so you can reach me through this distance?
Prove to me I matter, too.

And would you walk from end to end,
in the dark and all alone,
just to touch me one more time,
or see just how much I have grown?

I have laid a road to you.
Many times I've wandered on it.
I can never find the end.
I guess I'm just a hypocrite

I am the dog, collared and chained,
deemed useless and left alone.
I am the nail in the wall left unhammered, jutting to snag at your sleeve.
I am the hole in your line through which all of your energy will be filtered or lost.
I am heavy with meaning and weightless with meaning and grounded in someone else's reality.
I am that reality, while my own remains silent and hidden and threatening.
I am a threat to some, no one to someone, and everything to one.
I am the card in play, always, even
when you leave the table and
I will be there when you get back.
Also, I am the deck and few cards are missing.
I am the mirror in which you might one day see yourself and startle your eyes into misrecognition.
I am the cup that overfloweth,
and the child guilty for wanting.
I am the season which seems like it will never let up.
I am the sun casting rays of golden relief on the faces of many lonely strangers.
I am the forgotten sun, just as well.
I am the ruin of those who came here before me and the stain they left on the white fabric of time.
I am the fabric, loose and changing
in the winds of perpetuity.
I am a glass sphere in the midst of a landscape, puzzling and divine and uncanny alike.
I am a door left unopened.
I am a line with no end and a point with no beginning and I will let it be known that I am here seeking all.

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!”

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.

I don't need
     your     namaste flower-
power    poetry         words
     that       barely break   the
skin               give me something
strong like gin     something with
a little                sin.

        I don't want your
fluffy words               I want something       seldom heard
    something I          can always use
something that'll        leave a bruise
           so bomb the page I'll
light                the                 fuse.

If a poem could save you,
could mend all your breaks,
let it be this one,
for both of our sakes.

If a poem could teach you,
could offer you faith,
I pray that this poem
has what it takes.

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.

If it is beautiful to you,
it is beautiful to me.
If the sun you wish to have,
I shall pluck it from a tree
so you might
hold it in your eye
and it will be my gift to thee.
For what is beautiful to you
is so beautiful to me.

The sky behind the bare winter branches, blue and white, nearly reflective. I was almost an angel,
spread wide in the snow,
if only I had known about my wings.

If you were to ask my father,
he'd tell you I'd always been
a happy kid.

If you asked my mom,
she'd tell you something
different, but happy for the
most part.

You can't ask me such questions.
I hardly give thought to it now.

I was under the canopy for
what seemed like an eternity.
To a child, time is nothing, so
that's saying something.
It was cold, but that's what I'd needed, since warmth gives way to lies. I was looking for something true, and I didn't know where else
to search but the sky.
Were I to look anywhere else,
I'd just be retracing steps.

I was listening to a tape,
Iron Butterfly, wondering where
the name came from.
I fell asleep before turning
the tape over, and when I woke up,
I woke up to the sound of
my father calling my name and
an engine revving somewhere,
my brother driving 'round
looking for me.

When they found me lying there,
they thought I was hurt.
When I told them I wasn't they
asked what I'd been doing and I said
looking for some truth.
I was paddled and sent to my room
for the rest of the evening.

I stopped searching after that.
It always hurts to know for certain.

If your spirit must one day clear,
and our lives at once must cease,
if that sweet smile must leave your face,
and time must claim its lease,
then, Allison, let's not a moment waste,
let's pick the fruit and savor the taste.

And if the hour should ever come
when the two of us must part,
or phantom fiends creep from the dark,
their daggers aimed at our hearts,
then, Allison, don't be afraid,
for our love's hand is always stayed.

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

This here hurdle, babe,
you know I just can't jump it.
So I'll sit here instead, in the dark,
and I'll just bang on my trumpet.
And every sound that you hear
from the window, dear,
that's just me
wasting my precious time.
But before too long,
I'll get right and keep on
toeing the line.

Everybody out there,
they want you to be just like them.
They think they've got royal blood,
that they should wear a diadem!
And to everything that I say,
they say "no it ain't that way,"
and that I'm just
wasting their precious time.
So I'll just shut my mouth,
I'll get right and keep on
toeing the line.

I look up at the tenements and wonder
how many of them are like me.
Hidden by roofs and walls and windows, sitting, chasing their
butterflies of silent obsessions as they
threaten to fly too close to the net.
Do they too struggle with eternity?

I go by my old apartment, by the college, and don't hear my voice at the door. No more my reflection in the glass bulb. Whoever's inside there now, I hope they fill the space better than I did -- hope they're remembering to laugh once a day.

When I get home I make coffee.
I add creamer and sugar.
I stir it until they disappear.

God created man.
I create poems.
Just like poems,
some men are good,
     some bad.
The poems that are good,
I save those.
The bad ones? I save those, too -
that I may rework them
until they are good.
     I do not burn my creations,
for they are only ever bad
because I lacked a vision or patience.

I left home when I was young
To the fringes I was flung
And I never wrote a letter
to my home, Lord, to my home
No, I never wrote a letter to my home

I set out for Tuscaloo’
Just my baby sister knew
She hung her head and handed me a dime

An’ it took me pretty far
I hopped on the next boxcar
I waved goodbye to her a final time

Not a coat upon my frame
nor a penny to my name
But I never wrote a letter to my home
to my home, Lord Lord,
No, I never wrote a letter to my home

I was settled on the track
A cold wind tried to ******* back
But I held on an’ swallowed all the pain

I stepped off in Alabam’
Boxcar door shut with a slam
And I tried to build a house there in the rain

If ya missed the train I’s on
Count the days that I been gone
You can hear that whistle blow a hundred miles
Hundred miles, hundred miles
You can hear that whistle blow a hundred miles


But when it rains it pours
When it’s done, there’s always more
And it’s hard to build a home out in a storm

My Papa warned me, “Son
you’ll be sorry when you’re gone”
I thought that he was bitter - now I know

I left home to chase the sun
But it moves faster than I run
Now I cry alone the end of ev’ry day
I can hear my Mama call
“stop your runnin’ ‘fore ya fall”
I don’t wanna go home, let me play

Not a penny on my name
ever since the bankers came
I got a letter on a lonesome day

Said “Your Mama’s dead an’ gone
and your sister’s all gone wrong.
Son I need you home now right away”

Not a coat upon my back
and I’m still livin’ on the tracks
No, Papa can’t see me thisaway
Thisaway, Lord ya know
that I can’t go home thisaway.

And if ya miss the train I'm on
count the days that I been gone
You can hear that whistle blow a thousand miles
Thousand miles, thousand miles, Lord
You can hear my whistle blow a thousand miles.

You laughed at me and
called me names from the bed.
I held my head in my hands and
lamented each step that
brought me to your door.

In the morning, we kissed and
dressed together and
never acknowledged the
look in each other's eye.
You stuck out your tongue
in good humor while
this poem was dancing on mine.

It doesn't take much
to bend you toward beauty,
just a little sunlight
and a woman who cares.

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.

I kept you,
despite my constant worry
that it was wrong of me to do so
(you also kept me,
but you couldn't
possibly know that).
Around and around you'd go,
and my gaze went with you,
felt like I was weightless,
until at once the dream I sunk into
with you rose and evaporated
like a sudden, desperate breath.
I held you then,
tried to keep you warm,
sang you songs,
told you it would be alright.
I was left breathing onto you
as your spirit rose and evaporated
into the room around me,
into the air I breathe.

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.

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.

Well, I hopped off the ship
and fell face first
in a pile of ****.
Thought nothing's worse.
Saw a man go by
pullin' a hearse,
then I remembered
this single verse:

Oh, it'll get better now.
Say oh, it'll get better.
Don't let the wind
ruffle those feathers.
Just when it rains,
pray for some good weather
and oh, it'll get better.

When I rose again,
I fell into
a mess of chains
and heavy, too.
I asked the Lord
what can I do.
He told me Child
this one's for you:

Oh, it'll get better now.
Say oh, it'll get better.
Don't let the wind
ruffle those feathers.
Just when it rains,
pray for some good weather
and oh, it'll get better.

I managed to
shake off the weight.
Resolved I could
determine my fate.
Went lookin' for a boat
to take me back,
but the docks were bare and
I had a heart attack.

So I sit right on
the edge of this land
where the anchors drop
and the ships did land,
sing this song
to whoever I can,
stomp my feet
and clap my hands, it goes:

Oh, it'll get better now.
Say oh, it'll get better.
Don't let the wind
ruffle those feathers.
Just when it rains,
pray for some good weather
and oh, it'll get better.

I got a phone call late last night
and who was it but Mr. President.
"Ya got no business callin' when I'm trying' to write!"
"Can it, pal, you owe me rent."

In seconds flat I's out the door.
Ran a block and hailed a taxi.
But I left my cash in my underwear drawer
so I couldn't pay the cabby.

So I got dumped out in East River,
and as I's swimmin', met a mermaid.
She went by the name Bette Midler.
She ran me to shore, gave me a band-aid.

There I was all cold and wet
with seagulls overhead laughin' at me.
I wrangled 'em all in a fisherman's net,
started walkin' to Cincinnati.

Naturally, I got lost along the way
tuggin' at a movie star's blouse.
When finally I looked up, to my dismay,
I's standin' on the lawn of the White House.

Mr. President said, "I can send you to prison
or exile you to Nantucket."
And sure as seagulls are mean and Christ is risen,
I threw up my hands and said

Love, the sweet voice
heard in the doorway,
and the way it
rouses the ear.
Do get up and greet it,
you fool, before
it disappears.

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 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.

I've spent so much time
thinking of you
that I don't know who
I really am now.
I've spent all this time
promising
that I'll change, but
I dont know if I can now.

Everything is happening
in cycles.
One minute were laughing,
and next we cry.
And all I've had with me
to see me through
are friends who sport
a hungry eye.

No wonder you don't see that change is going on inside of me.
No wonder you don't feel loved.
How could I when you're killing me?

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