I cannot recall the moment
that sanity became a working goal.

Drugs are expensive,
sobriety; even more so.
Somewhere between all of this
I will have to learn to live.

The homeless are pushed out of town,
asleep beneath the railway bridge
that sends rain through rivets
like bullets.

I keep punching the clock
as it throttles Eros with slow hands.

“Sometimes just a smile is enough”
reads a cardboard placard.
But I have not cracked a smile
since I started popping these pills.

He had the voice you see,
the timing and the just pause.
He knew how to colour and stretch
a word, just so.
He wrote quiet rhymes:
I’m a winder
(he wrote,
writing as a river).
I love to wander.
Every day I’m different
with stories to tell
of wild otter huntings
and crisp frozen winters.

I could write entire novels
slowly down your body
my lips pretend to be a pencil
and your spine, my only hobby
gripping tightly to your chest
as if your bones are now my desk space
carving letters of my longing
down your arms
my lungs are desperate
for the right to be your air
while my breath endures this chest ache
forgetting what a life outside
is like
your ribs become my breakfast
your body is a mountain
I continually climb
and your neck becomes a bite of hope
that haunts me all the time
your skin is like an ocean
your salt becomes my wine
you build with your two legs
a space for me to live inside
and I study what you're made of
I compare you to the sky
like the moon you glow on top of me
like the stars you blow my mind

I tense my thumb over the bottom right-hand corner
of the page and recite a block of text
transcribed from a dead man’s notebook.

A stuttered requiem without accompaniment.

When I run out of lines to botch,
I bow my head politely and leave the stage
before anyone with a list of names and numbers
in front of them can thank me “for showing up.”

Outside, a woman dressed like a carnival growls at me,
or to me, in a language I don’t understand.
The audition sheet she grips prompts me
to point her in the right direction.

I watch her strut from my present to my past,
and neither of us is smiling.
Maybe she’s foreign to this place,
and maybe, so am I.

I'm an avid reader of books,  many different books
Tolstoys War And Peace took me seven days to read
Lord Of The Rings Trylogy just 3 days
One of those books I've read just once
The other I could almost quote
word
for
word
I read some truly great works of poetry here
Some simple with a message loud and clear
easily understood
Some long but with a rhythmic flow
the sort of poem where you cant let go
Then there is the long drawn out dirge
full of metaphors and unusual words that I don't even understand
I might read it once,  try to understand then file it under done
I just write the simple stuff,  that's what I do best
But, no matter how or what you write its all good.

                           After all, poetry is not a test ~
                      it is an expression of our humanity.

I started smoking cigarettes again

Something about having another thing burning between my fingers

Besides your hands

Makes me dismiss the feeling that lingers 
when I think of you

Since I can’t have your taste in my mouth

Menthol will have to do

I am addicted 

Isn't this sounding familar?
You **** me inside starting with my lungs

Like the small nicotine sticks do with every inhale

I would much rather your slender fingers in my hand

But for $10 a pack they last around a lot longer than you do 

No matter how much you rot me from the inside out

A piece of me will always be yours

Always

OK so this isnt poetry in the true sense

When I go on my trip next week and if I get a sunny day I want to find a place in the woods just to sit

The idea is to sit in one place facing south west from 1030 until 1330
and then about every 15 minutes paint a pen picture of the changing perspective

Then try the impossible and turn it into a poem. Call me crazy if you must but then I probably am