The battle between
darkness and depression
is onslaught for any troubled soul
for it takes place much deeper
than any dug out hole
This darkness seems to just find me
Takes over my world into my sanctuary
It settles around the iris of my eyes
Turning me into someone who just seems to cry
Rooted in negativity and lost in my pain
Through my eyes it enters my brain
Corrupting my each and every thought
Breeding unwelcome memories that like to haunt
Spreading now like poison through my veins
Trying to take over till nothing remains
Writing words is my only defense
When nothing else I do makes any sense
The power of prose keeps that place deep within me
Safe and free from this darkened toxicity…

Scapegoating 101
Always wrong

Feeling good by
Blaming someone

Nice for you
Justice for no one

I watch as an older woman in a red flowery
dress holding yellow flowers looks out to the sea
Searching for the young man she fell
in love with at the ripe age of twenty three
He gave his life that day on the Normandy shore
on the sixth of June the year was forty-four
Every year this woman comes to the sea to remember
For when she said her marriage vows
she meant them to last to the end of her forever
She throws the yellow flowers out to the sea
Always grateful for the love they shared
and proud that he fell in the cause for the free

Later at the same address
A storm of words reaches flood stage
A couch is bobbing in the currents
towards its mangled ruin-nexus
of matchsticks in cyclonic flow
among the renegade
trash
hanging
from the limbs like tinsel

Meanwhile
chair heaved through her door
Like the river
I am not above my rage
at this stage
of more than enough....
Clever daughter's got my goat
Turns my words on dimes
Lays into me
her score of blame
Each blow to drop me further

presses all my buttons at one time
despite the flashing
Warning! Warning!

“Fine! Fine!”

She blows-out through the afternoon
right past me
in a torrent of curses
A stubborn perfect storm
of words
has taken out parental dam
and blown out toward the Bay of Freedom
to the sorrows of her day

The river may crack its whip
But its got nothing on her

nothing is left standing
in her way

His head kept bumping on my shoulder
and he was not my father
or anyone I knew

he smelled as if a bath was overdue
and slept like wasn't a place better
than the ***** briefness of my shoulder.

Breaking down was my brittle patience
needled by his bristled cheek
brushed by his shabby dress,

was for rest the man hard pressed?

Wouldn't I have been nudged by pride
if the head on my shoulder was my father
happy to have him by my side?

as he gets older
does his blurry mind miss
a place where he is not alone

one or any shoulder
for an untimely nap in peace
a quiet stranger to rest upon?

Did you see them take the green fields
one by one, now line by line on hills in echelon?

Still, holding ground held holy by their sons;
no longer marching to the smoke and drum.

Where bugler called the day to final rest,
now silence grows like lichen on the stones.

For those who gave their all at our behest,
our memories alone will not atone.

Do you see the fires burning at a distance,
and more hallowed ground broken day by day?

Each new stone laid a fading reminiscence;
each new bouquet soon fading into gray.

What better way to honor sacrifice
than to pause and speak their names aloud.

Until the gods of war are pacified;
until our flag no longer serves as shroud.

People only ever want to ask me about
the poetry -
those verses about
busted up noses in outer space;
about the pros working
way down passed
the corner of Broad and Main;
about fistfights and hard, hard drinking.
But I built a flowerbed this weekend...
Twenty two tastefully irregular stone blocks
in a crescent moon shape,
filled with the blackest of soils.
The sweat of toil.
The digging.
The planting.
Exotic grasses. Asian maybe?
Purple and yellow flowers.
Zinnias or some **** thing.
All covered in a thick blanket of brown mulch.
It's a fine thing to have dirt on your hands
instead of blood.
No one ever asks me about flowerbeds.

Remember brother we didn't play with toys
we were two little toy soldiers
on two sides of the cold war
crawling on elbows and knees
in the backyard with a blackberry tree
firing at each other with invisible guns
our mouths echoing the rat-tat of bullets
and it was not blood that soaked us
but drops of heavily falling rains
upon soil long parched by the heat
exuding smell of love all over the wind
when the two would roll over each other
escaping from a war with no real enemies
pleading i'm wounded, don't shoot me.

We don't play wars any more brother
the cold war is long over
and we stopped being not enemies.

On the off chance this
Once discarded lothario
Older than a mud pie
In Borneo
Longing like rain in a desert
On the corner of sixth
Avenue and emerald street
Nearer the brothels than any temple long time met a cake
Of soap just clinging
To a sliver of one might call hope
Blathering wistfully
Though
Redeyed lack of sleep not crying
Clothes ***** as Moses
In Jerusalem on the sabbath when it was Jewish
And Islam wasn't a religion
Before the slayings at
Jericho
Almost old enough to remember
But has been told  about Jezebels wicked witches and fallen angels
All of that ****
Stood under a pine near a stop sign with faith hoping he'd see you again.
Reading the bible.

Eight of us sat at the table that night,
Rehashing the news,
Retelling the plots,
Familiar voices singing old songs;
Getting it right.

Between hors d'oeuvres and bottles,
One wife remarked,
She wished her husband
To be better read.
To us who knew her,
She said better bred.
A point best kept
Within her head,
Silent and unsaid.

He turned red,
The goodly man and dad,
A lad who could build
From ethereal prints in his head.

I could feel the company's dread.
He pushed his chair out,
Stood sturdy and stable,
Looked at the company
Sitting full round his table:

I can't read or write too good,
I'd be a Stooge in Hollywood,
Don't believe she said it in spite,
For forty years she's been my wife.
She knows I'll never change my ways,
She says things just to hear her voice.

Then sat with his elbows back on the table.