Serving up poetry like ***** and ginger ale
(with a ***-soaked crook and a big fat laugh),
the anti slow-soul-erosion antidote to...normality

way up ‘high’ on a ledge, overlooking the mountain range,
got my Stetson on, canteen full of ***** and ginger ale,
matches in my pocket, Chris Stapleton in my ears, and
a *** soaked blunt between my lips to get even hi-higher

a big fat laugh crosses my lips, creases my face, it’s time
to lean up against that big tree, light myself up, strategize,
how to get even higher, how to get down, how to do both
simultaneously, at the same time, without dying too slowly

the sunrise cheats, clods of plain ugly clouds covered it up,
i know it’s on account of me accumulating, stuff, bad poems,
delayed gratification of not confronting the situational, at the
cellular level, though the intersection with macro-international
clusters of men destructing their corner of the world surely
ain’t helping, but the drip into veins cools the paining’s ardor

the woman is edgy, debating if it’s that time, to give up, to snap
that towel across her face like a forgotten hotel wake up call request,
should-she take the truck and go visit her sister in Ashtabula
for a week of *******’ and staying longer, a couple of years more,
and me muse what i recall from living alone, and how it was easier
and so much harder that the shakes begin but that don’t stop,
but adjust the *****/ginger ale ratio, and things seem fuzzier
and for that I am eternally grateful for the miracle of potato
distillation

could do much more additive, but you don’t got the patience
like I do, so, forgive in advance and here’s hoping that maybe

someday you’ll learn this craft and the  extreme patience it
requires, how to savor a word, its conjunction with the one that
comes before and after, the combinations that make a verse, a stanza
sobering beautiful that it robs your breathtaking sensors, a scar minder to, for god sakes, ****! **** that trip to trite, give us something to shout about,

exhale on the moraine morass, that’s the other side of, yup, over
the rainbow that landed on the peak, cause a peek, is just the start of a trip downwards sloping doggy on my hands and knees and yeah, i’m drunker than I care to deny so I’ll head back down, or roll down, to find out what my next adventure will take, maybe I’ll chase after her,

and fall on her neck with sorries, sorrows, and kisses, besides,
now that I’m done, the sun decides to show a couple of cracks
and that’s some kind of of sign to wrap this sonata up and try a
new fugue, letting its contrapuntal composition tune cleanse me
and
save the day, and a corner of the world, hell it could even spread
like somethings good, successful  counter terrorism, zero shootings in New York and Chicago, forget, yeah, what they call that?  oh yeah,
peace on earth.

just maybe.

And it came down like madness
The water over her naked self
Spilling over budding dreads of *****
Neglect
Where it pooled in oil and the dust of long hellish roads
This sacrament refused to mix readily or give easy absolution
For the residuals of long journeyed sins
Hard living had taken its toll
And close to completely
What was left of her mind, muddy
"Of cloudless climbs and starry skies"
She had once known all the words
By heart and mirrored affinity
But sometime in that great distance
Of then to now
It had all become very, very
Ugly
So now, there stood
A shivering and hunched Liesel Priest
Wearing nothing but goosefleshed compromise
In durressed state of highly undressed
Urges, the natural kind
Of flight or flight, quite respectable and by right
Well all those fine urges, they flung like daggers
Until, almighty at last
Her head rocked back and sunk into wet soapy shoulders
Her jaw slacked slightly open
And she let the ministering of scalding water pass her lips
Until she rocked compliance
And uttered "forgive me father, how I've sinned."

got to eat them as they darken
reddened ruby to black constant opal
berries will rot quickly if you don’t
or they’ll taste real gooey and wierdy
if you let the drupelets’ colors get
unsynchronized like summer and fall

...why am i telling you this?
because i learned that the hard way
and the days go away in the gleam
heavy showers and peak-a-boo sun
the east barely bracing for the storm
and the sweetness decaying like the leaves