There is an addictive beauty in sadness
It’s easy to get hooked on pain
It’s a one-way street to depression
With no way to get out again.

You feel so good after crying
You sometimes must invent a good reason
There’s some kind of comfort in sighing
It gets you through Holiday Season

The craving for sorrow is endless
It lures like a velvety shroud
That shields from the world’s melancholy
When the ache begins keening out loud.

A funereal smile may be moving
And earn you a pitying hug
But Somehow you must forswear Anguish
And stop yourself craving this drug.
ljm

In this life
we are sculpted down
to bone
burned to cinders
and our ash
tossed without regret
into the four winds

I wish I could live.
Be a man.
Find comfort in the sun.

But every cell in my body
revolts against time
cries out against the sun
speaks in tongues
for the sole purpose
of creating an outrage
against God.

Oh Lord!
How did you make us thus?
And why?
Above all
why?

We are made metal
and in the end
alloy with the sun.

Our breath is drawn
to fuel that fire
bring life to a boil
and
if luck prevails
to wake each morning
in comfort
and with a smile.

Perhaps the last sweet smile.

To the one I lost
before we ever met,

to the potential mistake
that I would
never regret.

Oh, that I knew you true
but how can I forget
something I have never known.

A wisp of passing wonders
a vault of sparkling dreams
that playout behind the fantasies
and delirious daydreams
of what if realities.

Still, such sorrows spill
as I swallow that sad pill
I feel the poison of
a love that never was.

Let it rain
as I explain
how this water
washes all
that is in vain
out and into
a metal drain.

Let this rush
of running liquid
take with it
the pain
and filth
of this hot day.

Breaking
summer’s silence
let the storm’s
oncoming violence
shake the sediment foundation
as erosion
changes
the face of this
waterlogged nation.

I’ll slip on
my work coat
as you walk on
all alone
swept up
in this wet fury
cause you were in
too much of a hurry.

Let it rain
and feed
the green
what it needs
to replenish
from fallen seeds
all the bushes, grass
and beautiful trees.

Let it rain
and with
the cool percussion
I’ll drift
deeply
into
the greedy
refreshing
sleep
that I need.

Life is a nine to five
prison that no one
gets out of alive.

With the dirt brown doors
to the reflective wax floors
that janitors clean every night
after computers lock the building down,

and we fill up the cubicles,
dull gray squares were
we put the professionals
cause that is what they
went to school for.

Eight hours on and overtime,
a couple smoke breaks,
and an intermission for lunch,
but I got a sick hunch
that this groundhogs day
will take me straight
to my grave.

So, every morning
when I wake up,
I take my vitamins,
and drink my
vegetable gunk,
trying to be healthy
so, I can hit the gym,
and head right back in
to my personal work prison.

I'm not a seasoned poet
As standards go
I have neither the will nor wit
To assemble words that exhale
Sensuous truths of beauty
I have been tossed in poetry's net
To serve and protect its fate
I'm not sharp enough
To detect Moon's climb
For I'm not Archibald MacLeish
I'm no master metaphorician
To equate yellow fog to a cat
For I'm not T.S. Eliot
I'm just here to release the waves
That load my pen to barrage
Their organic ammunition
I cannot delve into the dark show
As smooth as Edgar Allen Poe
I'm not one to sing of love, of wine
For I'm no Rumi nor Khayyam
I can't settle music's dust
For I'm not Robert Frost
I can only write what I'm taught
By the shadow rulers of Art
If Yeats is awake
And Shakespeare watching
If Whitman, Dickinson, Keats
And the rest of the sublime ones
Happen to be espying
They would regard me
As an underling
And that would be a win
For I shall never reach
Their poetic spin.

You have heavy metal
hitting hard
till no one can hear
anything else clear.

That is the
kind of music
I like to move it to,
when I am working through
an intense workout grove.

But after that
exercise session
I need mellow music
of a different persuasion,
less percussion
and more piano solos
with a slow flow.

The kind of chords
that I can daydream to
when I am bored,

the kind that lets me
wander peacefully
discovering new thoughts safely
as I go slipping
in and out of
the wavelength,
of soft melodies
while locked doors
open to these keys
that put me at ease.

I did what I had to do,
just to get through
the day to get you
to listen to what I say.

I struggled to this point
to make decent pay
and still I feel
each struggle
was a battled waged
in vain.

I recall
all the dreams I had.
Now I know
why poets feel bad,
cause the real world
never lives up to
what weird word rhapsodies
can do for you.

Like a falling star
or a candle in the wind
I keep burning
but I am not made
to relight the fury
when it goes out.

Though I live
a life of doubt
uncertain
what this hurting
situation is all about,
I still put verbs
and nouns down
cause this lyrical clown
is trying to leave
something worthwhile
behind.

Winter is a cold hunger’s reign
harvesting warmer passions
that are buried beneath
white frosty sheets
and soft fleshy frames.

It is a longing for vitamin D
the nutrient that we need
for adequate levels of energy
and a host of other necessary
****** functions.

It is the time for that crap
cabin fever, dark dreary lethargy
of creeping depression.

Winter is made for forgetting
when warmer days return
like a victorious king,
rising.

Until, time dethrones him
by its frostbitten whims
when that harsh season
begins again.