Smoky used to sell pills and write poems,
Had to make a living somehow, payments
For a disabled mind, combat ruined,
Being less than the cost of rent and food,
So he sold his prescriptions and then some,
A little bit of grass as well, and shrooms
He raised in a little closet, lived with
Two mutts that barked at every driveway tire.

He sold his El Camino, bought it back
Wrecked and hammered out the damage at night
In an old friend's shop on Bondo alley,
Turning down the **** observers offered,
Then lay down in its shallow bed, alone,
In a closed garage, with the motor on.

Sometimes just before dusk
after my black mutt’s been fed
I go down to the canebrake
and cut fishing poles for the dead
where the live oaks’ shade
is so thick it'll make you shiver
like a stonemason chiseling
dates in a graveyard by the river
before shadows of the wriggling
bait worms on rusty curved nails I
use for a hook and light in the eyes
of the fishermen begin dwindling.

the truth is

i cannot be contained like that

i cannot be taught to like water 
more than cranberry juice

i cannot pretend for decades upon decades

(years like soft footprints and malnourished
buzzards circling who i really am;
the whimsical part of me
decaying like neglected cavities)

that i enjoy self-discipline and growing muscle

i cannot cook healthy dinners 
and go to sleep at reasonable hours

i will not wake up one morning
and be everything that you hoped for me to be

i tried holding myself very still for a while
i tried to like doing what i’m supposed to

and maybe i will someday

but it won’t be because i loved you

What she doesn't need, not again,
Is to be told by a lover,
Or a husband, where she went wrong
Before they met, or even since,
When apparently she's ******* up
Whatever great plan he had for
His life, which might have been a breeze
Without her siren's screech and moan.

She sits alone, in fading light,
Rejecting pills prescribed to fix
A chemically imbalanced soul,
Neglecting how it got that way,
This  bitter world of reckoning,
At lonely ends of summer nights.

Pretending, feigning.  I said that was the rule of the day.  cough,cough  



(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMXXVII)


If we forgot the merry dance erst thence
Wont to ring in this month which Shakespeare's scale
Of notice put down as not lo, t'avail
As perfect as whom he thus cherished, whence?
The winds are ghostly with a teasing sense
In tour of fragile warmth as sparrows hail.
Then ah, the Goldfinch seems to laugh, th'exhale
Likeas a whisper who maunt love from hence?
Did I swear I was "done pretending" fer
Which moment?  Yet who shall not smile now through
Th'effect of these sweet songsters?  I am blue
And would far rather weep, but tears as twere
Won't come.  A robin scolds and scents astir
Upon the wind's suggestion say twon't do.

01May19a

There’s a 55 gallon drum
in my yard beside the deck
half full of empty bottles
black ashes from burned poems
worthless words, regrets, bad
checks, the busted up scorched
bridge of Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E
half finished lyrics, melted Nirvana
vinyls, suicide notes charred and scared
every-bit as sincere as when written.

We sit there in the morning,
Me in your shirt, you slipping on mine,
Cold coffee in a cup I know you'll leave
But I give to you any way (it's tradition).
We spent last night inches apart
So close that our hair might have switched
Or your eyesight sharpen and mine diminish
To swap our pupils round.
We chew the names of old friends out like popcorn
Barely a breath given to any individual-
Me asking about yours, you teasing about mine
The two of us (mostly) never not in agreement.
It's been this way, one might say,
For 14 years and a little over that, too,
Not that I remember clutching your hand as we lay
Belly to belly on a baby rug with our parents watching.
Your smell becomes mine, so I associate it with home-
Sweet and fresh like candy tulips and soap.

We may as well be one; this is how little our paths diverge.