I'm not quite sure why I feel this way
Why in my bed, my legs feel tired
In my head, my heart feels numb
Why my lips feel dry without gin passing through them.

Chapped and sore, my patience like my lips thirsts
for a numbing draft of spirit to quench.
Spirit is exactly what I need
to instill charm into this hopeless mind.

If only charm poured as easily as gin
from the bottle so green with envy
and malice and wickedness.
Heavy, silver liquid within.

I hope I'm drunk
because if this is what sober is like,
I don't want to be sober -
Better pour myself another glass.
Onto the old slice of lime.

A woman
Swathed in mystery
Darkness
In her history
Which she hints at but doesn't tell
While she walks through heaven and hell,
Drinking with the angels and playing poker with the devil
Because her poker face is better than his
But don't show me your poker face
Lay your hand on the table, aces up,
Show me your hand, mysterious woman

**** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
take me from this wonder,
this blindness in the night.

Anger me in morning
with the refusal of ugly ***,
sleep still on our tongues,
whiskey on my breath.

Treat me to your body
when I am true and I am good,
dance me through your questions
until you are finally understood.

I can hear your longing
though I cannot hear your voice,
you know that I choose you,
though, I never really had a choice.

Tease me with your movie scenes,
your folded, anxious legs,
a calf born into the slaughterhouse,
the conveyor-belt, the hatchling, the egg.

I was doomed to your misfit puzzle,
I was sentenced to decay,
skin seared by your magnificence,
by your gratuitous delay.

Delay from a fulfilment,
a delay from inner peace,
the incremental recovery
whilst dreaming of the sea.

Now I'm drowning in the wishing well,
in the steady clamour of home;
the pill-box in the aquifer,
the faded reference to Rome.

I can memorise your breathing
hair fawning over your chest,
there are countless decent lovers,
but you know that I loved you the best.

So **** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
I am tired of words and meaning,
those blind entries
into the night.

I guzzled liquid courage
a lot
& found out it wasn't real
'till I felt
the concussion of a grenade
and heard the whizzing of small arms fire
above my head
& medevacs.

It was out
in the middle
of Cinnamon
that the night
belonged to us.

Not a single soul
was in sight,
we were engaged,
intertwined,
hanging
onto each other
with all of
our might.

We clung to our
own bouy line,
like jellyfish
enraptured,
electric.

We left a chum line
of sweat, tears, and other
soluable materials
we exchanged,
given to us
by the Gods.

We watched
a falling star,
tumble,
disappear
into the Pleiades.

You were mystical
and I was a mystic.

"If some people like your painting, fine.
If some don't, well, there's the door.

Take your work seriously
But don't take yourself seriously

Paint for yourself
Enjoy yourself"

I was watching a show on PBS today
"The Beauty of Oil Painting" with Gary & Kathwren Jenkins

Gary said this and I marveled at how much this echoed the attitude we should cultivate when writing poetry.