Forgotten crosses in the clearance section-
religion has become cheap.

The sea of fans churn to your voice sounds.
I am the part in the song where it strains,
to hit the note that makes the ladies swoon.
Over the moon, I float,
swishing your lyrical lies in my mouth.
I don't see a thing but the blackness,
and you, the star.
And I can't reach you,
but I can pretend to know you
chanting your words
like a false prayer.
The music is only a street we run on,
our feet pounding against pavement
like a war drum.
And I feel your sprints in my chest,
you're heaving.
But I can't reach you,
and I can pretend to know you
chanting your words
like a false prayer.

Heroes always look brighter

when they are surrounded by darkness

you take a chance
and you say man
here my digits,
now shared,
here is my Rx,
call me as needed

weeks months later
a phone rings
at 2:30am

and one poet says it's me,
I am the living soul
of words you have appreciated

and the other says,
I'm glad you called brother,
how did you know I'd be awake?

and he laughs and says
I read your stuff,
you write best tween
midnite and dawn,
so the probabilities were favorable
that I would find you awake and capable

and you walk and talk and roam
roads and oaths that black and write
screen letters
can't full convey,
till one says **** man look at the time
and both laugh,
knowing a poem
had just been writ in
true voices
shared

and that kids,
is the chance some make,
when first your words you take
and the poetry you proffer
is product of genuine flesh,
beyond mere in vitro digitally fertilized

ever since the day i saw you
wrapped up oh so tight
you've had me wrapped around your finger
and man, it just feels right

you sing and dance when i play music
though you do not know the words
the things you do just make me smile
you flap around just like the birds

you are my little big man
my little big man you will stay
you'll have that name forever
my little big man...every day
i love the way you smile
and the way you make me feel
you are my little big man
know my love for you is real

you do things and i tell you off
you stomp about and start to cry
you spend time there in the corner
looking outside at the sky

we hug and all's forgiven
we go outside into the yard
i never knew that love like this
could be so easy, not so hard

you are my little big man
my little big man you will stay
you'll have that name forever
my little big man...every day
i love the way you smile
and the way you make me feel
you are my little big man
know my love for you is real

you'll grow up and move along
get friends and live your life
in time you'll go to college
meet a girl to be your wife

one day you'll be a parent
and you'll feel just like I do
when you look down at that smile
of little big man ...number two

you are my little big man
my little big man you will stay
you'll have that name forever
my little big man...every day
i love the way you smile
and the way you make me feel
you are my little big man
know my love for you is real

I filled my bullet holes from the inside out
Concrete substitutions for flesh laid by a man of stone
So cold to the touch in the moonlight hours
I almost forget I was ever warm
Perforated to the core of my being
My initial rebuttal to the pain i felt was to harden myself
Teach myself to live with the cold
And look towards the solid shadows I then casted for inspiration to carry on
Fool myself into believing in the wholeness of a broken man
I lived as a creation of my own twisted and transformed imagination day in and day out
Dragging along the heavy weight a shield of hate brought with it
The problem being
Behind that shield I was protected fully from any outside source of grief
But I was trapped as well
A layer of thick rage and apathy deflecting any and all other emotion
A poison that constantly ate at what was left of me
Soon I became too weak to stand
The price you pay for being invincible against all other forces is that you can never stop yourself from dying on the inside
I had built a fortress to no avail
Because I had trapped the evil within myself
On my knees, my body rotting away
What was left of my flesh began to shrink back
The concrete was losing its grip the walls of skin that held them in retreating
The evil had won
Chunks of cement fell to the ground and crumbled
The agony indescribable
I was losing the last ounce of security I had left in this world
I was weak and the heaviness of the shield left when I could no longer hold it
I was defeated
I sat awaiting a death that in my mind was the only thing left assured to me
But it never came
Instead, I saw the sun rise over the horizon
I felt its warm rays on my disfigured flesh
And all around me was illuminated
In the light I saw how horrible what I had done to myself really was
At the price of living I had bought myself immortality
Nothing more than a cruel joke
Night never came again
And eventually I stood up
The light shone through my bullet holes as I did and the last of my disgust for the world was gone
I buried the shield and the crumbled stone deep in the darkness and never went back
Because no matter what may have been in my past, no matter how much blood I had shed, I knew that now I could live,

Truly

First posted here on August 22, 2013
~~~~~

Every summer, I relearn a new language.
Every winter, it departs for warmer climes,
And its charms and naked arms,
Its own alphabet,
Clean forgot.

Multi-lingual in the summer's peculiar
One language, one aleph bet,
But mega-millions of dialects,
Know them all cold, know them all, hot.

I speak Woman.

Summer is soft, shapely, sweet,
Clean, bare, lush in a sparse way,
And Woman is spoken thusly.
There are no harsh sounds,
Guttural exclamations, nein!

I speak Woman.

There is no ugly in the summer.
Ugly being an ugly word.  
It cannot exist in an atmosphere of
Sun, greenery, sand, carefree days, vacations, no school.
There are no ugly women in the summer.

I could take this writ many places,
But if you are sputtering sexist or other labeling words,
Could not give a good *******, because in the summer,
There is no ugly, there is no prejudice.

And I still speak
Woman with an almost perfect fluency,
au naturel.

Gym clothes, short shorts, A-line skirts swishing in the breeze,
High, god, so high the heels, flats clip clopping, flip flopping
all over my heart,

But, it is the bare arms and the hints of summer
Cleavage, the short skirts, body hugging one piece fabrics
stretching from here to down there that do not
Hint,
The shoulder strap of the underthings that asks,
That commands me:
Wonder where it leads too...

Even the light shoulder wrap
Casual over bare shoulders slung, at night, mocks me,
Like gift wrapping with a smile demure...a teasing blindfold...

All these say:
Write us poetry in our very own tongue,
Woman.

Will oblige.

I curve with curve of the ***** and
invert with  S arc of the waist,
Mystifying, how it is the designed place
For my hands to grasp, and never fails.

The crayola colors of flesh variations,
Boggle the senses... How can tan and pale,
Dark and Light
Have so many
Symphonic variations?
Adagio, slow and leisurely, a pas de deux
For two eyes, then a
Timpani crash and thunder,
Just as Byron wrote:
"music arose with its voluptuous swell,"
Yes, swell...swell...voluptuous swell

Enough.
My eloquence, no match for my
Fluency.

Late August, and my vocabulary is already
Diminishing.
I forget how to say in
Woman
Without you I am nothing,
With you, I am more than everything,

Tho I can no longer say it well,
It is is still true and
Beyond belief.

August 2013

my mother handed out
love in admonishments
about clean shoes and brushed teeth
to try our best and not to bleat about a life hard and oft incomplete....it is only now after years of growing
in understand it is not because she was hard, uncaring  but that she was as fragile as spun glass
so much already taken stolen by this world...her mother while in her teens
first love taken by vietnam
war machine, first child, daughter a few days old...and then three live children, later husband taken by gambling and a woman she considered a friend.
those simple words became
hard to say....to admit love
was to have it ripped away.
so she taught herself, this terse morse of words imbued with love..take a jumper... have you got your books all double entendre
just in care not risque
with love bespoke....
as children we learnt to find the deeper meaning
to parse conversations
for love...sifted by despair...

we learnt well, the art of doublespeak....

I write to exorcise
my demons,
who lie in wait
& are well organized
behind my darkened eyes.
When the morning star rises,
I cry & they are satiated
until it sets yet again,
when they come alive
for me to live out my sins.
In perfect harmony,
I write,
I write,
I write,
to get them off
my tortured mind.