Dear Devil,

Thank you for sin

Thank you for beer and bad decisions

Thank you for encouraging me to steal that twenty

The old man dropped

It paid for pizza

Thank you for my first arrest

Thank you for my second arrest

Thank you for my ****

Thank you for teaching me how to make bad decisions

And how to be happy I made them

Thank you for selective hearing

When I know someone is begging for help

Thank you for my father’s fists

And my mother’s manipulation

I have taken both with me

And they serve me well

Thank you for inventing rock bottom

If I could fall forever

I’d be in hell already

Thank you for nooses made of bungee cords

I only blew out my knee when I hit the bottom of my dry well

And I gasped at the choke of where I found myself

Before I shot back out

Thank you for self inflicted sand paper refinement of my soul

The grass is always greener after you **** it

I am thankful to see it grow back

Thank you for showing me what not to do

So I can decide to be better

Dear Devil,

Thank you and,

PS

You are a really ****** friend

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? John 10:34*

Stretch out a hand
and catch a bead of blood
from the beheaded head of St. Valentine.

Smear the sacrosanct crimson
on both lip and command
“let there be love” upon every sunset.

Treat every new face as a blank canvas
and stroke a kiss with a brush of your lips.

Leave the mark of love
upon as many hearts
and soon the world will see

and follow the light. This power is in us
for we are gods without a paradise.

This is one of those serious poems
And yet it has nothing new to say
But the poet needs to keep himself busy
And writing seems to be the easiest way

The poet rises up on his soapbox
Because he works better from an elevated height
He screams about organized religion, politics
And stripping away of our basic human rights

Like a magician with a classic misdirection
The poet wraps his moralizing in purple prose
He hits you over the head with one simple point
That he’s forgotten more than you’ll ever know

Around the time of the nineteenth obscure reference
The reader is in awe of his far-reaching knowledge
Then the poet overuses polysyllabic words
Just to prove he went to a good college

And the poet keeps filling up the notebooks
Even though he should have stopped long ago
But the publisher agreed to pay by the word
So unfortunately, there’s four more stanzas to go

Quickly, the release date approaches
There’s one printing, then two, then three
And the poem becomes a hit in coffee shops
Recited by grad students in between bites of biscotti

His face now graces the cover of every magazine
In an explosion of exuberant media admiration
Dozens of talk show appearances are scheduled
For the newly crowned “voice of our generation”

The publisher decorates the dust jacket with blurbs
Complimenting the book’s “dangerously original rhymes”
But it’s nothing more than passing hyperbole
Gathered from a glowing review in The New York Times

Now thousands grasp the paperback edition
And eagerly await the feature film adaptation
Meanwhile, the poet hunches over his typewriter
And commits more sententious literary *******

The chaos of my childhood haunts me.

Daddy's fist, mommy's ****** broken nose, streamers of blood, lawnmower catching on fire and the firemen trying to cop a feel of my mother, mommy yelling, me getting kicked out of pop's house, living nowhere for awhile, dumpsters, stumbling drunk into an old sewer, sleeping on ****, ******* in my sleep, waking up smelling stale like ammonia, car accident, fighting the guy who hit us because he called Josey a *****, pop slamming me into the refrigerator, me knocking him unconscious, levelling a knife on him once, fighting everybody, feeling like life was a fight, like i couldn't trust nobody. Even my new friends, brought beef to my house, a kid brought him and a whole bunch of other shaved-head ***** over in a jeep. I came outside with a butcher knife.
now i've got this flock inside of me,
because whenever I feel someone talking ****,
i just want to fight,
just want to react.

I hold all the good things inside of me
deep within,
even the little lambs
with pink, innocent lips
who are suckling and hungry for the thing i was really missing:
love.

"Nothing like a good smoke,"
They say.

Maybe I'll start.