In all these years,
Through thick and thin,
Marriges and many other,
“Loves” known and spent,
Why have I never once heard,
Those few simple
Words sincerely said?
Words so basic and important to hear,
to know and share.
Words that should be a necessary ingredient
For any recipe of Love declared.

I have for the most part lived a life free of sins,
(At least the big ones.)
Worked hard at always doing the right thing.
Provided for and put others first,
Loved with passion and fidelity.
Giving my trust, offered respect,
When sometimes it was not earned.
Granted Forgiveness, not deserved.
Played life by all the rules.
Was it just my bad luck,
Or something I did or did not do?

Not once have I ever heard from a woman I loved
Or professed that she loved me, (completely unsolicited,)
Taking my face in her hands, looking straight in my eyes,
uttering this few words;
“You’re a good and decent man; I love you with all my heart.”
Not merely a “Me Too” or exchange of “I love you” in
Our comings or goings, or good byes on the phone,
Or in a return reply to my words of devotion.
Not just in the cries of a completion of passion on the sheets.
Something a little more, unexpected, sincere from the heart.
A freely offered anthem, a true irrefutable declaration.
Pledged for no reason but truthfulness of thought and feeling.

If we doubt ourselves, continue to seek that elusive thing we
All seek, that unconditional love we cannot seem to find,
Perhaps this simple sentence of plain words spoken and
felt would have made all the difference, every single time.
If you truly feel it, take a moment to say those words,
To your own man or women. They too need to hear it.
Indeed, we all do.

had to
give a speech
at a funeral,
tried to leave them laughing,
happy to be sad.

but i done it.

whipped those rivulets
back up and into
those emptying tear ducts.

bring on the next act,
be prepared, scouts,
to exercise your
laughs lines.

you see,
when the deceased
and me,
walked twenty paces
behind you,
close enough that y'all
could not hear,
we cackled and cracked jokes,
in joyous wonderment
of our own foibles,
drunk silly on our silliness.

the jokes went from
bad to worse,
the worse it got,
the harder
we laughed.

so i ask you this?

did you're hear the one about
the grandpa
who asked his grandchild,
could he possibly source
a little yellow pill,
in return for
twenty bucks
under his pillow?

Sure, said the grandchild,
he knew where
his dad kept,
hid his stash,
free cash.

Next morning,
the child found
$120 bucks
underneath his pillow.

asked his grandpa,
what's the story, gramps?

the  twenty was from me,
as agreed.
the hundred dollar bill, well,
that was from Grandma.

a true story, maybe.

so long grandpa,
thanks for the good advice,

always leave 'em laughing!

then he broke down,
weeping inconsolable.

My cousin’s hair was the shade
of eggshells, or snow
on a winter afternoon. Skin

pale porcelain under long
sleeve, hoodies and sweatshirts, jeans
tight on thighs, tense.

Trace of blood peeks
from under her sleeves.
Strawberry syrup, sweet nectar

dripping from pancake skin. Hot
like the burns from the radiator
she hugged as a child

thinking a warm friend.
Or the bug bite, poisonous
from a friendly looking spider:

hours in the hospital,
followed by angry car rides
to homes that weren't.

She didn't catch fire, she was
flames, melting
girl known for naked nails,

long legs under black jeans
and a hoodie in July. She slept
the days away in her room.

Stuffed teddy bear, razor
blades, no longer hidden
out of sight. There was

no one there to see.
For weeks she wasn't
seen, a putrid smell resulting.

Her bamboo plant left
wilting in the kitchen.
Spiders watch from far corners.

Ask me,
Ask me now daddy.
What I want to do when I grow up.
I want to be happy.
No, not happy
I want to be happiness.
I want to be joy and cheer and admiration
Confidence and peace and optimism

I don’t want to be like others, no, I want to be love.
The smile that comes across your face when they say your name,
The look that makes your heart skip a beat,
The song that makes you rethink every second you spent together.
I don’t wanna be the poem, I wanna be the emotion behind it,
Not the first kiss, let me be the nerves,
Not the dance, let me be the excitement,
Not the Officiant, let me be the vows.

When I grow up, I don’t wanna be a doctor mommy.
I want to be the feeling when someone’s told there’s a cure,
Or when a parent finds out their child will live to be a teenager,
Or maybe I want to be 3 in the morning when a mother holds her child for the first time.

I want to be affection and adoration and passion
Oh, I want to be passion.
Let me be passion.
So that you cannot do without me, because nothing without me has meaning.
So that when you are playing the final strain or scoring the winning goal,
Or writing the last chapter or finishing the last paint stroke,
You will think of me.

Maybe I’ll be allegiance or devotion or respect.
I won’t be the soldier, I’ll be the loyalty.
Or the surprise in a child's heart when their dad comes home early,
Maybe I’ll be the feeling when a father meets his baby for the first time,
And the child already knows his name.

I want to be piety and faith and worship.
I don’t want to be the pastor, I’ll be the lesson.
Maybe I’ll be the obligation behind the first baptism or first communion.
Maybe I’ll be the words when someone so low is told someone loves them.
I’ll be the salvation of the gospel,
The redemption to the guilty,
The forgiveness to the sinners.

When I grow up,

I want to be the opposite of sorrow,
The antonym of misery,
The reverse of fear,
The contradiction of rejection,
The antithesis of disappointment,
The inverse of insecurity,
I want to be the alleviation of anxiety,
The ease of pain,

When I grow up,
I want to be happy.

I've decided I'm not going to let people hurt me.
If only I would not hurt myself.
I've fallen into the tricks of society.
Now I'm someone else

*and I'm sorry..

It’s always the same,
Hiding in that pitch dark room,
Like a terrified animal on the floor.
Heart pounding as if to leap from
my chest.
It always starts the same way,
Always . . . every time.

Up through the glass,
bright as a night sun,
The full moon stands suspended,
Big and gold, looking like the face of man.
Is it God I wonder?
Is that him looking down,
Watching me, cowering here?
In this black-as-a-cave room,
On my hands and knees,
Teeth chattering, ******* myself,
Fearful beyond all reason?

I crawl away from the window,
Deeper into the blackness of the kitchen.
Brushing past the woodstove,
still hot from that night’s fire,
Inching on my belly towards the corner table,
Its massive covered pedestal my remote destination,
My safe harbor,
My child’s imagined salvation.

Powerful angry footsteps,
Naked feet slapping pine wood floors,
Coming fast, their rhythmic thump echoing,
With evil resolve and harmful intent.
He’s coming, coming again for me!
I tuck myself up under the big table,
Wrap my arms tight around the oaken tower,
Jam my bare feet under one of the table’s claw feet.
And dig in!

Looking back at the window
and the bright face in the air,
I silently prey, yet scream it inside my head,
“God if that is you looking down through
That window, do something. . . Help me!”

He’s inside the room.  
I can hear him breathing hard,
Even smell his vile stench.
Tobacco stink, whiskey and death.
He’s close now.

The metallic swish and trailing sparks
of a sulfur match hastily struck on stove top,
Produce a near blinding flare.
A single wooden taper ignites a flame,
Extinguishing the darkness,
Of my enveloping cloak of fleeting invisibility.

The devil sees me now,
Knows where I hide!
His massive, claw-like hand reaches down towards me.
I tighten my grip on the table and tense my body.
Closing my eyes, I open my mouth to scream!

It’s always this way, always . . . every time.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM