Keep the lid on the coffin tight
Gay Paree on a hot Summers night
Plans are laid, secrets kept
Mr. Mojo whispering

Call the witness to the stand
The only one left is Pam
Took the secret to the grave
Mr. Mojo whispering

Count out loud now 1, 2, 3
Janice Joplin and 2 Jimmy's
Pay the price to the Bar Keep
Mr. Mojo whispering

The pain he felt, could not accept
Mojo Rising has up and left
Final countdown, Jimmy's free
Mr. Mojo whispering

Learned to rhyme the darkened times
All of it inside his mind
Lived and died his poetry
Mr. Mojo whispering

paper and pen won't do,
i'll pool blood around my frame and hope to find words in my own ink.
you'll stand right here and give me all the ammunition i need,
carving my skin from bone as you speak,
for i know this is your exit interview.
i will be a skeleton of a woman,
and that's just fine because at least i'll have been skinned by the handsomest man to leave this apartment.
my magnum opus,
i'll trace the blood with my fingers
and try to write about how it felt to have your attention for a moment.
you'll leave and stain the carpet with crimson footprints,
but that's just fine because there will be a painting to match my poem.

In spring, the poplars enchant
the city with fluff, our clothes
are decorated, we are halfway
through Lent, it's a party

The winter witch moves through the streets
to her high chair
at the stake, everyone laughs
the brass band starts, and we
dance in the smelly smoke
that blows in all directions
it will be a year as always
good and bad, we celebrate it

In the summer we beat the flies
off our faces, everything stays
as it is, the thick tree
gets a little thicker again

Uncle climbs in, he shouts
to the sky and over the land
'I want a wife, I want a wife'
He throws stones at the men
on the ladder, the nurses come
I remember it all well
I'm now an old witch myself
with fluff snow in my hair

1.
Long, empty days flee into the past.
No agenda.
No impulse.
No telos.
No soul.

My whitewashed angel claps
her silver hands.
I hear a dead man’s cry
sink slowly in the sands.

A mortar round pounds
the trenches at Verdun.
His heart stopped, Edward Thomas
blinks and falls.
Robert Frost tosses an apple
across the mending wall.

2.
Akhmatova mourns a faithless love.
Stalin disfigures her features
with a blood-stained dove.

Poetry extends beyond
the horizon of time.
Its foundation transcendental,
its meat image and rhyme.

3.
Empty days escape into the ticking void:
a metronome made meaningless,
a vacuum of joy.

Seeds sprout inside a driveway.
Dirt blackens in the rain.

Now knows no start or finish.
Eternity tightens its grip in vain.

I write because I
woke up this morning. I had
my coffee and finally stopped
yawning.

I write because I have
a lot to say. I want to put it
down before I lose the sound of
the words reverberating in my ear.

I write because my hands
are as filled as my heart. And they
want to reach out to everyone, the ****
the lawyer, the nun.

I write because
I must. It’s no different than
taking a breath. I’ll write and write
until my death.