Filled out a prescription
symptoms include
chance of heart failure

I have lived in important places, times

When great events were decided, who owned

That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land

Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting "**** your soul"

And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen

Step the plot defying blue cast-steel --

"Here is the march along these iron stones".

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which

Was more important? I inclined

To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin

Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.

He said: I made the Iliad from such

A local row. Gods make their own importance.

The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit,
Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red,
Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit,
And thou may'st find e'en there a homely bread.
Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide,
Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring;
And straggling e'en upon the turnpike's side,
Their ripened branches to your hand they bring,
I 've plucked them oft in boyhood's early hour,
That then I gave such name, and thought it true;
But now I know that other fruit as sour
Grows on what now thou callest Me and You;
Yet, wilt thou wait the autumn that I see,
Will sweeter taste than these red berries be.

“No one is ever satisfied with the success, is ever satisfied with the success, is ever satisfied with the dream.  It’s the hunger before a meal when you realize how good it is to be alive.”

With each passing day I feel youth slip from my bones like scoops
falling off a summer ice cream cone to blistering pavement. 

All of my friend’s dogs are dying of old age just like mine. 

Childhood trees we used to climb have either grown too tall to reach
or were struck by lightning.  Decisions, no matter how trivial, become monumental
in the scope of time.  There is no end in sight…only the faintest memory of humble beginnings, leading us
blindly into the vacuum of tomorrow, ******* the dreams from our head to feed the plague of survival.

That’s why you bruise with a breath.  Your heart beats too hard for your house of card frame.  Your body—desert willow—thrives on nothing, pumping cells full of carrots, vitamins and codeine.

Last night, While you were sleeping, I sank to the bottom of the ocean
with a seven mile chain attached to a thousand pound anchor and a Swiss army knife.  Slipping
through seasons I fell colder and deeper and darker, waving and giggling as I sank
for miles, watching the surface light blur and fade completely until I was in night,
a gentle pulse of luminescence massaging me with it’s glow, the old-ironsides squid laughing,
the rave fish pulsing with dinner plate pupils, the leather armor jellyfish are calm as Sunday's first ****,
and the flat rainbow fish spin their data and vanish into black.

All I think I know at 22:
Why they call this the information age;
What Buddy meant when he said, “There is a distance the size of bravery”;
This is the best part.

Don’t do that.

Give me that look of epitomized stupidity.

You must be kidding me.

Just stop before I lose control

Of everything and all I know.

Every time I open up I find myself getting hurt.

You don’t want to hear about my pain?

Why? *** is causes you discomfort.

So then its all about you?

Your life on that silver platter.

Read between the black and white, the grey matter.

Open up your eyes

Shed the hollow life, your living lies.

I’d test you, maybe bring out the best in you.

Try these on for size; my shoes

Take a journey of what I’ve been through.

I’ll like to see how you do.

So what if I have stumbled, I didn’t crash.

If it was you, do you think you woulda last?

No I didn’t burn, Went straight arrow

Never took the wrong turn.

Its been a never-ending battle.

Me against all

Everyone watching to see if I would fall.

But I won’t back down

I’ll crack down

Stay focused on what I have

May not be what I wanted but man it was the hand I was dealt

Sometimes I think love was an emotion I've never felt.

Even if I have to walk this life alone

I’ll be sure that one day

I could say,

Yea, that I made it on my own.