All around I hear voices,
Noise overtakes choices
Am I alive or still dead,
Who's invaded my head,

I can't promise you answers,
Trump spreads like a cancer,
Lies sold by the bold or so I've been told
From hearts oversold,grown old and so cold.

Take chances they say
Kneel down and play pray,
But we know the bomb's coming,
Cause his mouth is still numbing.

When will you vacate and take all your hate,
Or should we castrate this evil lightweight.
I have none, no respect, you gotta be checked
You want everything wrecked, is it all to protect?

Is was a long ride home.

We were sober.
Legal, maybe the best way to describe it.

But a 185 kilometer drive,
The morning after,
On snowy roads
Will test you at the core.

It wasn't the *** with other people.
She'd given a ******* to an eighteen year old,
I'd ended up drunk and flaccid,
With my head between the legs of a lady from New York City,
And *******,
Jesus christ, *******
Were never a point of contention between us.

God has one gift and we'd never been stingy, jealous,
Small minded control freaks or emotional kamikaze suiciders,
Dive bombing the happiness out of each other,
No way.
Nor were we myopic work slaves jacking off to the next tech treat,
Nor were we stingy uptight ***** faces,
Trading in the allusion of human perfection.
No way.
We knew love and we knew life and we knew the power of new.

But to say Jimi Hendrix wasn't the greatest axe player to ever trip.
**** man, that just couldn't stand.
So we listened, the windows shaking,
The seething poison of artistic disagreement,
Like nerve gas, art is serious ****, you feel me?

All Along the Watchtower, Hey Joe, Crosstown, Voodoo Child, Angel...

Some **** just won't stand

You dig?

Emma and Jack
1 A.M.

Emma: “Hey you asleep…?”

Jack:  “…if I say yes… what happens?”

E: “Look, I think we should get a divorce.”

J: “From each other or from reality altogether?”

“Funny. Do you dream anymore?”

“Never. Last time was when Paddy died.”

“Your high school friend. The one who got shot by the cops?”

“Yeah. The night I found out I had a dream that went on for hours.”

“About him?”

“No, yeah, it was all about life after death, there were angels, big rooms, lots of light.”

“What happened again?”

“He robbed a bank. Paddy and a guy named Chris Ranier. They held up a bank, like with shotguns”

“Why? Why would a 17 year old middle class kid rob a bank?”

“His parents were down, not starving, so I don’t know.”

“Where did he die again?”

“At a bus stop. They were waiting for a bus. If the bus had been on time, the cops would never have found them. At least that’s what the cops said.”

“And the Chris kid lived?”

“Yup, took a bullet through the heart but he lived.”

“So our divorce.”

“Why do you want to get divorced again?”

“Research. I want to know how people react.”

“ To what?”

“To you and me. What happens when you tell someone you are divorced?”

“In my case women start to salivate.”

“Women don’t salivate. They plan.”

“They scheme you mean. I thought writers made stuff up.”

“Wrong. Writers discover, we ‘re explorers.”

“You know I’ve got an early morning…”

“Scheme is sexist by the way, just sayin’”

“So is salivate, sleep tight”

There could no longer moment be,
Than the pause that comes after a prayer.
Be it final request or pleading promise made,
His answer weathers, wanders and out waits us all.

They main-lined memories,
Cooked up,
Or reheated their juiciest reminiscence,
Over fresh drip coffee and burnt toast in the kitchen.

They played the what-if game joyfully,
And injected the good, the bad and the impossible
Into their long walk
Down to the train station.

Retelling- hell,
Anthony and Emily
Rewrote their history together
With a laugh.

What if we’d had girls instead of boys, she asked,
What if we’d worked for somebody else, he remarked
Be a lot richer Emily chuckled,
And maybe a big pension too, Anthony replied,

And they snorted out loud and squeezed
Each other’s hands so tight
It felt like they were holding on
To life itself.

The only regret I have, said Emily,
Is the number of ice cream sandwiches
I stuffed in my mouth.
My *** could be half the size it is now.

My only regret is that *** isn’t twice as big, Anthony replied
So there’d be more of you to love
And lot more for me to hang on to!

It was an old joke,
Hell they’d performed it a million times.

But truth out…
They still ****** like teenagers
Only now with the kids gone,
They could be loud.
Jesus, the dog hid downstairs,
Or barked seriously
Like thieves were breaking in.

God-****** a good scream felt **** good,
And the hard work warranted some
High pitched celebration.

Hell between the banged up knees,
The stubborn like a mule hips,
And a ***** with attention deficit disorder,
A bit of applause at the end of it all,
Was a genuinely appreciated gesture.

It's the kind of thing,
Couples in for the long haul
Do all the time.

The band was exhausted,
Fall down tired and sweat happy.
But still on track,
Eye flirting and sending secret messages
To every girl they coaxed up
Onto the sandy wood plank dance floor,

But after six hours and 100 songs.
And now at 2:30 a.m. and the lights all up
A bit too drunk,
And way too tired to search out the tempo of the blues,
The drummer,
Buddha on his toadstool,
His shirt soaked with rhythm and stained dark green
From a steady sweat,
His boot, a robot after all these years,
Still tapped the bass drum lightly
As he dreamt of pizza,
Pizza in bed served by naked twenty somethings,
Who don't believe love has to hurt.


They, Bill and Sheila,the music gone
Continued to slow dance,
The beat replaced by the random ****** of shot glasses
Loaded by hand onto the top shelf
Of the dishwasher...
And to the scratch
Of the one armed bus boy with a push broom but no deadline.
The full moon had finally risen out of the sea,
Or was it the sun too tired to shine and begging for a day off.

Her arms were a tight hoop around his neck,
She knew how to hang onto love,
Her cheek to his chest, to his heart.
She'd kicked off her sandals and stepped onto his boots,
Her full weight a reminder that they weren't dead yet.

He'd always known how to lead and carried her with ease.
'Is this the end', Sheila asked him
And looked around at the nearly empty room,
'Not as long as we keep dancing' he said
And kissed her with a full tongue.

They did yet not know,
The coincidental details
Of each other’s loathings,

Or even begin
To chart
The eclipses of their early aspirations,

Although instantly,
And within seconds of hearing each other’s voice,
They suspected they’d soon share
The gasps and pleadings of the great grand hope.

Their introduction was online of course,
Their first physical meet,
A small wine bar on the south side,
Where they were served complimentary
Blue cheese, on
Crisp crackers, handmade,
Each bite a delight and a nod and a welcome treat.
A sign of so many yummy things to come.

Lisa, her full name was Lisa Lilac,
Explained, with a bit of crumb on her lower lip,
That her bedroom was the only place to have
A serious conversation.

Nothing else will matter if we don’t **** well,
Or at the very least if we don’t **** with potential, she said,
Can anything overcome the cardinal disappointment,
Of *****-shat ***?
How is intimacy even possible she asked
If the ordeal is bitter or banal.

His name was Keegan
And he took her hand for a moment,
And examined the backs of her knuckles with
A kind man’s massage of her fingers.

Her hands were small beautiful appointments,
Soft,
And he knew her touch was ******  
And capable of breaking him apart.

Let me see if I can read your desires, Keegan said
And he turned her hand over and examined her palm.

Our first kiss must be a valuable possession, he said,
A vivid memory, ****** and intentional,

From this first brush, in this famished embrace
You will find in my pursuit all of your hunger,

I will draw your lower lip out with a lover’s bite,
My tongue will pirate your beautiful mouth,
And like a jewel thief in a plush apartment,
It will search urgently and everywhere for a precious reaction.

A French Kiss, is that not the most perfectly named thing,
Our entanglement will tender to curiosity,
This very first kiss will be ours,
Our only signature of things to come.

Lisa said she wanted him to kiss her right now,
In the company of strangers and hired help, Keegan asked.
Of course, I sometimes like an audience, she said,
And I always fall for a man,
Who can perform under pressure.

In that case you must make a promise, Keegan requested.
I’m listening, she replied.
You must promise after
The first time we make love,
To let me read to you out loud,
No matter time of day,

Will there be a first time,
She asked in blush of fashion and feminine coy,
Without any doubt he replied
And consummated her with his dusk- dawn smile.