Society detests innocence
Often shaking hands with ignorance
Exchanging phone numbers with bliss.
We hate it cause we’re jealous.

So we send loaded words their way.
Our mouths, like pistols
shooting bullets full of hate.
Someday we shall see the error of our ways.
Until then,

******.
We call him.
He who has yet to be used,
Or more so, use another for pleasure
******, and then leave a woman and a ******
on a Hotel’s bathroom floor,
alone and broken.

Square.
We say
To she who has never felt the itch.
Needed so badly to scratch it
and get her fix
that she steal from her two month old daughters college fund
so she can fly away and forget….

Try as we may, we never forget
How it feels to fall from the sky.
So, we know how to make a mockingbird cry.
We know how to make a mockingbird cry.
And we know how it feels
to **** one

There once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he cut off his ear.
No one knows what to take from this.
I guess, it’s just that love
makes you do crazy things.

That being said,
it’s not hard to believe
that there once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he stowed away on trains
riding them from Ohio to Arizona
just to barge in
on an ex-lover’s wedding and scream

“I OBJECT!”

There once was a woman
so hopelessly in love with another man
that she left her husband at the altar.
Although that’s not the woman at this altar
in our story.
This woman tossed champagne
in the man’s face
and screamed that she never wanted
to see him again.

There once was a man
with a heart so broken
he once considered suicide
but then he read something
about this painter
who cut off his ear
and mailed it to this *******
that he was head over heals for.

Today, there’s a shell of a man
in New York City
with a stub
where his ring finger used to be.

And somewhere in Arizona
in a box she never opened,
is the rest of him.

Sometimes I wish for power to go out.
Be it a down power line, a blackout,
or simply a bill that wasn’t paid on time.
That way we would have an excuse to break out
those scented candles I got you for Christmas last year.
The apartment will fill with its fruity aroma
and I’d know why you never lit them.

We’d laugh, as we re-learn to navigate our living room,
half-arguing over whose idea it was
to put that table there.
I’d knock over that hideous lamp your mother gave you,
insisting that it was an accident, and that you didn’t really like it either,
So now, at least we have an excuse to trash it,
‘Cause I know how much you hate to throw things away.
That’s why I’m still here.
Not that I’m complaining.

We’d make up games to pass the time,
like “Would you ever?”
“Would you ever kiss me in a dark room?” You’d ask.
I’d find your lips in the abyss and show you my answer.
A few hours later we’d play “Where’s my pants?”

Once dressed, we’d stumble our way over furniture
to get outside,
where we’d lay next to each other in the grass
which is a little wet, but we don’t care
and enjoy the stars without the distraction of the city lights.

We’d fall asleep this way,
I’d wake up in the morning next to you,
with my shirt on backwards,
my frown upside down,
and you still sleeping, sideways
with my head on my chest
and your leg wrapped around mine.

Electricity? Who needs it?
We make our own.

Nobody knows the boulevards
and back roads of broken hearts
better than he who has been there
too many times and counting.
He loved to get lost in this neighborhood
practically growing up there
seeing his fair share of roads in need of repair
bridges built up and burned down
and train tracks leading everywhere
and nowhere.
Exactly where he was going
before he was distracted
by a pretty girl with a flirtatious smile
in a pink Corvette passing by.
Occasionally he’ll come to his senses
and head for the city exit
but before he’s home free
some dame, with a dangerous name convinces him to stay
and play cat and mouse.
Nobody know the boulevards
and back roads of broken hearts
like he.
and he still gets lost
in familiar territory.

I couldn’t tell you when I started doing it
Or why.
As far as I know it’s always been a part of me
My parents were certain it was a phase.
That this, like my nonexistent terrible twos,
would come and go
and the people in supermarkets would stop staring.
I know now how odd it looks.
I don’t blame them.
Imagine a miniature me, burning a hole in the floor
pacing back and forth
Hands clenched around an action figure
Mumbling nonsense to no one in particular.
Perhaps, they’d assume, to the toy in my hands
that my eyes were strictly fixed to.
“Talking to myself”
They called it.
Like I was crazy.
“Quit talking to yourself!”
My step mother would slap the toy out of my hand.
“You’re a big boy now, stop it!”
Maybe I would have if she took time to talk to me without screaming
or if my father were home enough to see how much she hated me.
How she Isolated me from her children,
the very ones who grew up to hate her more then I ever would.
But to me, it wasn’t something strange or crazy at all.
It was – is – kind of like watching T.V.
only more interactive.
I would tell myself a story.
The action figure, or whatever, was like an actor – a template.
For anyone I wanted to create.
The world around me would melt into static,
and I’d play both audience and performer
Putting on shows full of fantasy and magic.
Adventure and romance.
Tragedy and madness.
My own private little theater of distractions.
The older I got,
the smaller my actor,
and more private my performances became
until my action figure became a pair of toenail clippers.
Small enough to be hidden in my pocket
If I had to descend into the real world without any given notice.
The way I acted,
when someone walked in on me
You’d assume I was doing something naughty
and maybe I was.
Maybe it was wrong to indulge in the imaginary,
to live for fiction
but I didn’t care.
It was the one world I didn’t have to share.
I eventually would,
But I liked that I didn’t have to.

When I started writing these crazy stories down on paper
English teachers took notice,
and saw in me,
an apprentice.
Someone who could live their long forgotten dreams of being…
I don’t know.
I don’t think they did either.
They taught me the mechanics,
Putting names to the concepts I had known and used for years
that’s how I came to writing and to poetry.
How I became what I always was,and never will be again:
A little kid, telling  a story,
with indifference to the audience,
or lack thereof.
For no other reason,then to escape everything
If only in the moments when no one is watching.
Every now and again,
I still like to slip away from the crowd,
pull out my toenail clippers from my right front pocket
and see what’s playing.
I know, I may look and sound crazy
talking to myself over here,
and maybe I am.
But at least it’s not a boring conversation

Once upon a time
This was known as "the river of many fish"
We are told this as children
like it's a fairytale
our parents, trying not to laugh
as they tell us of a time
long before their own
when this was the place to be
If you wanted to be somebody
you came to the town with the name you can't pronounce
and you could have your American Dream
Newly free men and women
arrived early and bright at our train station
their sleeves rolled up and heads held high
ready to kickstart their lives.
The gears of industry were turning here
in the land of wine and covered bridges.
Once upon a time
there was a trainwreck here
a lot of people lost their lives
even more lost their way
as time rusted over the wheels of progress
and our water
once so full of hope and prosperity
caught fire and burned for miles in all directions
scorching the water, and suffocating the fish
Today
this is "the river of much pollution"
We have always known it as such
A town were depression is both
a hereditary emotional and economic condition
Where pessimism is our only tradition
The train station no longer operates
The free man's grandchildren's children are up before the birds
trying to find a way to kickstart their high
chasing the American Delusion
"Ashtabula does not have a drug problem"
The police told a friend of mine
as her two year old daughter looked on curiously
at a strung out stranger who wandered into their home
and took their bathroom hostage for two hours
He shook uncontrollably
His eyes overflowing with emptiness
By the time the cops showed up, he was long gone
tossed back into the river
The fish in this water have nothing to lose
If evolution is true, we can sprout legs and lungs
crawl onto dry land and breathe
but the current prevents it here
It's hard to see the glass as half full
when you can't drink the water
I suppose we could drink the wine instead
and stumble inside of a bridge
seeking shelter from the toxic rain