A hard luck kid
Pushing and fighting
Sleeping and reaping
Hand hold his girl Joann
Sleeping over drunk and high
You always slowed me down
You always made me mad
It's funny how your dishes in the sink
Would **** me off
But now I wish you were still around
To eat off the plates
And scrape your teeth on the fork
And leave your clothes in the floor
I wish you would open the door
And ask for a ride to buy beer

But

Now I'm smoking cigarettes
On your bedroom floor
Looking at the empty bottles
Wondering about the dresser
Filled with your drawings
And your lava lamp still going
Joann comes in
And cries in the doorway
Because she doesn't know what to do
With your clothes and your pictures
And I want so bad for you to open the front door
Singing Merle Haggard at the top of your lungs

I never knew tonight
Was the last cigarette in the pack
I never learned which way your hands went
and why
Or if your car would have made it to D.C
without dying
But I remember
How cold your hands were
And how it was raining
And how you looked like an actress
caught
in a
simulated
rainstorm
and the fan would blow your hair
and the water buckets poured
And Johnny offscreen
Banging aluminum sheets together for thunder
a cigarette hangs from his lips
a flashbulb for some lightning
Your umbrella opens up
beneath your make up running
My chest began to squeeze
Between your wet hair falling
I couldn't hold it back any longer

I love you

......and cut

Have you ever written about love
until your eyelids were heavy
and tears drip dropped
from your eyes,
when clearly you knew
you had awakened the beast
that lies inside you,
deep and wide.

This is when I hear the world begin
to count the ways
it can swing
against my pride.  
When I want to hear you say
I am beautiful
wipe away
the tears I cry.

I could proclaim that roses
slide over all of my shadows
and hold me close
until I no longer want
to be anywhere else.  
Say farewell
to these lines I write,
put them on a shelf.

Yet still, I write of the love I know,
day by day, on paper
until the ink of my soul
becomes a gentle scent
which fades into each page.
Again I wake the beast
inside of my heart's cage.

Walking down the avenue,
admiring how my cigarette smoke
mingles with the snow.
Gentle wisps rising,
quiet kisses falling,
but they meet midair
to dance.
I could watch this silent beauty
for days, until

a wrinkled old man closing up shop
scowls at me.
"Those things will **** you, lady."

I pause.
Shocked at the sound.

"That's the plan," I mumble,
and clumsily stride away.

The snow keeps falling
but nothing sticks.

Security.
Confidence, competence, common sense,
purity.

I'm caught in my own obscurity.
I'm terrified of finding the truth-
Running distraught through the
questions I've sought after,
tired of playing the sleuth

to find facts that I don't want to know.

The stage is set for the show
and I don't want to go.

my teacher tells me

the sage is not attached.          so i cut off all my hair and quit my job and buy records despite my lacking bank account.

i don't know **** about wisdom but i know how to make myself

weightlessly
indulgently

                         happy.