If the time ever comes
when human touch
is taken from you

(because you are
sick or in solitary
or castaway or...)

you will understand
how much
you need it:

your skin will ache
as a riverbed
cracks

for
want
of rain;

you will never take it
for granted
again

So we were sitting around with some college dude
And talking about what we wanted to do later
And the pretty little girls wanted to be singers or artists
And the little blond boy wanted to be a movie director up in the golden city
They had star-studded dreams of art and passion
And this one guy says he wants to be in finance
And be a stock broker
And play with money
Because he likes money.
So I looked over and saw him there
Leaning far back in his chair with a purple penguin T-Shirt
And gloriously doodled notebooks
And I thought this kid
This kid
Is not afraid of losing his soul.
Perhaps he lost it years ago
And figures he's got nothing to lose.

I thought this kid
Is going places.
Perhaps not very moral places, perhaps not very clean places
But big places.

If I was a really good poet I would probably say many deep things about this kid so willing to be a Wall Street slave
But I'm also
Just a kid

Color me confused,
As one most often will do,
To strike a note with a concordance of thieves.

Away, away sweet thoughts on paper,
Melodrama and cherishment be thine.
Add a dash of insecurity
And away all conscious thought processes go.

A tongue-tied shade of green, you always seem to put me.
Playing without knowledge, with my thoughts and mind.

Deep within the castle walls, a creature stands listless,
With eyes of hazel and face chiseled in anguish and confusion.

To say that a man is a man is but one side of an ever-evolving equation,
And I can’t help but feel at loss.
For what should be with great elation to be near, all I feel is lost

With emotions in a tizzy,
To keep my mind busy,
One must try almost too hard.
So take what I say,
Writ it okay,
And pay no attention to my advances.

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, --
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.