Dear Man Lee,

So this is how it’s supposed to go:
I eat the fruit of the seeds I sow,
And permit the weeds to grow and grow.

But can’t I take a moment to trim
All the excess fat and stretched out skin
Of the extra leaves hung on the limbs?

Can’t you see that I love my garden?
That I worked so **** ******* hard in?
Excuse my French I didn’t mean it.

So you see there’s just isn’t room
For a baby in this garden’s womb
Doomed to unnatural growth and acrid fume.

So its not that I don’t desire
To feed and care for my young flower,
I just forget, but not due to ire.

All of the world’s love I give to thee
Just don’t expect anymore from me.

Mother

Dear Mother,

I know it must be hard to understand
Where you are in relation to where you
Stand since your understanding undermines
Everything everywhere and all the time.
I know it’s “unfair” that the Samson you
Wanted, the same son, was forgotten and
Left behind at the bank where the water
Children sit so silent stagnant still and
The mothers swim and drink without waiting
A good bent hour before eating. But,
Is not the rambling, running, dancing
Flowing, singing, tripping, superfluous  
River, where the congregation is born
Time and time again, then, as always, drowned
In the maw and paw of familiar
Familial distress, and disastrous
Loving waters–those siren sounding sounds:
The falling great stones, and frail bricks of
A heart that you’d ne’er build nor take apart
Not the most loved above all the rest?
Isn’t it the spirit, not the structure,
Where we find the lord’s faulty, cheap, design?
Can we not amend such vast decisions?
Can we not stop the working workmen’s work?
Halt the lord’s crane? His goosed neck, bent broke stretched,
Over and above the flowing rotting
Sewage? Lord, too much water, too much wine.
But I’ve digressed, or, perhaps, digested
Too much from my discontented plate and
Now, my distended belly will give up
Disagreeing with me on this feast day.
So mother, I’m done. I’ve spoken my peace
In this puzzling puzzle that just won’t
fit. So with adieu, I now give to you
Goodnight, goodbye, good luck–but only two.

Love,
Man Lee

“Take your children off the street!”
Shades hunt little bones and meat

Murderers and cannibals
Shorn the night to moan and meet

They prefer the nicked knot night
To drum bones and bite young meat.

Two kids are gone: no hide, no
Seek. We’ll just find bones and meat.

One kid had sweet salvation
The other, just bone and meat.

One kid bathed in ****** prayer
The other, just bone and meat.

Nothing found within a week
All the press and parents meet

While their guts digest little
Brittle bones and chewy meat.

Time passes and we forget
All the boys we used to meet

Playing in the woods and parks
Forget our streets when we meet.

Your voice interrupts my time
To groan my love’s bones and meat,

Such subtle supplication:
On the phone “Can we please meet?”

At dinner “love the sinner”
While cooks simmer bone and meat

And in the sleet of the snow
You let me know “I eat meat.”

“Won’t you please come greet me at
The station? That’s when we’ll meet.”

“Hug your man lee boy,” “He’s here!”
*Feed me, love me, watch me eat.”

Can we be just wild beasts again?
I need to run through woods through fen.

Eye ask you, OPEN! Close the door
I need to run through woods through fen

Hair wild and untamed combed straight
I need to run through woods through fen

Sticky chaos. Sweet chaos,
I need to run through woods through fen

Death seen and life unseen both cry
“I need to run through woods through fen”

And once again I’m whole lee man
“I need to run through woods through fen”

There were no sounds
When I walked.
There was no breath
In the cold air.
There was no moon,
Just the light
Of a phone
And a cigarette half done.
With the revelation
Of my solitude:
Stinging, soothing;
And in an attempt
To find the noise
That in silence
Left a while ago,
I sang a song,
The only one I knew.

“I have loved
And I have died.
And they’re the same
The pride, the shame.
I have prayed
And I have laid
In the biblical sense
As my penitence.
But no man has ever
Told me more clever
Jokes or tales
Over cold beer and ale,
As my papa, the Lord
Of my room and board.
He gave me a home
For only me to know
With a bed to love in,
With a head in the oven.
So mama lay me down
Take off this old crown
No more guesses
No more addresses
Return to sender
This old fender
Oh mama, help me!
Tell Atticus to shoot me,
For all the ashes and embers
Have made me remember:
I have crawled about
I have clamored to shout
I have begged like a dog
I have prayed to some god
And mama no man has come
To give me some
Lesson on how to love”

There were no voices,
To deliver my choices,
For the cruel night,
Was callous and blithe.
The frost in the air
Cut off my hair
To make me a Samson,
To make me the real son,
As I walked home alone
While no moon shone.

Who the Hell wants to
Go off to Heaven?
Think about it please:
If you had to spend
All eternity
With “goody two shoes”,
And “zipped up virgins”,
And “pious *******”,
Always putting on
Thick sweaters of wool
Cause there ain’t no heat,
Playing “Yahtzee” and
“Old Maid” and “Go Fish”
And “Bingo” and “Red
Rover Red Rover”
Send the next bore on
Over! You’d pray and,
Oh my dear, you‘d wish
To come down to Hell
Where the party’s at!
By the time Heaven
Starts serving soda
Water and broccoli
Oh my dear you’ll crave:
***** Linguini
A full Trough of Sloth
A Southern Wrath Wrap
Greed’s mead, Peppered Pride
Glutton’s Mutton and
Sweet Envy’s Smoothie.
Can you live with just
Holding their cold hand?
Sitting on some cloud,
Gazing and never
Feeling or touching?
Never burning, nor
Experimenting?
This is blunt, but think,
This is where all the
Interesting folks
Go! Laughter? Its here!
Debauchery? Here!
Creativity!
Ingenuity!
We are what made life,
LIFE! Think about it!
Has obedience,
Has docility,
Has simplicity,
Has submission changed
This world? This universe?
A wise man, once said
“If heaven is where,
“Nice” folks like you go,
Then its surely hell
That I’d rather know”
Here is the freedom!
Here are the cool kids!
Why starve in the light,
When in the dark there’s
Every delight and
Every single thing
Enjoyed throughout life?

There is a man walking slowly in me
And he’s going through each room, one by one,
Turning on all the lights while passing by
Stripping the scenes with silver dollar eyes.
With a flick of his chicken bone finger
The kitchen lights violently flare up
To reveal tomato stains, upset
Stomachs, windows and broken table legs.
“Call the medic now!”– In the living room
The lights just found choked up throats and down town
Sticky red wine stains that bleat beat up
Little lambs for little peeps and little
Mistakes that become big scabs and big scams
That swallows the shallowest of waters.
Now the man who certainly loves the light
Is in the bathroom where the peeping brights
Gouge and grind the snuffed and lying young man
Till he is but the pulp and rind and juice.
“Where’s the medic?” Screams the mad running blood
“Where’s the ******* medic?” They cry again.
Now he tricks the porch light into being
Forcing it to leer upon this **** scene
Of a man barely living, most likely
Sleeping, with a garden hose stuffed down his
Gorgon throat seeping– weeping – all at once.
Where is he now? The man who loves the lights?
He’s walking to the impressive bedroom.
The lights wrestle and work the shadows down
Looking for the living, the last one home
Hiding away just in his underwear.
The man of lights opens the closet door
Just takes a look at the creature’s features
When he has finished, when he has remarked
He marks the skin with light, then tears it off.
He takes each muscle each tendon and bone
And throws them, crashing the walls as each falls!
Boom boom! Goes the muscle through the bathroom
Boom boom! Goes the bone through the kitchen
Boom boom! Goes the tendon through the bedroom.
Boom boom! Goes the heart through the rooftop
Boom Boom! Goes the head through the frondoor.

There was once a man that walked within me
And he has left the lights to burn on and on