Oh, God forgive me
I lost my keys
to Your Kingdom
crawling on my knees
over every piece of me
too drunk to hope to find
Your lost and found
I just step out of my mind.

I'm 87 this month and time has been unkind.
I was such a beauty in my youth beckoning
lovers with indifference. Always in demand.

Empty compliments from sales girls enrage me!
I can still be sweet like poison stealing pain from
your suffering.  Once again, Rudolph Valentino!

Make this old heart explode with your wild eyes.
Bring me a proper final curtain, roses at my feet.
I'll return for you forever for our curtain calls.

Cheap wine and cigarettes
    classical music on a tinny
    sounding radio in a garret
    writing poetry to other
    lost souls in Boston and
    Southie and Sommerville
    and anyone who ever lit
    a candle for lost souls.

    We poets die each night.
    Our poems are lost in waves
    of cheap wine as we surrender
    to night's promises of a better
    tomorrow. Another chance to grab
    the brass ring on wooden horses.

    We wake with scraps of paper
    bearing witness to last nights
    binge of accidental brilliance.
    We stitch them back together
    best we can and offer them as
  poetry to anyone who cares.

I wandered so off course I didn't
  even recognize myself. A stranger
  I feared. What was I willing to
  destroy? Was anything sacred?
  Children? Wives? Family at all?

  I gladly sent the church to hell.
  Empty platitudes and all the rest.
  I never trusted holier than thou.

  I was saved by angels. Women who
  cared enough to approach my heat.
  It was warm but sometimes caught
  fire and burned out of control.

  They showed me my north star.
  I found my way back home then.
  No happily ever after. Never.
  Regained a foothold with my kids.
  That was enough. We love on and on.
  The angels still come around.