hearing Shakespeare,
my-own-voice
crack'd, stilted,
stuttered-shut by the
mocking silence of still
waters on the brain

poverty exposed,
raggedy verbiage for a
raggedy man's
frayed fringed garments

ashamed of
every word I ever wrote,
not even ten survivors,
not enough to pray collectively
for muse~forgivement

****,
hush me not,
no chairs turned,
the public has not texted,
new tattoo:
write on for audience of one

a necessity, a life sentence

a single topic, a subject,
a life, mine,
still unmastered,
decades of trying

poverty exposed, unmasked
for what it is worth,
or what it is not

Poetry hurts.
It hurts to look at, hurts to read, because
it digs into the muscle fiber of your heart and burns its way
marking a fixed tattoo in your bone marrow
tearing through your brain material and ******* you dry.
It requires you to latch into the throttle of the soul and feel the pain
and joy
of everything you experience.
No, there is no escape-
explore your pain, stay there, fully enjoy the beauty and the frightening
love of this terribly glorious world.
Books don't hurt,
they placate. They are the balm on your poetry-burns,
allow you to view your pain objectively, to quietly observe
from a peaceful, magical
faraway land where pain doesn't matter
and that roller coaster is just a funny backdrop instead of
the vehicle in which you fall in love and lose your innocence
in the same run.
Books are the numbing, the morphine
to allow you to fall into an enchanted sleep.

We all need books and poetry at different times- to each his own-
but for my own part,

I prefer poetry.

be direct
  direct me


have I not,
    but cannot more
                      be been strong for you,
            so I teach you to teach the power
of strength by daring to ask


ask me
   i will create anything it is
in my power
   to create for you
i will break anything for you
that needs to be broken

old poet old brok-en asking that you keep on
asking, I need nothing broke, busted but still needing you,
needing you whole for me to be whole,
from that hole of dark, we share different sides,
I need you creating
you anew

al green said
  no one told us about the sorrow
no one told me about today
no one told me about tomorrow    

if asking were my strength
  this deadly blind balance
would not be my act

but it is that you arrived here to survive here,
the balance is blind, but you are not,
you knew sorrow was a possible.
you want easy, I'll give you easy,
ask yourself above all,
what's next that
I want

answering
   l o v e...
i can answer
i can answer

*the old poet asks,
why is it this poem world always comes around to that
old tirade, that four letter word...the one you ask,
when is it
my turn, and I answer you twice,
for you asked and answered twice,
I do love you,
I do love you,
exactly as you are,
invisible but oh so visible to us all,
and that is why you must ask for
more, evermore,
never ceasing, believing this more
is due, due to you

Check your courage, your humanity, your common decency, your *****, in the cloakroom of pathetic

2. Spend not a nanosecond thinking about how it would feel if it were done to you, reminding yourself how sad, justified, and relieved you feel

3. Debate tween text and email, choose text cause it is shorter, less time consuming, and packs more punch

4. Be proud of your courageous forthrightness in dealing with human problems so directly

5. Immediately (or prior) text all your friends what you have done

6. Make plans for a party so you can begin trolling the field.  Of course not! (invite the ex, that would be cruel)

7. Proceed to smear your ex in person, in secret, to justify how good and kind and used you are and were.  Laser focus on new target person who really turns you on

8. Show around all the ex's break up poems for laughs.

9.  Shampoo and rinse your soul with lye, and repeat, 2 - 3 times a week. If you notice any self improvement, call your doctor immediately!

read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance is the only concert
the imbalance is the the only constant

how do I know this?
what are my credentials?
you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know of this matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred
thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient
then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move
off

and begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation