Can you feel the breath
Leaving your lungs and your lips?
It keeps me alive.

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He smiled calmly and grimly
And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' "

Writing in prose becomes difficult
When swirling around in your head
Are only lines of verse.

It is lucky, then,
That I am a poet.

Chase these drunken foreigners
Back to their ****** land.
Make sure they don't come back
Lest we cut off their filthy hands.

They walk right through our borders
And set fire to our barns
They **** our farmers' daughters
And they vandalise our farms

They bring their bows and arrows
And roll in their trebuchets
Then they fire off their weapons
And destroy our country's face.

Now go swift and see it done,
Send our armies to the field!
We'll make sure they don't come back again,
We'll show them what we feel.

I was somewhere deep in Kansas,
  on a Triumph 69’

When your song came on the jukebox,
   and hit me from behind

I was headed for a bad place,
  and cared for nothing much

When I heard the song ‘Melissa,’
  my heart and soul were struck

Entranced, your lyrics captured me,
  like nothing had before

When you sang about ‘The Gypsy,’
  I headed for the door

But something made me turn around,
  and grab another dime

Ten more times in that diner’s booth,
  still lost within your rhyme

Now back inside the bus station,
  and sleeping on the bench

I scratch your words into the wood,
  last dollar gone and spent

My bike outside against the wall,
  the kickstand now long gone

And out of gas, my hopes have dashed,
  that unrelenting song

Waking up at ten unsettled,
  across the street I pushed

The sign said Triumph-BSA,
  the owner Mister Cush

He asked, “What’s with your motor,”
   I said “nothing—out of gas,

“But worse I’m out of money,
   can I sell the bike for cash

“Would you please just buy my Triumph,
  I know it’s old and worn

“It got me here through seven states,
   runs great both cold and warm”

“I’ll pay three hundred on the spot,
  on that can we agree?”

We walked back up inside his shop,
  three bills he handed me

I thought about a bus ride home,
  my thumb looked more in line

Facing East on old route #50,
  my heart in deep decline

The first big rig that came along,
  was bound for York Pa.

The driver said “If you like dogs,
  I’ll take you on your way”

In York I caught a fast ride out,
  two ‘dodgers’ going North

And got back home with hat in hand,
  your song to guide me forth

Two years then passed, I met my wife,
  four more and our first child

And we named her ‘Sweet Melissa,’
  her dad back from the wilds

Now forty years have come and gone,
  my beard and hair both gray

I owe you Gregg, and always will,
  your song, her name—that day

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2017)
           For Gregg Allman
I Sent This To Gregg Last March,
It's on His Website. We Spent Two
Days Together In Richmond Va. In  A Blizzard In 1982

Every step walked
Takes us farther from home
With every word spoken
We feel more alone

For eternate aeons
Just walking away
No love, consolation
Or freedom or say.

As fickle as smoke,
But a trifling doubt
A whisp in the willows
We silently shout.

The daggers that stab us
The water that drowns
The fire that burns us
And we don't make a sound.

Emotions are trapped
In this blindfolded clutch
We're ***** by our deaths
And can't feel its cold touch

The storm now is mild
But the black clouds still growl
And the stench in the air
Will not go and smells foul.

And yet we march on
While our home moves away
We are blind, we are deaf
And we're stalked by our prey.