She should have been fine,
Right school, good family, right color,
But she was at the age when things go wrong.

She began to feel the weight
Of weightless things
And the need to be someone
No one could be outside the cover of a magazine.

So the doubt crept in and
Muddied her image in the mirror
Then frustration took hold
Because she couldn't reach a
Place that never was
Or ease the pain of that failure.

One bad day, the devil whispered
Through the mouth of a boy who knew her pain
In his hand a pill, he said,
“It's cool, everybody does”.

But she heard through tortured adolescent thoughts  
“Here is peace, acceptance is here, belonging “.

And so she did and did
And when she tried to turn away
The whisper became a shout, then a command
And the pill became a needle in her arm.
  
When money ran out, she started selling
Pieces of her soul in backseats, or ***** hotels.
The devil left her then, he had won.
No more promises, no dreams, or hopes or even fears
Only the need for something
No one ever needed.

Her world became an illustration
She maintained with just enough sense
To keep her on the street, but
It wasn't enough in the end.

Her mother found her in her bed
Afterward the woman always said
“She looked so peaceful and
So young. “My little girl “.

Somewhere the devil whispered,
“Peace” and laughed.

Is it my priestly duty
to be denied?
love—time and all else, at all cost!
while he went home alone to watch a movie?

Another victim  
sacrificed
having squandered all my pieces in his game?
Trudging home
along the river
slow, in snow
I parse my losses

At the outskirts of a homeless camp
I pause below a viaduct
hauling passion by a leash
warming hands
avoiding hovel-eyes
Flames flicker on our faces
receiving absolution over embers
of a burning embrace

There trace
in glowing holocaust of skids
in human bleatings and crumblings
our smoke rises— pure   obscure
Appease with *****-blur
the icy, stinging God of winter stars...

G’nights inaudible as blessing

Am I derelict enough to be worthy?
Fallen far enough?
from the porches of prosperity?
to escape it all?
That wedding white
the newborn’s head
that numbing denial of decay?

Am I depraved enough to make it?
to the pages of your tragedy— minus poetry?

But the angel said
“The poetry’s more!”

Than leaving me—beyond you

...in the shambles of my words

The paper drips with red blood from my soul
There’s no ink left in my pen
The clock has used up all its hours
The music of the spheres has ended.

I set out to build a village in a place
Not hard to find without a map
Proudly I used local lumber
Made sure the walls were square and true.

Sadly no one wants to live there
No one stops to hear my song
(Just one clear voice and not an opera )
People look and listen briefly then move on
     ≈
Wandering through the others’ harvests
I see words stacked in random order
Piled like fancy autumn haystacks
Held in place with azure ribbons

Mumbled voices raised in solos
Whose words I cannot parse or learn
Where verses run from one to twenty
And the applause is deafening

What seems real is evanescent
Fleeting as the winking of an owl
Impossible to braid with just two strands
And painted over with graffiti.
   ≈
How am I to fly when it appears
That I can barely walk and yet
I thought that I knew how to dance.
I guess I never found the beat.

I can’t but keep on building sturdy
Little one theme dwellings
It’s the only thing I know
And I’ll live there all by myself

And hope a visitor or two
Will stop by now and then
To say hello and how are you
And share a cup of my brand’s tea.
ljm

Walking home
ripped I tripped
on a dead dog
half-in the ditch
hard as a log
and stinking.

I said *Scoot over bro,
come morning
there won't be a spit
of difference between
you and I in the eyes
of the buzzards
and the beholders.