I feel like I am neurologically deficient
That a lot of my brain cells are missing
Like a punch drunk doped up punk boxer
A pimply muscle bound ***** on steroids
Hanging out at my old high school locker
No shocker that I am no medical doctor
But I always thought I’d be just a bit better
I guess on average I am a little bit smarter
But the bar is set so low that it requires
Very little to grow and go over it, you know
In comparison to the other young men
I may be grandstanding and one upping them
But when it comes to grand scheme of things
When compared to past people
Who shared my glorious dreams
Like Percy Shelley and John Keats
Like Ginsburg and the other Beats
I think I am drifting of course just a bit
Lest we all forget the **** cut the crap to fit in it
Maybe I’m okay few travel this way anyways
So who’s to say if I’m doing it the wrong or the right way
But I still feel like my brain needs a chemical treatment
A diet with more nutrients and sufficient Supplements
Because I’m feeling neurologically deficient

everybody’s angel bodies
find happening midnight
on Kansas pavements
hipsters’ motherwords are wholely robed by time
instant everything is ordinary
buggered city  immortals --
annoyed, parentless, marijuana everymans
swiftly digging unknown eternity
groaning strange in the long mysterious night
roaring, vibrating kindness
from their holy tongues
blazing inner hideous human gold
draining ***** forever
draining everything
forever -
Moloch, Buddha, Abyss
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

When I wanted to be a superhero

I forgot how important it is to have a sidekick

I forgot that when I tried to go into that good night gently

I did not have to go in alone

That when I fell face first into mud thick puddles

In places so dark it feels like drowning

You could have been by my side

I forgot that I am only human

That the only weapon I’ve ever held is a pen

And the notebook I keep in my breast pocket

Would burn up at the thought of a bullet

Superheroes don’t wear pocket protectors

So when my editing pen broke

I saw what a bullet wound might look like

But I still let you fall behind

The voice of reason

Of clichéd comedy sayin’,

“Holy Ginsburg crazy man

Poets don’t save people

They just look for reasons to cry”

And if you had gone in there with me

I might have come out alive

Gone back to my day job

Loved you proper

With 9 to 5 weekday normalcy

And nights so silent

I’d have to press my ear to the wooden floor

And listen to the sound of the cold expanding

Just to fall asleep

I made it to the other side of the city

I’ve since removed my armor

It sits wrapped in slowly thinning paper

Trapped between the lines I secretly wrote you into

I never had any powers in me

Just a lot of passion in me

But I still keep forgetting

I can’t do this alone

Wow, what even is this?
Terrible, terrible.
Why do you even bother, it’s no good
Thanks, now get out.
I admit I’m not the next Frost
I may not even be the next anyone.
So, without further ado, I’m sorry.
I apologize.
I’m sorry Blake, Burns, Wordsworth.
I’m sorry Poe, Frost, Ginsburg.
I’m sorry Plath, Petersen, Bremer.
I’m sorry Church, Winter, Dychkowski.
I don’t measure up, I don’t even rhyme
Selfishness is my reason for this
Feelings on paper and thoughts in obscurity
All written without form, no scheme
Is it real if it doesn’t make sense?
I’m not stopping, no, I’ll persevere
But I offer up these apologies to those who are poets
Somehow I got labeled with you
Somehow I ended up here.
Poetry. My one stay. An escape I can always turn to.
I’m sorry.
My apologies.
Forgive my excuse.

Life is purchased
with metaphors
you jingled those coins
loaned them to anyone
gave your students
a lift
down alliterative avenues
danced at the front
of the room

The plantation overseer
cruel as dominion allows
stirred your fears
made a ***** in your confidence
Schooled in permitted wrongs
she let the lash fall
on those on whom it is allowed
Indulged her charity
honeyed harms for some
obfuscated raw aggression to others
hooked the faithful
for the delicacy of a minnow glittered soul
because pain like tears
is a universal taste

You rallied and held on.
Recalling the poverty
of the adjunct
you feared falling
through that trap door
Oh faithful moon man
you leapt over the danger
turned fear to comedy
showed us the stairs
with howling laughter
and for a time
climbing the career steps
out of the basement
I tried a Vaudevillian
performance too
at your urging.

You cultivated adoring lines of students
your succulents
yearning for the secret
how to survive
in dry times
how to nourish the roots
when life is scorched
and fragile and taut
You imparted the gift to sustain the soul
to anyone who would listen
a verse on the tongue
is the secret wellspring
and you showed them all
how to find it.

I have seen, I have seen, I have seen all I need to –

The illuminating ideas rolling gently from your lips, caressing my mind,
vivifying my thoughts, reviving lost electrons, electrifying burnt out neurons –
charging my mind, challenging my intellect, changing my perspective – there is no Starry Night, no Mona Lisa, no Shakespeare sonnet, no Ginsburg “Howl,” no Ezra Pound on a black bough, that likens to the magnificence of your words, the radiance of your smile, the wonderment of your eyes, or the fun of your laugh. There was nothing special about the moments before, not the jester, nor a stunning sunset, but something charmed happened after the jester exited stage right, a simple phrase, uttered from your lips, the what matters not, just the swift insight that I was in awe. Never have I been in awe before, a new experience, that never faded, that stuck with me for the days to come as I wander aimlessly dreaming of the greener experiences you will open me to. I leave myself unguarded, there are no masks, no sad howling mask of despair, no happy grinning mask of cheer, just me, open to you, your ideas, your enlightenment. Paint, draw, sketch, mold me into who I should be for you, I am your canvas, you are my artist, this will be a masterpiece that will hang on the walls of museums, in the halls of temples to come, to put people in bewilderment as they rub their eyes for they have seen all there is to see now.  

– nothing can compare to what I have now seen, life has meaning, and it’s before me, in your eyes, your smile, your mind, your you.

I dig Joe Rogan
Suheir Hammad
And Alix Olson
Truth seeking
Artists

I dig Howard Zinn
And Noam Chomsky
Dead intellectuals
Truth seekers

I dig Marty
McConnell
And Jason Carny
Poet lovers
Of Humanity

I dig Shakespeare
Mark Twain
Edgar Allen Poe
Emily Dickenson
John Keats
Percy Shelley
Ginsburg and the other Beats
Writers and poets
I will never meet

I dig The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
The John Oliver Show
The Young Turks
News and fake news
Comedy Shows
That expose
Deep truth

I don’t dig me
Always
But I like you
And all the potential
You hold
You are not a black hole
But a blazing star
Waiting to blow
Waiting to be born
The only good form
Of a hydrogen bomb

That reminds me
I dig Einstein
Tesla, Da Vinci
Gandhi Thoreau
Bruce Lee
Great Minds
That are dead

My list goes on
Forever in my head
So instead of
A dissertation of love
I would like to know

Who do you dig bro?

Let's run away together
and buy a cramped, one bedroom apartment
in New York or Prague or San Fran or Bristol
wherever you like
(I could never begrudge you anything)
I'd sleep so much better
with you in my arms
(I wouldn't be scared
that you would **** yourself
in the night)
I'd learn to cook
vegitarian
just for you
and
I'd make you tea
when you were sick;
You'd tell me
"You're pretty"
every morning
and mean it
and
You'd read me
Nabokov and Ginsburg and Shakespeare
over breakfast on the weekend.
We'd go to the museum
and discuss
artistic movements
and painting techniques;
We'd go to concerts
and dance (though
neither of us
can)
We'd lie in the grass
under the stars
naming off constellation
basking in each others' proximity.
In short, we would
love each other;
*** each other;
make each other happy.
Let's run away.
let's run away together.

"Hope is a thing with feathers"
They read, confused.

The only feathers in life were
On TV or locked away in a zoo.

They read the poetry of Whitman
The dictates of Emerson
Of Ginsburg, Steinbeck, Salinger
Nothing made sense

When you spend your life being prodded
From concrete box to concrete box
Stuffed, squashed and barely managing to survive,
Imagination is rare

It's hard to picture feathers,
Red hunting caps, blooming lilacs,
Open roads
Between ***** pavements
Glittering broken bottles, and leftover plastic

Beauty became an expensive concept,
Best left for academics

I have seen, I have seen, I have seen all I need to –

The illuminating ideas rolling gently from your lips, caressing my mind,

vivifying my thoughts, reviving lost electrons, electrifying burnt out neurons –

charging my mind, challenging my intellect, changing my perspective – there is no Starry Night, no Mona Lisa, no Shakespeare sonnet, no Ginsburg “Howl,” no Ezra Pound on a black bough, that likens to the magnificence of your words, the radiance of your smile, the wonderment of your eyes, or the fun of your laugh. There was nothing special about the moments before, not the jester, nor a stunning sunset, but something charmed happened after the jester exited stage right, a simple phrase, uttered from your lips, the what matters not, just the swift insight that I was in awe. Never have I been in awe before, a new experience, that never faded, that stuck with me for the days to come as I wander aimlessly dreaming of the greener experiences you will open me to. I leave myself unguarded, there are no masks, no sad howling mask of despair, no happy grinning mask of cheer, just me, open to you, your ideas, your enlightenment. Paint, draw, sketch, mold me into who I should be for you, I am your canvas, you are my artist, this will be a masterpiece that will hang on the walls of museums, in the halls of temples to come, to put people in bewilderment as they rub their eyes for they have seen all there is to see now.

– nothing can compare to what I have now seen, life has meaning, and it’s before me, in your eyes, your smile, your mind, your you.