the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the ******,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

I know that you look up to me;
For one, because I'm six feet tall,
But I think that I have done my best,
To keep you safe -- away from all,
The little things that ****** me up.

For you are young: with scathing tongue,
Opinions you cannot express,
A lack of words,
And fear of hurt,
And are yet to fully comprehend
The singing of your encaged thoughts.

But listen to me little sister,
I cannot be your wall forever,
For, one day, you will draw your sword
And embark upon your own endeavour,
To quell the beasts that hide within.

You will only ever need these words,
And the gumption to unleash their rage,
To part the seas of social norms,
To dispute the words on any page,
But I warn you; they bring trouble.

For one day, little sister, I
Will lie a living corpse in bed,
Encroached upon by inner beasts,
Of longing, love and loneliness,
But I assure you, you are safe.

For I was one who did not speak --
Until the world was tucked in bed;
So when the world lends you its ear,
Discard the lines that they want read --
And tell them what your brother said:

*******.

And when it rains
it pours
in that little mind of yours.
So you take your thoughts
and hang them out to dry
in the form of a poem.