Born to a *******,
He was her worst nightmare.
He had rendered her out of shape,
and thus out of business.

He was thrown into the streets to look for work
When other kids happily went to school.
Soon his repertoire boasted of a variety of jobs...
Working, begging, stealing- he'd done it all.

The dark, filthy streets were his home,
Where he was abused and bullied
by those who were his brothers in fate.
He was a prisoner of his own childhood.

Sleep was his escape,
Where he was a king of a distant land.
The sun shone on his face,
Jolting her back to him to his grim reality.

He dreamt of escaping this labyrinth of pain and suffering.
But what did the future hold for him?

Perhaps his story would have a happy end
And he would be a lotus in a ***** pond,
A diamond mined from a coal mine,
A messiah to others like him.

Or perhaps his life would be devoid of any happiness,
And he would become a thief, a dacoit, a gangster,
Like a maggot, which is born on the rotting,
Lives and feeds on it, only to die there.

I was tricked into believing
This is my world.
There are too many signs
That can't be ignored.
It's certainly not my old world.
No, not my world at all.
Not the one I inherited,
And not the world I'll leave you.
And I'm so sorry for the mess we're in.
I'm sorry I'm made of carbon,
I'm changing,
I could be a diamond still.

To be poor is to go back in time
I have eaten dandelions out of the backyard
And contemplated the guillotine
The revolution of a coin
Skittering to a stop.

It's 1991, community-based drug treatments
are on the rise. People, on the mend, bending over each other to fix addiction

It's 1991, my mother is holding her
low belly, watching TV in the basement
Shared housing, bending over her arm, grip,
friction

It's 1991, have you heard of social feminism? Have you heard how
they do it in Sweden?
Inequality.
Household labor.
This is America. It's a "man's world"
Hold her belly, water, it's a girl.

It's 1991, rise economy,
rise homelessness,
rise, her chest
her ribs
her lungs
her body
expand,
rise, push,
rise, fall, rise, fall
pushing
household labor.

I drew it best like a river once,
calm to violent
wasting so much space, un-hoped for, an unpleasant
surprise, and
never treated like I
was

There was a lot of laughter, dirt, loud voice, loud TV,
smoke filled rooms with
strangers
The power's out, the water's off
high again, sad again
off our meds again
but laughing
again

We're joking. We're troubleshooting.
We're running out of gas, looking for
quarters

We're knee deep in a creek & our
teeth are falling out.
Dogs, rabbits, skinny horses, pins, cows, rust, motors,
cars, and cars, and rain. So much rain.

It always poured until it didn't

She is gone again
Gone living him all alone
Alone with his thoughts and pain

She gave convincing reasons to leave
But he has convincing doubts
Doubts many enough not to believe

But he cannot keep her
He cannot
Because be has not enough to feed her

On a cold breezy night
With misses of her warmth
He has nothing else but his bottle of liquor to hold on tight

Thoughts of her kills him inside
He can only have her in his mind
But not by his side

Who is she with this time
That is the question seesawing on his mind
And he wonders if loving her is a crime

Why can't he leave her for another
Another one maybe better
But only he knows how hard it was to find him a lover

A mother ignoring the cry of her baby.
A wife in a mans gear.
Heavy pan of pain, ignored to the smile from the smell of a paper.
Respect lost, control in hands of currency weight.

A lonely woman
With no dream or ambition.
The gift of child birth ,
Now the token of burden and regret.

Love painted in hate.
Smile cloaked in anger.
Subject to his satisfaction at night
Bearer of his weakness in the day

A girl deceived by love
now a mother stretched to the core
The love for lust
Backwashed in a pain that last

Memories are a reflection of the present
Caged by the decision to love
Chained to his lax
Hope of smile ... a matter of course

I was living in this
flop house above
a **** shop in Amarillo.
I had a one eyed cat
named Walter, I'd bet
a sawbuck that when
I slept,
he drank my whiskey.
I sill love him though.
He stuck around longer
than those old painted up
ladies that strolled through,
and tested my bed springs.
I got two shots of Wild Irish Rose
left, then it's back to these
***** streets of broken dreams
and sick scenes.