if you believed
truly believed
in my goodness

you would laugh,
and shake your head
at the absurd gestures
i make at god

you'd buy me a beer,
raise your glass,
and toast the foolishness
of my fatalistic ruin

Much like my ex-friend Tom
is content being a drunk
i am content
writing bad poetry
faking sanity
and never going home

If this is the path
to enlightenment
someone please
show me the trail
marked ignorant bliss!

some days
it's enough
to go from horizontal
to

v
e
r
t
i
c
a
l

feed the kids,
kick them out
and find some one thing,
worth doing

i don’t
have hope
for recovery
tho i'll understand
the miracle of
holding your head in my hands
and the subversive joy
of buying your ticket
coach class to Iran
to pick up some saffron
and maybe some new friends
amidst opposition
from those that love you
and want to keep you safe

this flower
has taken so long to blossom
that i've ******* the sun
with waiting

I’m sorry
I just wasn’t up to
the emotional dishonesty
and ******-drama
required to ****** you
and give you your excuse
to tell the world, later
how you were disappointed
again
by another man

we both knew
before it began
you picked him
for his insignificance.

his only talents,
playing the new age sensitive guy
and destroying marriages.
tho it turns out
you're pretty skilled yourself.

I smiled when
,as easily as our marriage,
you dropped him in the landfill you call your past
when he'd served his purpose.

And yes, that's a petty satisfaction of sorts

you pause between each piece
give me the 'you know what you did' look
which, of course, I don't
then on to the glasses not the good china, tho

i stand there
amazed that I get to touch you
sometimes, not now
and I think, 'we are in a fight'
and wonder what color plates
goodwill has today

secretly, i smile inside
my red queen of shatters
awakened in a dream

how beautiful you are
naked and panting

I've been
practicing
self-therapy

Now I
have to sue
my  mind
for malpractice

i wondered
in that world-changing first glance
what would it be like to
wake to such beauty
each morning
sleep in your graceful presence
at night
and live a dream
every day

now that i know
i keep hoping
for a graceless outburst
a moment of callous judgement
some random act of cruelty

so i could know that
maybe, just maybe
i could survive
missing you

so when you
tried your best
to **** up my life,
was it because i
didn't find out what i was missing
when you told me what
a sweet piece of ***
i was missing
or because you said it?

there is this certain house
call it the beach house
once a well-worn respite,
it's quaint disrepair no longer charms

sands that once barely dared  
brush against the steps
victory dance over the porch
and through the warped, unclosed door
as it hangs nearly unhinged

passersby notice
much as hazy eyed prostitutes
stare thru effete johns
from that absent mind place
where it wouldn't occur
to look inside

just give it time...
you say
time...
heals all wounds you tell me.

are you even thinking
about the words
that apparently
bypassed  your brain

time... kills everything,
love
hate
life
joy
even misery can't hold on forever

so the sage advice
that rolls carelessly
off your tongue
to make you feel
as if you have somehow
done your duty
just makes me want to smack you

that kind of advice...
is like telling me
to watch cancer happen

to my ex-wife who
****** my friend
brought him to family outings
dumped him for his immorality
then made your new family
with another woman's husband

really?
did you really say to me
'peace on earth begins in
your own family'?

i guess you learned
that little pearl of platitude
later in life

you
stupid
****

falling to pieces
does not make you a victim
falling to pieces takes courage

'lashing out'
(as you called it),
at what they did
or didn't do,
or said
or didn't say,
or thought
or didn't think,
or whatever you expected
and didn't get,
does.

and you wear victimhood
like a seething samurai's honed sword
raining relentless, remorseless
flesh wounds of projected guilt

grasping to the hilt
the illusion
that your self-satisfying slashes
are self inflicted suicides

love blooms each morn...

[how am i supposed to write the quintessential love poem when the short, dumpy, plain girl at
the next table  
desperately, too loudly    interjects her
placating ‘wows!’, ‘awesomes!’ and ‘that’s amazings!’
into every stunted breath-pause in the stun gun voiced,
spine stabbing soliloquy
spewing
from the hirsute parody she followed in.
as if volume and volume somehow trump tepid, vapid content
tho it might have been interesting that
“this one time, ginsberg ****** in your mouth” if you had had the ***** to swallow it
but you spit it out you coward
and so, bored and ******,
i remembered
ginsberg wasn't into hairy
or three year olds
or hairy three year olds]      where was i


... like a glory
awakens to the sunlight in your smile
and the gentle breeze
of your sleeping eyes