Frozen clothes on
the clothesline, blowing in
a vagrant wind.
My nose red from the
Wine and beer at
the bar.
December of '87 came
hard and ferocious,
forever changing my life.

I was working night shift at
the nursing home up
the street.
A few of us went to
the tavern after work.
I got home around noon,
and went to bed.
21 years old, with money,
a job, and a car.
I didn't realize
life was borrowed.
Mom couldn't find
her sweater, so she
came to my room and
asked if I had seen it.
I said,
"No Mom, I'm trying to sleep."
I should have realized that
there's plenty of time for
sleep when I die.
But youth produces ignorance,
and I was drowned in it.

Mom asked if she could
borrow my car to go
Christmas shopping.
After more discussion about
her sweater,
I, with eyes closed tight,
held up the keys,
and that was the last
time I saw her.

My last words,
"Quit acting like
a *****."
Ever since, there has
been and itch to
punish myself.
I'm not Freud, but
maybe that's why I
drink so much.
Happy Mother's Day
Mom.

Another lunatic trip to
the hospital.
Nine days, this
go around.
For the first two
days, I just pulled
the covers over my
head and pretended I
was back in the womb.
It was warm and safe.
As much as I
wanted to stay,
I knew it was time to
be reborn into this
strange world of
sick streets, and
broken dreams.

My natural instinct in
this flesh wrapped soul,
is to anestasize the
pain and ugliness of life.
Blackout the brutality and
cruelty in the world.
Close my eyes with *****,
drugs, ***, anything to
stop the oozing pain.

And then it dawned on me,
like the dew soaked morning,
opposite action is required.
Walk through the
pain with eyes wide open.
Let love and YHWH hold my
hand.
Sober, head held high.
Call me sentimental and foolish,
but I'm a real *******.

I'm going to embrace the beauty.
It is all around me.
It's painted in the
sunset of the robin's breast.
It's in the
sublime melody of
the starry night.
It's written in the
faces of all my brothers and
sisters in their pain and
struggles.

Love is the answer to
every question;
I have to die to grow;
like a seed, a cell,
a fractured heart.
Bring it On Life!
If you knock me down,
I'm getting back up.
I'm resilient, and
no longer afraid.
Yes, this world can be
brutal, and we often
lose the ones we love,
but I'm choosing
today, at this moment, to
take this wild ride called
life, and live it, and
love every second I have
left.

Then, I can leave victorious.
What the ****?
Everybody wants to win.

The conversation lasted into the
long tooth hours of the night.
She read her textbooks and then heard a mouse with its tail barely caught in a glue trap. It squealed as if it were dying. In my heart I believed it was savable. In the agony I imagined him dreaming of fields and insects and seeds.
She had these cold gray eyes.
In one quick movement, she took off
one of her clodhoppers and smashed its brains out. She cleaned her shoe with a tissue, she said, I neither hate the mouse nor love it, it's just a thing.  At that moment I was pretty sure she was psychotic.
We're both drunk, I kept watching her *** in that tight  black dress.
She said in a very automated voice, I suppose you want to **** me now and then slithered out of the dress.
***** is *****
But I couldn't do it. I told her to put her clothes back on and not **** anything on the way out.

I let what you
thought about me,
and said about me,
matter more than what I
knew about me.
Way too intertwined with
your sickness and cruelty.
Far too beat down under your
brutal regime.
Nowadays, I wake up overjoyed that
I now live the obvious.
Who gives a **** what you think?