In her deadly
blue eyes, I fall down the
rabbit hole.
Down
down
down I go.
I hit the
earth like a
mock turtle on its
back;
with a smack;
like a shot to the vein.
She travels through my
bloodstream with the
force of a mad tea party.
Her hair is dormouse soft.
I touch it, and feed
her tarts, as she
rides me like
a guillotine;
sharp and final,
with a purpose;
like a porpoise with a
fish hook in
its mouth.
I hold on tight
and never let go.

Ten Seconds
You will meet people in
life that like a
fixed game or a
rigged deck.
The dice will feel
heavy, or the
take may be
light.
A jockey might hold
the whip in the
stretch,
or the champ will
go down from
a glancing blow.

Don’t be surprised when

you see it, you’re not
imagining things.
Some people need
it this way,
they’ve been on a loosing
streak for so long, they’ve
even lost
track.

The best you can hope
for is ten seconds
of one day in an entire
lifetime when it’s a level
playing field.
And if you get that
chance,
be ready, it’s
your turn.
Swing for the fence,
win by a nose,
take their *******
head off.

Give me lazy lithium
days; soft asylum and Cheshire madness.
This sadness only
lasts
awhile, with sun burnt
smiles and ocean mist
kisses...

Give me sweet Mai Tai
nights, gentle lunacy.
The Mad Hatter moon
laughs at me,
and the fog
only lasts a
little while.

Just one more time,
please stay a while.

I was helping my
son with his homework
the other day.
For one of his assignments,
he had to write a
public service announcement.
He has been visited
by the muse
at an early age.
His goal is to publish
his first book by the
time he's 18.

It got me thinking about
my life as a writer,
and the young formative
years.
As a boy, I had a
broad imagination,
and much time alone.
I remember coming
up with plot lines in
my head, and then
writng little adventure stories.
My dad was a drama
teacher.
He directed four or
five plays a year.
I grew up watching
the classic plays,
and developing a love
for literature.

In Junior high,
I saw the power
of my gift.
I wasn't a popular
kid; somewhat of a
loner.
But one day in
English class, I wrote
a story about a
***** headed hamster,
with an underbite like
a French bulldog.
The other kids loved it.
They listened and laughed,
and applauded.
Words became my
new best friend.

I grew, and leaned on
writing through the
good times and the bad.
They were my warmth
In the long winters,
and my rain in
springtime.
Through the alcoholic
haze of much of
my adulthood,
writing kept me sane,
and it gave me
the will to keep
living when the
pain grew into
a beast of its own...

My son hands me
his paper, and it's
brilliant--it warns people
about the dangers
of cyber hackers, by
portraying the average
person surfing the net
as a lamb walking along
in the grass,
thinking life is grand just being
a sheep, when along
comes the wolf that pounces and
devours.
He finishes with,
"Don't let this happen to you.
Protect your computer and files
with such and such software."

He asked me if I thought
he could be a good writer.
I laughed, and and told him
that he already was.

She used to clean my ears with hydrogen peroxide.
She cut and cleaned my toenails and fingernails.
She shaved my neck and back.
She even popped my zits. When I first went to
her apartment, she had me strip down in the hall,
so that she could wash the clothes I was wearing.
This all made me a bit uncomfortable.
I was sleeping on her couch one night. She came out of her room, wrapped in a blanket, and asked if I would lie down with her.
I did.
We were both naked, and I went to work on her.
She later cried and said,
"I wish I could take your pain away."
At the moment,
I didn't have any.
The next day, after I bought her over a
hundred bucks worth of groceries, she kicked me out.
Her last words were,
"You just want somebody to take care of you."

Another sun sets on his ****** red
broken dreams.This is the kind of scene
where a leaky faucet could be the straw that
breaks the roaches back, a snapped
shoe lace, a closed liquor store after
a mile walk, sick and shaking in
the pouring rain.
It's so hot, you could bake a potato in
the dresser drawer.
Hot like hell in the summer.
And after it's all said and done,
it's not the heat that finally gets him
or the rickety gate. It's the beating in
his chest that began two hundred
years too late.

She worries about
everything,
real and imagined,
"what if this? What if that?"
I watched my
Mom
worry herself right
into the
grave one disastrous
December night.
My girlfriend doesn't care.
She wants me to
worry right along
with her.
And when I don't
she
gets angry.

My Dad said,
"They can **** us,
but they can't eat us."
I share this with her.
Nothing!
Just
worry, worry, worry.

When I was a boy on the farm in
Missouri slaying dragons and
making swords out of sticks,
my Dad got me a coonhound pup.
He named him Festus.
Dad was a real Gunsmoke fan.
Festus grew, as I did, and we
traveled every inch of
that 120 acres.
There were two streams that
ran through our land,
and a pond south of the house.
We had 60 head of cattle and
several calves.  Festus would
help me chase them.
When I went to bed for
the night, I heard crickets and cicadas,
and always Festus, way off in
the distance howling and barking.
He didn't mind touring the
farm with me, but he
did his best work on his own,
late at night.
Now that I'm an adult, and
Festus is long gone,
I wonder if anybody can
hear me howl in the
darkness.

Before I met her
I used to dress myself.
Donned in paisley,
I had class and style.
She cut out my Calvin Klein heart
and now I look like
my grandpa.
Oversized golf shirts,
and slacks to match.

I used to dress myself.
It sounds absurd
but it's true.
I was dangerous, I lived
on the edge.
She said,
"You're not a gangster,
so quit dressing like one.
Here, put this on.
It's really cute."

I used to dress myself.
And now I'm
safe and sound in
cardigans and corduroy.

"I'm not hungry"
How many times have
I said that?
This time, it's the
recent woman in my life.
She wants to savor
the buzz.
Food would interfere.
I know it all too
well.
The hell of not
eating to maintain
the high.
Food absorbs.
I used to go
six to ten days
without a bite.
The light goes out.
The brain begins to
eat itself.
She's starving.

He wants to shake the moss off his back
and leave the tad-poles behind.
They remind him of his misspent youth
and wasted Spring.
The blackbird sings of blue skies,
far off lands,
and the bullfrog dreams of flying.

Like a phoenix from the ashes,
I will rise
up from this mess.
This test will not distress
me for long.
Gone are the days of
warped god living,
giving my soul to the
sun baked afternoons by
the lake.
I will take all
the **** that the
enemy has to offer,
with a smile, and ask for more.
This season will only
last a little while.
Spring will
return, and when they
burn my world, I shall
rise, like a phoenix
from the ashes.

I gave her
latitude,
took the higher
road.
Appeasement
never works.
She drank all
my whiskey
and stole my
parakeet.
The Romans bathed
naked in the
Tiber, and she
wins wars with
a smile.
Never mind the
casualties.

We've been apart
now for a while, and
the pain has begun to
subside. But today, something
triggered it all fresh
and sharp.

I ran across some
pictures of your
****** that you let
me have.
It makes me sad
to look at them
for hours on end.
I may be reading
too much into the
three different views,
but in one of them,
your dormouse seems
to be whispering,
"I miss you, Thomas,
we had so much fun,
you and I."
In another shot,
the light hits little Jezebel
just right (she loved it when I called her that.)
And I swear it seems as though
she is pouting like she's sad too.
And the third picture is
the hardest to view of all.
It's in black and white
so it has that artsy film noir
look to it, like a sad French
mime. Quite artistic as far as
closeups of vajayjays go.
It has a fussy, pouty
look to it, with a twinge
of anger, as if to say,
"why did you break up
with that great poet who
idolized me, and took such glorious
pictures of me." It seems to be
beckoning, "Please take him
back, maybe if you do,
he won't drink so much and
disappear for days on end
with your car, and then come
back smelling of *****, and
old painted up ******."
It breaks my heart
to look at that one.
I'm almost crying as I write
this because Jezzy looks so sad, and
lonely, and a bit angry at
you for selling my collection
of baseball cards.

As the ***** and
chemicals leave
my body
I realize that
anger wears many
masks.
It has lots of
colors and shapes:
sarcasm,
jealousy,
envy,
intolerance and contempt.
It's like being at
a masquerade.
I try to figure out
who or what is behind the mask.
It's only when I take them
off that I see
the truth.

Once there was this
woman that I could talk about
writing and
poetry with.
We talked about Emily and Bukowski,
and many others.
We were poets in our own right.
We shared tears and laughter,
like a joint among friends.
Once, we sang our daughter to sleep.
It was beautiful and sublime.
But, the brutal dawn destroyed that
glorious night.

She farted a lot, but I fell
in love with her anyway,
and her son too.
We even cooked together.
It was magnificent,
although she got a little bossy in
the kitchen.
I can still smell the coriander
and garlic and taste the salt on
the back of her neck.

I picked her wildflowers, and
ate well from her garden- all slippery and divine.
She had these pastel soft blue eyes,
like something out of a Degas painting.
She could be as mean as Humpty Dumpty,
all cracked and broken, yoke flowing everywhere.
And I couldn't fix her. And I certainly
couldn't put myself back together again.

And then one autumn, I turned around,
and she was gone. A wall went up.
Occasionally I could see her through the
holes in the bricks. But I knew that
I would never touch her again;
hold her, kiss her.
It made me feel sad and lonely.
But I keep her real close in my heart.
And some days that gets me by.
And other times, it's like she was
never there at all just a tender dream.

I want to escape the memory of her;
overdose on artichokes and avocados,
drowned in a sea of ****** Marys,
or run away to far-off lands,
like Montana or Idaho.
But, I'm afraid I'd still see her there,
in the Snake River or the wide open sky.

When I think of you,
I hear a marimba in my head.
I'm lost like a stray cat.
Baby, I swear I'll hop a train
and head west, to roll away
from the memory of you.
This mad hatter moon lights
my way, and I'm done
holding on.  I'm getting a
bottle of whiskey, and drinking
it until you become a
blurry memory.
Then I'm jumping that train.

It's all trial and error;
weighing heavy on
the latter.
When I feel like this,
I want to build an
exit machine;
walk through it to
a different life.
Too many irons in
the fire, I'm burned
beyond recognition.
The situation unfolds
like it always does,
I fall down, and
then get back up.
But I'm tired, and sometimes
the ground is comfortable,
and way too familiar.

Sometimes, on rainy days I stare out the
windows; the shadows play
tricks.
I see happier times,
when we were decent to each other.
Yellow flowers, blue skies,  I blink
and then the rain
looks like tear drops on a glass pipe,
or dragons rising in the bowl.

I don't vacation
in Babylon anymore.
The ticket prices soared
and the trip
almost killed me.
Years of
debauchery weren't
good for the soul.

The only gold I
want now is the
autumn leaves and
the buttery summer corn,
and the shimmer on the
lake at sunset.

I'm getting older and
my heart is stronger.
It beats like a
childs, seeing
green for the first
time.

This could be 
the last poem I
ever write.
I hope not,
but it's possible.

If it were my 
last poem,
what would I want 
it to say?
Wow, not so easy.

Poetry has been a
loving wife, and I 
will miss her on
all those sleepless
nights, when dreams
don't come.
Writing poems have
kept me in touch
with all the harsh
pain, and all the 
sublime beauty.
Both are supreme
teachers. 

Poetry has opened 
my ears to the
sounds of the
earth, the whispered
rush of the creek
running over stones
and sticks.
The cries of my
children in the
night wanting
their mothers'
milk.

If this were
absolutely my
last poem, I would
want it to bring
some joy and be 
a bit less sentimental.
Oh well,
guess I have to
write more.

Make the static go
away,
the dead-dog depression;
the fleas tip-toeing across
my brain.
Hate locks the
door to the heart,
and puts the
soul in a cage.
The rage consumes,
like a West Coast fire.

Make the static go
away,
the electric anxiety;
the butterflies swimming in
my blood.
Love is a fantasy,
a fairy tale for children.
Devotion
imprisons
the mind and
subdues the heart.

Give me sweet
apathy, beautiful
sedation, let me
float in bliss;
not tethered by emotion.
Let me get lost, deep
in the core of the orchid,
and sail aimless,
in the
vast chasm
of the sea.
Give me radical
lethargy.

My friend asks
me where I get
the fodder for
writing my poems.
I tell him, life.
He says that's too
simple.
He isn't satisfied.
I tell him that
sometimes, I sit at
my desk and open
the window above the
litterbox, and look
outside at the
orange daylilies and
wait.

He says he writes
from a small place above
his left ear.
It tickles at times, but
often it's painful.
I nod and make a
note to call my
doctor about the
headaches I've been having.

He reads his posey at
the coffee shops while
drinking espresso and
chatting with the other
young poets in sweaters.
I tell him that I used
to live under a bridge,
I read my poems to the
savage river and the
Mallard ducks, and the
drunk friends that
wandered in for a drink of
***** or a beer.
He says the little place above
his left ear is beginning to
hurt.

I walk him to the door and
tell him goodbye.
He asks if I will come
to the coffee shop to
hear him read his poetry.
"Sure", I say, smiling blankly.
After closing the door,
I sit and smile at the view from
my window.
I can smell the freshly cut
grass, and hear the
grinding whine of the
lawnmower.
A woman across  
the street is lying in
the sun.
She's wearing a turquoise
bikini and big sunglasses.
Just then, a slight hint
of coconut wafts into my room.
I get hard and pick up the pen.

I remember Valentines Day
16 years ago.
I was staying at
the Salvation Army in
Des Moines.I was
going through a divorce
and trying not to drink.
I was competing in poetry slams
at Java Joe's downtown.
That little stage kept me sane.
Some of the guys at the Sally
asked me to write love poems
for their girlfriends- to get them laid.
I told them in order for the poetry
to not sound contrived, I might
need to spend a night or two
with their women.
They didn't think that was funny.
I wasn't kidding.
I ended up writing a decent
poem about the irony of the whole situation.

Well, it's February 2019,
and I'm in prison for drinking.
No romantic Valentine's Day this
year; but still plenty of irony.
Even in the joint, guys ask me
to write love poems for their women.
The other day, I did write
a poem for a guy's wife who is
dying of cancer.
I hope some day soon,
he gives it to her.

She drinks beer and farts like a sailor.
She cusses like someone with Tourette's.
She complains constantly,
like it gets her high. She's never read a book,
and the look on her face when I
bring up Hemingway, Bukowski, or Gogol
is something to see.
She doesn't have the faintest clue what
fidelity means. Yet, with all of
her shortcomings, I've never met a woman that
could **** like her. It's magical; sometimes
I think she put a spell on me;
our ****** chemistry is mythological. She rides me like
I'm the wild frontier. She makes the cutest
face when she comes.
Sometimes, I wonder if Papa, Buk, or Nicolai
had it this good?
Besides, who doesn't like drinking beer and farting?
And after a glorious night with her,
I'm pretty sure that reading is overrated.

I can't count how many times
I've been to D-Tox.
she was always
there by my side.
I turned her on to
the cheesecake and
yogurt berry parfait.
It was a plain yogurt with
fresh blackberries, raspberries,
strawberries and blueberries.
It was amazing- it still is.
We'd stir up the parfait and
pour it on the cheesecake.
It was divine.

I sit here and eat
it alone tonight.
The berries explode when I
put them in my mouth and
chew on them, it's like a
food that the Greek gods
would eat- an ambrosia for
the brokenhearted.
I think of you as the little
blueberries roll around on
my tongue.
It's all so creamy and succulent.

But, I sit here forlorn and eat our
yogurt berry poetry and cheesecake.
And each berry stores a memory in
every luscious bite.
I feel downhearted that you
aren't here with that juicy
purple fluid running down your chin.

I fell in love with a dream,
and then I woke up.
It felt like a gut punch.
I wanted so badly for
the dream to be real,
but it wasn't.

The antonym for
dream is
reality.
And the reality
was
that she could
never love me
like I loved her.

It doesn't seem like
Christmas.
Mom and Dad are gone,
the kids are grown; There's no
snow on the ground, and
I'm in the psych ward again.
There is a dead dog loneliness
about the place.
All the patients are asleep,
and it's too early to get
my medicine.
Coffee has replaced
***** in my diet, and
I feel like I'm in a
battle without a shield.
Even the pen I wield
isn't as sharp as it
used to be.

You are like a mountain, not a
sublime snow-capped mountain in
Colorado, or like the Cerro Torre in
Argentina and Chili.
Not like
the Ama Dablam in Nepal.
But you seem like a
mountain nonetheless.
A mountain that obscures
the beauty of the
majestic sunrise,
and the grandeur of life.
A mountain that
smothers love and
everything glorious.
Maybe you aren't
a mountain at all.
Perhaps you're an
ant hill, dragging
dead souls into
your busy hole.
I climbed you, and
was so enamored with
your beauty, I missed
your charade and
masquerade.

You ask me why I build The Wall, isn't it obvious?
We are in the middle of a ******* plague, we are loosing heart.
Some of us have become "Comfortably Numb."
I envy my friend that's in a mental institution, he remains
blissfully unaware.  His thought's are Obscured by Clouds.
I paid him a visit the other day, and when I left, I left laughing, because he said, "Shine on you Crazy Diamond."
But then my heart broke because as I walked away, he yelled,
I Wish you Were Here!" I turned around, and he was crying.
I got out in the parking lot and it felt like I couldn't Breathe.
My girlfriend called while I was driving.  She's a conspiracy theorist, she thinks it's Us and them.  Sometimes she blames God, saying,
It's just part of The Great Gig in the Sky." When she doesn't take her meds, she thinks her Mother might be in on it, that she has a Saucer full of secrets.  Me, I'm at a losss...I think we are all just aPiper at the Gates of Dawn.  I dedicate this to my girlfriend *Vera.

I've been a slave so many
times.
I've been a slave to
***** and vaginas,
to poverty and the streets.
I've been a slave to opiates
and poetry
brutality and love.

I've been a slave to
the flesh and my addictions,
good intentions galore.
I've been a slave to
beauty and hatred,
passion and desire
the flame
and the
fiery dance with death.
I've been a slave to the
crowd and the pedestal
the morning glory women, and
their spells.
I've been a slave on
the slow ride to hell.

So for the last time,
I'm done with slavery.
Go find a new **** to control.
This rooster is going back to
the barnyard,
chase the horses and hens.
I promise
I will crow at the
freedom-soaked dawn.

I've been going through
a long dry spell, an arid
wasteland of the mind.
Writer's block is hell.
It's an empty nest,
a dead baby bird in
the wet grass--ant eaten eyes.
It smells like plastic flowers on
a tombstone.
I'm lost and starving in
the Whiteness.
Why can't I write?
Have I drank my mind
into mush?
The poems don't come like
they used to; the click is gone.
Sometimes, there were
four or five a night.
They swam from the
rivers of my soul.
They were my food and my light,
and my wings.
A good poem is like
smacking the ball out of
the park, or like coming together after
hours of foreplay.
Writer's block is a
limp ****, a miscarriage, an empty gun.
It's like having a stomach ache,
and not being able to *****.

Everywhere I go, I am
surrounded by convicts, and a
maze of walls.
My mind and spirit are
not in prison though.
They fly over the razor wire like
the falcon I saw through the
bars on the window.
It pierced the clouds like a bullet.
I will make the next
poem a feast.
Blood and feathers will
fall from my chin.
Ambrosia will course through
my veins, and I will
sing and soar from
the depths of my cage.

As the day
closes, and the
night slides in.
The big fish hunt
in shallow water.

The old dog
leaves home to
die alone.
Orphans cry for
love
and the arrogant
choke on
rotten meat.

The libraries
become hostels
and owls
break the backs
of tom-cats on
the prowl.
The ***** is gone
and the cigarettes too.

And somewhere
in this silly
world, a father kisses
his daughter good night.

The breakup was
the best thing that
ever happened to me.
I lost everything except
my dignity.
I escaped with my soul.
She tried to buy it with
Sushi and Thai food,
but it's not for sale.
I would rather
freeze and be free,
than die warm in her cage.
No amount of love can
fix that abysmal madness;
that car crash confusion.
Daisies withered when she
walked by.
Her heart was rotten, like
an STD, like a
fish hook to the eye.

She steals candles from
the craft store.
I stole a ceramic
rooster for her and said,
“Here’s your ****.”
We rock the stores like
they’re our *****.
It’s like an itch that
has to be scratched.
We get drunk, and
It’s game on—it’s a high like
******* in public,
like that first
shot when you’re
shaking
and sick.
Someday, it will all
come crashing down,
but until then,
it’s the flash of
lightning and the crown.

There are moments in
my life that are
too wild and
beautiful to be
tamed or captured by
words or sentences.
Musical notes could
do a better job at
conveying the experience.
D minor
or C sharp major.

My mind replays
the moments,
alive with pentatonic scales
and the taste of homemade
apple cider, and pomegranate
security.
I smell the burning leaves of
late October, and feel
the smooth nose of my
childhood Appaloosa, her
dappled coat, and trusting eyes.

Sometimes the world, and
all its goodness
stupifies me, and leaves
my spirit rocking gently in
a cradle, where I know it's
all going to be okay.

The inner critic
protects me from
reality and success;
It knows best.
It reminds me of
my hopeless plight,
my dark destiny,
my night of a
thousand storms.

Councillors say,
"Examine those thoughts.
Challenge them, are
they rational? "
I nod and smile,
and somewhere there
is a sparrow in me
that wants to sing,
that agrees with
the blue skies, and
the trees, and the wings
that have carried it
away from the pain.

But then the critic
and its minions
chatter away, and
remind me of failures,
they say,
"The play has already been written.
You're just doing your part-
your small walk-on part.
You don't get to rewrite it.
It's been written, it's finished.
You being a writer must appreciate
irony, isn't it ironic;
Thomas, no matter
how bad you want it,
you can't have it.
It's been decided, it's predestined,
long before you were born.
You lose, some win, but not you."

I faintly hear the dying song
of the sparrow, as I rise once again
and stumble towards the abyss.

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.

B.L.T and I were talking today.  We thought wouldn't it be interesting if a long lost journal of poetry was found.  But the twist would be, it would be poetry by a non poet, but maybe an actor, an actress, a politician, a serial killer, a fictional character......I was thinking River Phoenix, but it could be anyone from history, what would their poetry look like?  What would the Joker's poetry look like? or Ted Bundy's or John Coltrain, or Jesse James, or Babe Ruth, the list goes on....The Challenge is write a poem as a Historical Character, what's in their heart, how does it shape out.  Lizzie Bordon for God's sake!!!!
Any historical person that you wouldn't expect poetry from...make a note in the notes and mention the challenge... HAVE FUN.  All my love and appreciation goes out to B.L.T for that early morning conversation.

She had wild
dark
eyes, like a
mare
smelling the
freedom of the
rain
soaked meadow.

She’s easily
caught but hard
to hold.
Under the grey
morning sky she
jumped the fence;
thunder chasing her,
nostrils flaring,
wind blowing
through her mane;
powerful legs and
hooves pounding
the muddy earth.

Her freedom has
a pulse, a rhythm;
dark like a Tom Waits song,
black like the flight
pattern of a
wasp.
Matilda is always
waiting to waltz.

Life becomes
simple when you
destroy the fence
and
hold loosely to the
wild
untamed heart.
Try to lasso the
sunset or dam up
the sea; catch the
wind in your
hand, or keep the
sunflower from dying,
it’s an exercise in futility.
And when you finally
get this, for one golden
moment you keep the
mad house at bay.

Listen here miss crazy,
Every Breath I Take my soul
screams, Don't Stand so Close
to Me.  I want to escape.
Maybe to an Island, where
the only contact with your
madness will be by a
Message in a Bottle.

So please Roxanne, for the
last time, there is no
Synchronicity between us.
Go haunt someone else with
your, Ghost in the Machine
the mumbo jumbo and your
Do Do Do, Da Da Da.
no longer works.

I'm going through a dry spell.  I thought a challenge would be fun. Write your best tribute to Charles Bukowski poem or write a poem that could be a lost poem of Bukowskis'.  He is my favorite writer and I thought maybe this Challenge would break my writer's block.  Be sure to put in the Author's notes the mention that it is a poemfor the Thomas w. Case/ Bukowski challenge.

I met a man once who said, It's all
nothing. Everything goes away in the end.
It doesn't mean anything.

I asked him, What about love?
He said, It's an illusion;
it disappears when you
think you have it.
It means nothing;
we are all going to die.

I saw him walking one day,
and I asked him
where he was going.

He said, It doesn't matter, all roads lead to death;
it all ends the same- nothing matters.

I said, What about family, children, and God-
what about life?
Family abandons you, children grow up and
move away; God is deaf and dumb, if he's
even there, and life ends in decay-
everything goes away.

I said, What about art and literature,
the power and the hope?
What's the point of beauty if the
beauty ends? he said.

I said, What about the moment?  You're
alive right now, it's real and it's happening.
Look at the simple beauty of that robin-
Its breast looks like a sunset.
Do you smell the sweetness of the cherry blossoms?
Do you remember the slippery loveliness of
a woman's ******, the taste of a fine Chardonnay?
Look at the dappled fur on that dog; he's almost
grinning, that has to matter; it has to
mean something.

No, he said, That dog could get hit by a
car in an hour, then he'd just be a pile of
bones rotting in the street.

But look, I said. He's alive; his fur is warm and
course; look at his tail wag, he knows things.

He shook his head. You don't get it.
The race is fixed; the horse breaks
his leg in the home stretch.
The champ goes down from a
glancing blow, the dice are loaded.
It's a setup.
Everything goes awry,
it's not good for mice
or men.

I smiled and threw a perfectly
timed left jab to
the bridge of his nose, the blood was the most
brilliant shade of red I'd ever seen.
It flowed from his nostrils and
settled on the green grass
below his feet.
Some of it stained his white shoes.

Hey what the hell did you do that for?
That ******* hurt.

I said, Pain is nothing- it will end- it's almost
like it didn't happen;
maybe it's a dream.

You're ******* crazy!
It is real; you punched me,
and now my shirt and shoes are
ruined, he said.

He walked away, and the sun broke
trough the clouds, flowers bloomed,
and a small black
beetle crawled through a
patch of blood onto
a lilac bush.
And somehow, I knew
that it all mattered.

It's One a.m. in the psych ward.
Let's just call it 4 North.
On the table that I'm writing at is a plant,
it looks to be a member of the cactus family.
Three nurses sit behind a glass booth
and watch me with curiosity.
One of them looks to be a member of the
cactus family—or is it cacti?
Either way, I don't want her close to me.
Just now, one of the cacti-looking nurses says,
"What are you writing? "
I say, "My escape plan," without looking up.
She says,
"Very interesting."
That's one thing I've noticed in the
psych ward, everything is very interesting.
Just once, I wish they would say,
"That is the most boring load of
**** I've ever heard."
Then, maybe I'd be less inclined
to think they resemble members of the plant life.

My derelict soul
rolls west, to under
the Benton Street Bridge.
The bridge is strange and
lonely and changed, with
Steve and Scott dead.
Both of them died on
the railroad tracks.
The ducks are still there,
under the Benton Street Bridge.
A feral calico cat stalks
them with death and
hunger in her eyes.
The river's up.
Fish jump where me
and Carl used to sit and
sing old Motown songs.
I'm in the nut ward for
the umpteenth time.
***** induced madness.
Pensive about life;
bereft of hope,
I wonder:
Am I just a lost duck?
Maybe I'll ask that
slender cat.

I need to be touched and held.
As a human, I need that like
I need oxygen, food and poetry.
It's not ******; it has nothing to
do with a relationship, it just has
to be someone I've known for
a long time and we care about
each other.
I don't want to be accosted or
held by a stranger.
I boxed for a few years, and it
wouldn't bode well for that individual.
This world is brutal, we are dealing
with a pandemic.
Life can be cruel beyond belief.
I need to be touched and held.
I need to feel a heartbeat next to mine.
This life is so fleeting, one minute I'm
five years old burying my goldfish in
the backyard, crying because I don't
understand death and the next
minute 48 years have passed by.
I've buried my Mom, Dad, two
brothers, and over 20 of my
close friends.

When I'm holding someone,
and someone is holding me,
I feel alive and I'm pretty
sure they do too.
As a poet, my senses are
on high alert:
touch, taste, smell etc...
I need to taste the salt from
a gentle kiss on her forehead.
I need to feel the smoothness of
her cheek on my shoulder as we
watch a movie or talk about
distant memories.
I need to feel her smooth feet when
I rub them after she's had a
tumultuous day at work.
This ******* Coronavirus has
got everyone so afraid of
contact and I get it.
But if I die as a direct result of
touching or being touched by
someone that I love...
I can think of much worse
ways to go.

Yeah, so what I was sitting
on the wall.
It was mine, and a great
wall it was.
Peasants walked by
and envied my crevasse,
they mistook it for a
belt, I had to constantly
correct them.
I got in such a squabble
with one of the villagers,
I leaned forward to give
him the what for, and
I'll be ****** if I didn't
tumble off and smash into
thousands of pieces.
Because I'm so important,
the Kings men and beasts were
quickly dispatched, and
the incompetent fools could
not fix me.
So I lie here, yolk and shell
everywhere, yet I continue to
think and reason, no heaven,
no hell.  This wretched life
continues, I watch the ****
walk through me, I hear their
uneducated banter and it
infuriates me...
I've read all the great philosophers,
yet; nothing has prepared me for this.
And what the hell does, "pride goeth
before the fall." mean anyway.

When does the
champ know that  
he doesn’t have  
It anymore?
Is it after that
first loss to a
*** he should  
have knocked out in
the second round?
Is it when his body
doesn't do what
his mind tells it
to do?  

His punches are
slow.
His legs are
weak.
He once was one
of the greatest.
Iron Mike, they
called him.

He loses to an
overhyped cute
boy with little skills,  
and blonde curls.
It was brutal to watch.

He was king of
the jungle in those
early Brooklyn days.
Old lions don’t just
wander off and die
alone.  
They get killed and
eaten by  
younger lions.

After this charade,
I hope the champ
hangs up his
gloves for good.

On my windowsill,
of that indigo night
you took me,
and I haven't
been the same since.

Something about you
makes me want to
be a better man.
I've grown wings,
so I take to the sky.

There is a crime that
goes beyond
denunciation.

There is a sorrow,
a hollowness
that weeping
can't even begin
to symbolize.

There is a failure in
life
that topples and
belittles all
success.

When trying to focus on
life
is like looking through
a kaleidoscope,
when sounds liquify, and
odors take shape and
waltz
to sullen night music,
life must end.

Life must end because
a profit can no longer be
ripped from your
hands, your knowledge,
your punctuality, or your
dedication to
the machine.

Ever since I can remember,
I sensed the
randomness of it
all.
I fought against it
I had faith; I believed.