When I lose my way will you be my conscience?
Show me the errors of my ways. I'm pulled
into dark places and tight spaces. I drink potions
and eat from sinful women and break in two.
The worst is I love it all and kneel on broke knees.
I still smell her and like a wolf want more.

Christ escaped his tomb this day.
We cheered and built a business
called religion and made a fortune.
We sell snake oil and ***** and
ask you to tithe for Him.
Kneel before false profits.

Within me is a huge empty space. A void
   that yearns for reason and meaning and
   a universe of splendid understanding why.
   Why me? Why here? Why now? Why death?
   So many why's with so little explanations.
   I can't help but think there's no God at
   the levers just a wizard of Oz and Toto.

It's such a sweet notion after all.
I have an ******* so I'm in love.
I'm jealous so I'm in love.
I'll die if you leave, I'm in love.
You are my breath and heartbeat.
I love love love love love you!

Would you believe my I Love You?
If I made promises to quit ***** and
quit destroying Christmas and the
kid's birthday and our date night
can you ever believe me? I can't.
I'll never be sober again.
Will we ever make love again?

I do.

I used to be so angry at indifference
and cruelty rained upon the innocent.
I chased off the wolves and shot the
powerful cowards feasting on the weak.
I don't feel much anymore. Passion
lies in my waiting grave with love and
anger and desire to eat my lovers.
Tonight I'll sleep without dreams.

If it sounds insane it's true.
   The shark is in the goldfish bowl.
   Killers swarm our picnic field and
   **** the enemy where we had lunch
   a year ago and ****** marriage vows
   and promised 'til death parted us.
   Today we're on a rail car to a camp.

Is truth a sword or scalpel?
Off with heads or lobotomy?
Bury it how you must.
Truth is power to peasants.
Keep my castle safe.
Keep my debauchery.

Never mind a suit. I want to
be warm and comfortable
for my eternal B&B.
Drop a pint of Guinness
in the box and a pack of ****.
I won't need any matches.

He was too good for death.        
        Rusty should never have died.      
        My world is diminished now.
        Each day without him thinner air,
        less light, too cold and too hot.
        All dogs go to heaven so they say.
What kind of twisted God condemns
Golden Retrievers to death?

There we were sitting on bar stools
side by side and talking about women
and the way they smell. Some earthy and
some flowers and some like stale *****.
We told sick jokes and remembered good
old days when men were fierce and girls
were gentle and tamed their beasts.
We parted. He paid my tab. Yellow teeth.
I remember his laugh. It was sincere.
I stumbled out drunk but he walked sober.

I was going to Twitter today.
I needed to get my fill of venom
and hate to feed my outrage
and fuel my despair and fear.
I ended up here instead.
I'm listening to upbeat music
and hope we all gather in a field
called Woodstock and drop acid
and get baptized in pouring rain
naked and free of anybody's chains.

Cradles to caskets and everything
  between you need we have for sale
  at the General Store. We're living
  at the edge of society with savages
  just outside our walls bloodthirsty
  and hunting for scalps and women.
  Remingtons for sale and Colt pistols.
  Tend your fields and break horses.
  Whip mules to pull your plows and
  pray to your god for rain and sun.
  Feed your infant and **** for more.
  You need field hands for the harvest.

My girl favors sweatpants and sweaters
  like a nun. Under her armor she hides
  Victoria's secrets and pierces my heart
  and slays this dragon with her thong.

They bully us constantly to
be at a place and time or else.
tic tock seconds we race to please
the clocks we fear as they snap
whips and rule the fools we are.
We live years and die in seconds.

We've read your submission and don't
have a place for it in our magazine
at this time. We look forward to future
submissions and wish you well.

We have billions of submissions and
can't possibly read them all so we
count on poets in print to fill pages so
the rest of you must busk for change.

Have you ever read a poem and been
profoundly touched? Your world
trembled for a moment and you
were compelled to write  a poem
to shake other's worlds.
A leaf, a door, a poem unread.

I'm a poet. My job is to drag your heart
   kicking and screaming through your past
   reminding you of kindnesses and cruelties.
   Against my wall blindfold and last cigarette.
   Truth is my weapon. There is no confessional.
   We're naked and always ugly in our own light.

In no particular order these are
the poets I read and their poetry
influenced mine for better or worse.
Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost,
Dylan Thomas, Langston Hughes,
T. S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, Charles Bukowski,
Stephen Dunn, Anne Sexton, Kenneth Rexroth,
Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Billy Collins,
W. B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams,
e. e. cummings, W. H. Auden,
Theodore Roethke, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath,
Leonard Cohen, Ogden Nash and Fr. Paschael O.F.M.

You calm me. You terrify me.
I'm kissed gently at your edge
but your riptide can sweep me
out where love dies 3 times.

When I die release the doves to
     follow my spirit and have the band
     play 'When the Saints' and a buffet
     table a mile long. I don't want sorrow.
     Forget regrets and simmering feuds.
     None of that matters anymore. If I
     broke your heart forgive me, if you
     broke mine you're forgiven. I hope I
     was a decent son, brother, husband,
     father. I know I fell short at times.
     You'll never really know me. I don't
     really know myself.  We're complex
     and conflicted. I hope on death's
     scale I can come out even at the end.

Everything is fragile now.
  I take special care walking.
  A fall could break a hip and
  send me to death's landfill.

  I used to climb trees and fall
  and bounce up to climb again.
  I rode bikes downhill as fast
  as I could risking everything!

  I smoked and drank all night
  with loose boys and girls. We
  skipped class and ****** in
  impossible spaces. We lived!

  We have bingo and "dances" where
  we shuffle with our walkers.
  Fading memories bent like
  question marks, with no answers.

I'm stumbling over my own thoughts.
I feel like a scarecrow in fierce wind.
I love everyone and promise all.
I always disappoint tomorrow.

You can see heaven from hell.
   A fetching ***** beckoning but
   just beyond your chain's reach.
It's such a lovely piece of meat.
Love is seeing but not touching.
It's what we'd die for but never find.

Teeming steaming city where everyone
  is looking for lovers everywhere.
  Women dressed in small dresses naked
  and men strut straight and tall and point
  to them one by one and **** them and
  go home to family's who ignore naked truth.

We were all so full of bravado. Graduates.
  40 years later the class reunion reminisce.
  Fat jocks in wrinkled skin and jowls talk of
  tackles and blocks and winning passes back then.
  Winners and losers are on display.
  I can't face the flesh of the memories.

I'll die when it is my turn.
I won't argue that my coupon
gets me another week or so.
I'll vacate the body known as Bill.

We will always find life like weeds and
cockroaches and leaves in spring. Nothing
stays dead. A tree grows in Brooklyn and
hope stays alive in this dead heart of mine.

Thin lipped men without souls
    in million dollar suits with
    thousand dollar ****** steal
    livelihoods of working stiffs.
    Inside the DC beltway they feed
    on governments' billion teats.

You make me dance.
I'm not a dancer.
You make me sing.
I'm not a singer.
You make me your lover.
I'm not anyone's lover.
I'm not Pinocchio.
I'm a real boy.
You pull strings of my heart
and I love you for it.

It was a place where I escaped
my self pity and guilt and breathed
ocean air and entombed my body
in yours and slept at peace finally.
You were in all men's dreams,
the centerfold in the magazines.

Do you remember when the circus came to town?
We all woke from our small town stupor and hearts
beat right again. Exotic animals, people on high
trapezes and high wires almost balanced in clouds.
We had cotton candy and ******* Jacks. Light blinded
and I fell in love with the girl with dancing bears.

Is it wrong for me to want you?
  It simply tells the truth.
  Can't we just dance naked in our arms
  in the dark, hot breath on our necks?
  Life lasts but an instant and it's gone.
  Let's pretend for a beat it's forever.

I'm a monster
walking among my memories
scaring every **** one of them.
I've been here from the beginning.
I was born of pasts not mine and
guilt not mine and despair not mine.

I've been in this dim bar for hours.
Everyone is more beautiful as we dance
and laugh and all fall in love at once.
Last call and the lights go up and we
step off the roller coaster and step out
to the streets and broken hearts again.

We met drunk at last nights party.
I thought we had a chance at love
You stayed the night. Strangers who
were broken over and over and found
common pain we shared, love of sorts.
We ****** the morning after hungover.

We're not here for a baptism.
  We're here for an execution.

A long hair bearded man sits on a throne
taking a **** and reading poetry by Frost
and Auden and Elliot and Dylan Thomas.
He works as a janitor and lives frugal.
1956 and beats are howling for the truth.
2020 and a scream for the truth again.
I'm a long hair bearded man on a toilet
reading Howl and Kerouac, and Burroughs.
The next generation will whisper for truth.
Poets will bleed through the state's censors.

Each poem is stained with wine,
   sweat, tears and sometimes blood.
   I'll write gently of my doomed
   loves. We were sincere and naive,
   too young to taste death's smell.
   Promises were made and abandoned
   for lust. My only friend after all.
   Never trust poets for truth, just honesty.

The universe is on display tonight.
    A storm is coming with the wind and
    lightening cracks the sky in two.
    There's half for me and half for you.

With my neck in the guillotine
and the mob hungry for blood
my final thought was us naked
and touching each other's there.

The hangman's noose around me
standing on a trap door  I thought
of your soft voice comforting me
while I wept in my agony.

Standing tall blindfolded  before
a firing squad I thought of you
for comfort. You always believed
in me. I always loved you for it.

War requires absolute insanity.
  Suspend every decent thing you
  learned growing up. You must ****
  a man or woman or child. Anonymous
  means guiltless. They're the enemy.
  ***** and carry on. It gets easier.

I'm 12 and in bed for the night
    listening to WSAI. Dusty Rhodes
    is the DJ playing Rock and Roll
    on my crystal radio in my ear.
    I'm frozen there forever. I will
    never die. I'm 12. I hear the world.

They heft the scull like a tortoise
shell and gently touch it to water.
They hold oars and take places and
wait for commands. Soldiers willing
to die for greater good of the boat.
Row. Poetry comes to life as the light
reflects 8 men rowing as 1. Like poetry
it looks effortless. Smooth and smart
it's a ballet of boys rising against odds
to become men worth rowing crew.

The writers who dare put thoughts to page
which might be loved, hated or worst ignored.
The unrecognized millions of us who dare to
speak our truth against tides and say **** it.
I admire us all and will always say **** it.
Rip our tongues out and we write in blood.

The world I know is black and white.
Food is bland and love impossible.
If I smile it's by accident not joy.
He sterilized an ice pick and mind ******
me until he found my identity and killed it.
Lobotomy banished my demons and my self.

I don't know what they've done to you, my love.
    They claim they fixed you but I fear they stole
    your essence, your flame that burned too bright
    but kept us both warm in the bitterest winters.
    You look almost the same as before except your
    eyes seem vacant. Both seeing and blind together.
    I miss your outbursts of passion that thrilled
    and scared me. They always ended in mad *******.
    Now we don't ride the bed together. I tuck you in,
    a kiss and pulling a sheet over you like a shroud.

Written by BJ Donovan

We bought a broken dog
and took him to our broken home
to live with this broken family.
We tried to fix him with broken
training. I was too broken to get
it right. The more I yelled the more
broke we got. I had a drunken insight
one evening walking him in a full moon.
He reminded me of me in my childhood.
I saw things through our broken eyes
and held him close. I promised I'd fix us.
He saved us both from broken lives.