I look in my mirror and talk
to the old man staring at me.
Why are you smiling? Death
is not far away. We wasted
our best years. We chased
her and lived in bars and
racetracks and funerals of
broken souls just like us.
We keep smiling and tuck
another Ace in our sleeve.

Set up the chess board for us.
String barbwire between us.
Introduce Gatling guns to the battle
and make it a meat grinder and weeks
become months become years and it
seems there are no pieces left to save.
Widows and orphans and lovers all
weep for their ghosts in our cellars.
The broke men who returned had
lost limbs and most of their minds.

Do you still have a pulse and goodness in your heart?
Do you have loved ones? Do you have regrets?
Do you have failures? Do you wish upon stars?
Do you scoff at Disney? Yeah, me too.
Let's live our real lives from this second on.
Let's meet in bars and dance naked and
huff and puff in bed and let us die
in our ****** with abandon.
While they all live on
down in the street below.

In some long ago mall in a photo booth
we left proof of undying love you kiss
my cheek and I smile happier than ever.
I have it in my wallet 30 years later.
I write these lines looking at young lovers
who've forgotten how to really love.

She and I shared a heartbeat.
We loved the same ice cream
and music and movies and
wanted kids and to elope and
hated our parents but loved us.

We had a fight.
He was tired and spent
and I was frisky and bent.
I felt rejected. Ugly and fat
and my insecurities lashed out.

What are the rules?
Who has the high ground?
Who falls on the sword?
Who breaks the silence?
He moved out and I lost.

I always wanted to make
  everyone laugh out loud.
  I'd slip and fall down on
  purpose so they'd love me.

Roadmap to painless suffering.
Do penance for just being born
through a birth canal into Coney Island
where everything is fun
and Leave it to ****** Church
gives ****** for communion.
Embrace the fog and forget you
ever doubted. Drive your bus.
Deliver us all to our evils.
Punch transfers to mortal sins.

What stage could contain my passion?
What life could the bard write for me?
What lover could tame my wicked  lust?
I'll swallow a pill of my sins and die
while the world spins on its axis
in the darkness and stars guide us.
Bury me in the shade of an oak tree.
Visit me and I'll whisper secrets.

Like me all you want.
I think you're swell.
I think you're funny.
I like how you smell.
I like your taste in music,
your wonderful cooking
and the cut of your jib and
how you're good looking.
The L word is a hex upon
the you and us and me.
I like you almost enough
to **** the guarantee

We burn bridges.
We burn us in effigy.
We burn crosses with
no feelings of anger
just ignorant as sheep.
We burn brightest in love
and kindness we share.
We burn to ashes at the
world's end facing
fierce fire together
exiting this paradise we
surrender to the flames.

If you and I were in the vicinity
of the same age I'd invite you to
get coffee. It's an invite to be lovers
but now I'm just a ***** old man.

Blink and you might finally see the truth.
Perched on a throne of wasted years you're
out of time. Your machine is broken down.
Are you scrap, cremated or buried?
Did you have a god? Were you an atheist?
We'll pray for your soul just in case.

I think of the night we met
  and drink an ocean of wine
  to put me down and meet you
  all over again. I'd die for it.

Blink and you might see yourself in madness.
Spent years are stacked like ash beneath you.
You notice the hourglass is almost out of sand.
Mirrors are cruel reminders of sagging flesh and
missing hair and canyons in aged faces.
Death is the final madness after all.

Launch your poems into unknown
waters. Pick your top 10 faves and
send them off to the great beyond.
Leave this nest and find true flight.

He hid in the bedroom I grew up in.
He showed Himself years later when
I visited my parents at 6 Alcott and
slept in my old bedroom. He was there
and made me wonder about all of it.
I put him in my shaving kit and
kidnapped our savior. He haunts
me in my cups every night. I hold him.

What good are they now? Today pales in their lights.
We live for Early Bird Specials and matinees.
We are cursed with memories of years ago.
So many lovers in the 60's and up all night
******* and smoking and drinking and ******
to help us sleep to do it all again tomorrow.

No real commitment. Not a burial.
  Just flurries, enough to excite
  her knees apart for a time or two
  and moves on leaving her with child.

I'll die as many times as it takes to
finally meet you the next time I live.
I live in your vast night full of stars
and your gravity keeps me close to you.

Let Kellee live. Take her cancer
and if it needs to be someplace put
it it in me. I've spent most of life.
All I have is loose change and she
needs Time. It's Yours to give.
Just do me this favor, God?
I see. You don't do favors and
she dies. Why bother with God?

I'm over served and under read.
   I'm almost every poet ever lived.
   We thrive in squalor and denim
   and body odor and the stink of us.
   We've been banished from polite
   society until we are published,
   feted and rude to ******* snobs.
   The rich love slumming with us.

Earth spinning like a top
    clowns running to stay put
    don't mention the trenches
    and amputations and rats who
    nibble on our numb legs as we
    try to sleep in muck and wonder
    which lucky men will die tonight?
    Let's not talk about it anymore.

You might want to ask for my
  blessing someday. I ask little.
  Be kind. Be a gentleman. Hold
  her hand when she needs it.
  Give her your coat in the cold.
  Protect her from her monsters.
  Know she'll never deceive you.
  Trust her love. It is absolute.

I see my naked body on the stainless steel.
They drain my blood out while
pumping formaldehyde in me.
I'm dressed in my black suit.
They make me up like a *****
so I might look alive again.
Friends never see the corpse.
They only see their memory.

I think your synapses and wires and circuits
are state of the art. Your beauty is flawless.
You're a '57 Chevy with a 4 in the floor and
a V8 engine that screams along the highways.

We met in an airport bar on our ways to who
cares anyway? We fell in love and cancelled
flights and left it all to the carrion eaters.
The circus was in town. We went and never left.

I haven't been inside a church
since my first marriage was annulled
after 2 kiddos and 5 bored years and
enough money to get some catholic
upper management to sign off on it.
I was lonely and cold on xmas eve so
I stood at the back of a packed church
midnight slightly drunk and nostalgic
for when I believed in youth's lies.
Black and white was true. Color is
blended into whatever you want it.
The play was comfort. The body of
Christ stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Some things never change, thank God.

It can't be silenced. It echoes
louder than thunder and guilt.
It roars inside the conscience
and makes us all beg for mercy.

I know his old face from photos.
Crevasses and dried memories and
ancient women cracked smiles and
prunes and peach pits and the most
magnificent poet of his and my day.
He is dead yet alive on my pages.
We live in his age of anxiety so
little read but known in the gut.

"I've been with saints.
I've been with sinners.
They both ruin my knees".
She told me that later.

Just a drop of blood between
me and death. I'm nailed
to your **** cross after
I was soundly flailed.
Who fears my words
enough to **** me?
Who fears the world
enough to free me?

I don't crave attention like other poets.
    I couldn't care less about your opinions.
    You never read my poems anyway. Too long
    or short or blah been done to death yeah.
    I never was published and I'll die on a toilet
    in black and white like Elvis. I'm just you.

Step off a bus and see the
little pieces of you in a storefront
shattered mirror and wonder why you
can't be whole like everyone else.
Then take another ****** to put the
thought back to sleep so you can go
to your shrink appointment.
Get another script for sanity.

I was posed in the bathtub naked
  with a razor on my wrist to die
  the phone rang and went to machine
  my mom said "we hope you're on meds
  take care we love you and I'll call
  tomorrow to check up. I love you."
  I loved my mom more than god but
  I cut big veins and died after all.

On an altar of fierce desire we
  two virgins devoured each other
  on a blanket in the tall grass
  of Winton Woods park.
  Woman Blood
  Man *****
  One for just an instant
  and a spark created life
  that changed our world
  forever and all we cared
  about were baby names.
Kathleen Ann.

We have a type. We are mad as hatters
but crazy in love. Yin yang.
We burst into flames at happy hour
screaming about nothing anyway.
We swallow the fire and break the bed
and wake entwined in noon's mad sun.

We met at mile marker 237.
Maine. You were tough enough
to go the distance and we both
dragged us to the final mile.

I need you tonight.
I need your dark love
the love I never had.
Drug to fill this hole
stab my vein and give
me the poison I need.
Hold me close tonight
and never let me go.

You floated wild on the wind
landing weightless on my life
and cracked my world to pieces.
No family's safe from ******,
coquettish nubile kitten who
drowns me in cheap perfume.

He was a cousin born with a brain tumor
they removed but left him most befuddled.
He came to visit in Charleston's edges where
we didn't have a **** thing we didn't provide.
I was the girl who worried about everything.
Petty Bette they called me but **** them all.
What if he falls off the porch and gets hurt?
Don't fret, child, give him a piece of string
and he'll trouble nobody. Amen. He spent the
rest of the day pondering that string like
it held the answers to the universe. I think
that string might be the boy's God almighty.
The lord works in mysterious ways I'm told.
When I die in my fog I'll ponder that string.

Empty wine bottles and cigarette butts.
  Old pictures of us in love and babies.
  Dust rests on every surface like death.
  I don't feel anything. I'm mostly dead.
  The only living thing is a keyboard where
  I pound tears into my coffin one at a time.

I hope we did you proud.
  Mike died young of cirrhosis
  I live on in alcoholic haze
  no connection with the living
  just a **** or two and meet
  another **** in some dive bar
  where your ghost cheers for
  conquests without a heart.

Hide your fear behind your
  beautiful smile and your
  bruises under makeup.
  Your beast has you trapped
  with gobs of babies you had
  and Christ I want to rescue
  the lot of you but he'd con
  the system and I'd be crucified
  and you'd be ostracized and that
  cruelty let loose would win the day.

Kathy
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  of our kitchen
  I found my new soulmate
  I'm leaving you and the kids
  to write a Great American Novel

  Betsy
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  of your dorm room
  our last kiss and
  I'm off to Boston
  to discover myself.

  Georgine
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  of my garret
  a broken fist I put in a wall
  I'm jealousy's beast of burden
  I won't bother for my stuff. I'm sorry

  Terry
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  of my latest *******
  I'm just another *****
  gather your stuff, bye
  why do I keep dying inside?

  Lynette
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  Nashville new job, we're over
  I'll mail your stuff.
  you were the cruelest month
  still I couldn't set you free

  Jayne
  I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  always
  no cure for romantics
  who believe in miracles
  and impossible loves.

I'm an old man with my young man memories
  that would make a ***** blush after all.
  Lots of ***** and naked and *** and more
  was how it unfolded and I loved them all
  and still do. I know I can't reach back to
  say hello. Some of them blame me for their
  unfulfilled lives with empty wombs but I
  can't save me and can't save them after all.

We are poets. We are emotional to extremes.
      We love more and hate more and suffer most
      of all.  We feel everyone's pain and write it
      in our blood for you. You're welcome.

I'm aching naked
  in the raw dawn
  of your dorm room
  our last kiss and
  I'm off to Boston
  to discover myself.

I was conceived in the wrong womb.
  That's my life in a nutshell.
  It was one I never wore well.
  Greenhills, OH. Suburbia writ large.
  Lovely family and all but Bumpkinville
  so boring I took up smoking 8th grade.
  A swimming pool but I craved an ocean.
  I wanted a boardwalk and carneys and girls
  bold enough to kiss me like I needed.
  I wanted canyons of skyscrapers to wander
  and junkies and perverts and hookers who
  knew the price of meat. I wanted a library
  with every book ever writ held out for me
  to devour and digest so I'd be smarter than
  my father and teachers and the *******
  Parish priests who loved their altar boys.

Did you ever see the perfect woman?
I did. She was always on a movie screen
and larger than life itself. She shimmered
and spoke loud like a goddess might.
The light was perfect for her and I lost
my heart that night in the dark and swore
I would look forever to find her and I'd
kiss her in a final scene every night.

An institution offering shelter and support
to people who are mentally ill. Marriage.
We're all nuts! We're animals with urges we
can't control. We might as well fling ****
all over the place and parade red ***** to
the masses so they'll get we love them all.