There's a terrible storm in my heart.
    It's fire and ice. There's no in between.
    Love memories and dead ones. I laugh and cry.
    I live the best I can in the middle of it
with vultures always in my sky.
How I wish for you today, Preston.

I love/hate the dance of romance.
I feel like I'm in a house of mirrors.
Nothing is what it seems. Where am I?
Is this love or a bent reflection?
Are we pretending at love in the dark
touching then surrendering our flesh?

Staring into death's eye is final.
I have no need for secrets or guilt
or hate for anyone who ever hurt me.
Scars don't survive dead. Scabs on the
heart are delicate food for the worms.
Earth's a distant star where souls meet.
I'm a jar of ash on your mantle. You
think me alive until your turn to die.

****** river flowing red
deflowered on her bed
by a ******* brutal beast
long gone after his feast

Promise forever love.
You might promise the moon and stars.
Promise never any deadly cancer
or acne or dying in our bed.
Don't worry. I know your promise
is as vacant as mine. Love is a lie.

I found a photo booth picture of us
  when we'd just met. We are beautiful.
  Our hearts are fireworks in our sky.
  We caught an instant of perfect love.

I'm hurt that no one ever thought
  highly enough about me to steal
  my identity. I wouldn't want to
  but I know how boring it all is.
  I'm not rich. I'm married to Jane.
  She's complex. She's wonderful and
  horrid. She's just like me. Complex.
  We bend. We roll our eyes. We see
  our flaws and ignore them anyway.
  Who wouldn't steal this identity?

I remember your touch and I hunger
like the night we became us on the
back stairs as the party faded away
into white noise and my heart beat
into yours and I knew my world just
fell to pieces and broken promises
and broken children were coming.
I relive it one second at a time.
I still look for you everywhere
hoping we can find the back stairs.

We sit on our bar stools in afternoon.
The only light is neon. Night or day?
It's all the same in here with our
fellow drunks. We've no shame.
We circle death day to day.
We put quarters in the jukebox
grinning like scarecrows in
rhythm with the old tunes
stirring memories of love and
marriage and baby carriage.
We were decent men back then.
Good fathers and husbands and
bread winners, hard workers.
The coal mines paid good then.
The mines went dry and we died.
I touch the tears on my pint and
think of your tears when you left.
I remember your touch and hunger.

One more glass of wine.
  Into my time machine I
  travel back before you die.
  We'll laugh until we cry!
  remembering, remembering...
  We agree death tops our fears.
  and morning overwhelms.
  I drown again in my sea of tears.

If I were a younger me
I'd steal you from your
so called life and show
you how we could live
without the fences. Lust
would be our guide to an
ending we'd always regret.
The wonders we'd know on
the way would be worth it.
Grand kids would never forget.

Delicate. Mother and child. Innocent need.
   Pure as fresh snow.

   Awkward. Hormones. Pimples.
   Weak flame. Growing.

   Fierce. Flesh desires flesh.
   Will not be denied.
   God ******.
   Furious. Quick temper.
   Let's not fight
   for just one night.


   Over and over.
   Marriage.
   Divorce.
   Again.
   Again.
   Again.

   Winter. Frozen stars.
   Ashes. Alone in a cold bed.

   Buried. Adjoining plots
   for frisky bones.
   Love never dies.

I have crazy dogs waking me.
  I fumble out of bed and ***.
  I feed the wild beasts and
  hold coffee with shaking hands
  from the night before wine.
  I walk them and pick up ****.
  One fine day they'll drag me
  to my grave chasing squirrels.

We'll gather in the backroom of a bar bringing 5 of our proudest poems/children and present them to the group of poets for brutal  yet gentle honesty. Adult beverages are available for the courage to throw our souls on the threshing floor.

I'm just a fool among fools.
   I'm invisible to the touch.
   I can be whatever you need
   for a month or two then I
   begin to melt like a Dali.
   I become the jealous child
   I am. Just 1 of 8 kids lost
   among the ******* litter.

You can keep your sun.
    My moon's on fire tonight.
    I'll keep the laughter and
    let you hold onto the pain.
    Pets are going to be our war.
    You take the house. I keep them.

Everyone is worried about my prostate.
Beautiful young women want me.
Every store has 100 dollars to give me.
People promise me a bigger **** and
a smaller flawless body with a pill.
I'm 70 but I can have better ***. No ****!

Appalachian range older than me
was where we played our music
to a bunch of college kids high as hell.
We miss our beds and loves and normal.
Porch 40 is where we hang our shingle.
Sylva is where our mail stacks up
and our true loves hold our hearts
gently in their own until we're home.

I see my breath and bright stars.
Wine keeps me warm while I wonder
at the grand scheme of it all.
Who painted this masterpiece for
the likes of me? God? Einstein?
Are we architects of these dreams?

Which lie will finally destroy
my love? I love the truth of you.
It's eroding each time you use.
White lies are turning darker as
our time together has a stench.
Be right back.You never returned.

3:00 am. I'm going to die tonight.
     I don't want to turn that light off.
     Let's live a little while longer
     and we might create perfect love
     and wake what lies dormant in us.
     Lust is life's great hallelujah.
     We'll **** in broken bed and not
     think of broken hearts as waves
     whisper of love and we drift off
     in impossible dreams to graves.

At war with my soul for years
  since I was an innocent child.
  Born with original sin, never
  had a chance with a stacked deck.

  Seven deadly sins my enemy.
  After puberty under constant
  barrage of heavy artillery.
  Pleasure can't breach ramparts!

  Maps useless, terrain unrecognized,
  Holy water torrents destroy minds,
  drive men insane with guilt.
  We crawl to confession seeking

  a place in line to heaven.  All
  we see is the horror of this war
  waged against us in our innocence.
  We can never forgive ourselves.

  We find salvation in ******, beer,
  cigarettes, Xanax, coke, ******.
  Numb our conscience until we wake.
  Take it from the top one more time.

They want to be heard for the poems.
Algorithms have no eye for Bukowski.
Dylan Thomas would have been ignored.
Genius has no formula to chalk on boards.
Poets want a public square to nail their
personal crucifixions and bleed out loud.

He stands behind the podium,
   grand and pigeon proud. Poet
   for the ages. Long dead but
   died young a poet of drunk
   appetites ******* with passion
   fitting a poet after all. Dylan.
   I try to die on your cross to
   write. I only kneel at the grave.

I shine as brightly as I can.
     You don't see me in your night.
     If I explode will you notice me
     as I die spectacular star death?

I shoot up and live death awhile.
  I keep dropping dead and come alive
  and die again and death holds the
  best dreams for us living zombies.
We lose families. We lose ourselves.
We wish prayers helped or AA or
sponsors or your heart and soul.
I dream of our first night *******.

I saw a dying brother bleed out.
   I saw a madman **** his flock.
   Parades celebrated the funerals.
   Little boys masquerading as men
   played war. Real men died for mud.
   Loved ones prayed their rosaries.
   No prayers were ever answered on
   our street. Gold stars filled sad
   windows. Widows cried in private.
   They never wanted to dance again.

You can't be too rich or too thin.
A throw away line from your youth
that took root in your psyche and
made you our anorexic beauty queen.
Porcelain skin we bow at your feet.
Reed thin and just enough love to
keep the masses at a safe distance.
You hold court at the discotheque.
You bring lovers home every night
but never feel that spark you need.
Trapped in your depletion you're
doomed to die already a skeleton.

He's dying in his bed above his bar
    where juke box plays soundtracks
    of life and people dance out loud
    laughing and living fierce desperate
    lives below his death bed. Life on fire!
    Reggie dies quiet. His bar closes
    for his Memorial. All his customers
    remember Reggie and forget bar tabs.

Lost love smells of rotting corpses,
  failed battles and the futility of war.
  I wake screaming. I never slept and
  the old grey man in my mirror smiles.
  I think of our magic times. I smell
your perfume. We'll dance in my cups.

I see a stone a leaf and a door. I knock.
  It opens and I float into clouds that make
  me step gently. I want to kiss everyone I
  have ever known except my wife. Yoko is
  in my mind beckoning. I belong to her now.

Fire made me a freak.
It kept you warm and
cooked your meals and
gave you light to read.
I kept you warm in bed.
I gave us food to eat and
wood to burn. Fire caught
me and made me a freak
with onion skin frail
as wrapping paper on
Christmas gifts for you.
I feel love and pity. Freak.

A magic box where all of your
ugliness and cruelty are forgiven
when you recite the sin list to
your priest and perform penance.
The guilt still lives in shadows
of the heart shaking foundations.

They know the finish line's in sight
  like Christmas morning running down
  the stairs to discover new treasures.
  Will they dream into another ******?
  Will the flat line alarm be their final
  farewell to a vast nothing? We'll see.

You're perfect.
I know I should love you.
I don't understand ways of
the heart and Cupid's cruelty.
I fell in love before and felt
betrayed by Eros.

If I pluck the strings of
   my worn out heart and it's
   as though an old man were
   leafing through an album
   with a ghost forgive me.
   I'm living in old photos.

I had no idea it was happening.
      The world caught fire and I blinked.
      My skin smelled like cooked meat.
      I was hungry and couldn't help myself.
      When I came to strapped down I thought
      I had died. I talked to you tomorrow.
      We spoke of beaches and sand and sun
      and salt that we would visit yesterday.

I beat you once. I'll beat you twice.
  I promise I won't but you'll set
  me off with a look and I will.
  You always ask for it you know?
  I'm a fragile brute, nitroglycerin.
  I love you but I never loved me.