I stand naked in a strange light
in my bathroom in the mirror
looking 35 but I'm 79 so what
magic does a young lover cast?
She thinks I'm moon and sun.
At death's door I've just begun.

Church bells are mute this time.
Carols are quiet in a silent night.
Tree lights are dim and children
laugh without mirth. It's a funeral.
Christ was stillborn to a ****** and
carpenter in a Holiday Inn Express.
Return all the toys and ***** the candles
and pour the eggnog down the drain.
We might as well burn the churches
and sell the Vatican holdings to feed
the world's starving and clothe the
naked and cure the sick and all of that.

I reach into my ice bucket.
I feel like the Titanic ruined
as I cover the bergs with wine
and crash into my destiny again.

It's a creator's diary of our
life's times start and stop.
He keeps meticulous records
like an OCD god might do.
He might die. A bigger god's
bigger book has his entry.

Anger Leaves Jagged Wounds
  Its wounds are horrible, never razor clean.
  Like a monster's dripping jaws tearing at
  the flesh with a mad hunger and thirst for
  blood never satisfied, always wanting more.

     Wounds Leave Jagged Anger
  A child is rained upon by anger until he
  crawls to safety in a dark silence of his
  own creation where he ponders how unfair
  it is and learns to lash out in his own anger.

Where the slaves were auctioned is
      a market selling trinkets to fools
      who don't understand why the black
      man who carries their bags to their
      rooms won't look them in the eye and
      thanks them for the tip and dismissal.

I'm a part time atheist
praying to a 9-5 god
I fall in love with strangers
everywhere and always
I try to live outside my skin
until it drags me into rehab
I can't live in here and now
or then and there until I
find me inside a mirror
take a selfie with Alice.

I lost faith in my religion and wander.
      Who can forgive my sins? Who can cast my
      demons from me? Who can bless me at death?
      Can I never be buried in sacred ground?

      Now my faith is in pills and ***** and soft
      places with perfume and happy endings.
      My church is a bar with a pastor named Tia.
      She speaks in tongues with a snake that bites.

      Her venom is the sweetest thing I've tasted.
      She brings me to my knees and I bow to her.
      I drink her blood and eat her in communion.
      I wake calm with my savior. I found my faith.

Like used rubbers old lovers haunt my bed.
  As I drift to sleep I hear words like Love,
  Need, Forever, Till Death. I take a ******.
  I sleep a fitful sleep and wake with ghosts.

  We eat breakfast and shower and I
  have to get to work. They visit me
  through the day and remind me
  to never disregard another heart.

  After work I go to a bar stool and
  proceed to lobotomize my brain with
  alcohol and smokes and small talk.
  The laughter burns bright and I forget.

  We cab it to my place and drunk and naked
  play at love forever for an hour or two.
  She goes and I try to sleep with the ghosts
  but their numbers! I take all the ******.

We were in a riptide
  catching our breaths.
  15 and nobody home we
  jumped off sin's steep cliff
  and practiced 'til it was right.
  I fell in love. You loved *******.

can you save me from fires of hell?
were you born poor in a lean to barn?
do you talk to the animals and heal sick?
are you celibate? are you a catholic priest?
who was your father? was he a pharaoh?
was your mother really a ******?
did you attend Catholic School?
are you a time traveller without a watch?
are you mostly carbon, mr. christ?
did you die ****** nailed on that cross?

Come closer into the light.
  I need to smell your beauty
  to quiet demons in my head.
  God's tears cleanse our souls.
  Come closer still, touch me,
  calm my tremors still my hands.
  Closer hold me closer and we'll
  transcend broken in our world.
  Dance closer, watch the stars.
  Hear death's music ever closer.

madness

the dearth of death
is birth and breath
when a broken bed
betrays my stead
petulant reaper
becomes my keeper
when madness rules
this house of fools
I'll always pledge
this razor's edge
to my neck's vein
to spare you pain.

I'll live alone in my madness
in a world of my own invention.
I won't ever compromise or admit
you're right and I'm wrong. I eat
what I want when I want it. I
don't believe in god, only Math.

I lie like a five year old. I'm 71.
     I'm like the freaking beacon of truth.
     I can't eat anything that died in pain.
     When I **** we both lie dead and squirm.
     Never cheat at war or tax returns. Always
     pay parking tickets and buy tags for pets.

There's a place among the living
   we've provided for the dead. Remains
   in graves we never walk on. Bad luck.
   Superstition keeps our dead harmless.

   I died helping the sick and dying. Ha!
   I actually died in my sleep. I was dreaming
   of being strapped in a guillotine during the
   French Revolution and I lost my head.

   I've lived a good and bad life. Depends on
   who writes the moral code. Do we condemn
   our lustful desires? Do we arrest for stealing
   a loaf of bread or meds for our children?

   Society has a lot to answer for. Who died
   and left you boss? My chemistry and my
   biology are my puppet masters. I am a naked
   ape who has been "Blessed" with self awareness.

I was ****** and drunk at 3am.
My conscience called my phone.
We ****** and never answered.
I crawled back to my quiet womb
with black light and little room.
I woke in hell's fierce sunlight.

I love Love. The idea. The rush. The chase.
I love the act. I love the lust. I love the end.
Love always has a timer.
Love always has a headstone.

I have a bottle of tequila and
an attitude and straight razor
with the bleak night going on
for miles to endless horizons.
I'm looking for a motel where
I can rest a weary soul at last.

Comrade, our fragile freedoms are gone.
We just don't know it yet. We've been
betrayed by our politicians who sold
their empty souls for bags of silver.
We send our sons to die in their wars.
They drink Champagne toasting wins
and dismiss massacres as bad luck.
Where did it all go wrong? We pay.

I'm ageless as the ruins of Rome.
I live in the white cliffs of Dover.
I'm the Pyramids and Great Wall.
I'm the tiny voices in your head
that never leave you alone and
chant your failures out loud in
bed with lovers never satisfied.
I'm Death's brutal echo forever.

Not all love is lost as time can't heal all wounds.
   Lust has no use for time beyond a fortnight. It withers.
   Keep your heart under lock and key but your knees apart
   for my midnight wine stoked visit to your sacred chamber.

Paint me in watercolor.
  Bring me back to life.
  Hues of laughter and desire,
  light inside brilliant light
  husky brawling of youth
  half naked, sweating, proud.

I bring you invisible to the party to
   meet my friends on an autism spectrum.
   They drink every third beer and **** on
   the hour. They avoid eye contact and guess
   your IQ and love your smell and fear you.
   They like us. They invite us to come again.

Night defeats the sun
    and hangs its pale imposter
    in its own sky
    to wax and wane
    and woo young lovers
    under the boardwalk.

    Monsters hide under beds
    while skeletons fill closets
    and life gets lived always
    hanging in the balance.
    Dawn beats back the dark and
    makes us live another day.

Your beautiful corpse reminds me
of the kindest lovers I abandoned.
You're still Anne from death by gas.
Hair and makeup perfect after all.
Your poetry had you rowing out to sea
to die in saltwater ugly and shriveled.
You could never sacrifice your beauty
even for commitment to fierce suicide.

Empire Builders

They sit on couches with the Mrs.
watching TV and planning tomorrows
thousand chess moves to dominate the
market and destroy their competition.

I've got no time for your suffering.
I've got no time for your struggles.
No time for your ugly riots and fires.
I pour the gas and set myself in flames.

We've all gone crazy lately.
I don't wear a tie or cut my hair.
I smoked some hash and lost my
mind a little bit. Save me from
a world I don't recognize anymore.
I dress like a clown and eat drugs
to keep me up and down and level.
Friends are straight or hippies each
seeking their very own Nirvana and
I walk a tightrope above insanity.

I wanted to make you proud.
Your first born boy namesake.
March 23,1949. You were back
from war nerves on edge and
work was scarce and you kept
exploding in rage and we all
vibrated with fear and felt
your pain and war's hell and
pitied and loved you always.
Mom closed the windows in
summer so the neighbors
wouldn't hear and we went
to our rooms and mastered
the art of disappearing.

Life's a lucky penny found then lost
in life's day to day mayhem of death.
Hashtag all you want. Protest and riot.
History has taught us no lives matter.
Wars waste it. Plague turns it black and
the stench fills the streets. Hunger won't
feed it and it dies on its own vine. Life
kills itself. It's fool's gold after all.

We drink stale coffee and eat
stale doughnuts and chant
stale prayers and stale hope.
12 steps are our savior.
Find your own way out.
Behavior modification works.

I'm gone inside of moments
and lost inside of days and
live inside of hours with
chores wishing I was dead.

Pills make me happy when I'm sad, and tired
  so I can sleep, and wide awake in mornings.
  Pills help me when anxiety steals my breath.
  Pills  save me from a cuckoo's nest lobotomy.
  Pills make me feel normal like the rest of you.
  Pills let me feel lust on our special date night.

Write your hearts out.
Tap dance on mean streets
throwing sparks into never.
Your words die wordlessly
rejected corpse buried in
The New Yorker's graveyard.

Gangs of doctors a
hundred patients deep,
cancer is the currency
dying in their sleep.
We don't make promises.
We ask your permission.
Sign the waiver. There's
no cure maybe remission?
Promise us that you'll
always take your pill.
Most importantly arrange for
loved ones to pay your final bill.

I was born a turtle. Kids put me on
the road and watched me squashed.
I was born a parrot and captured and
broke into an odd pet in your cage.
I was born a duck and cruelly drowned
for your convenience. My father was
at war and lost his kindness and I
was squashed, caged and drowned

You counsel me to choke on the
**** he stuffs in my throat and
be the wife a husband needs.
I'm in a night sea in a fragile boat
rowing to a god I hope listens
but I take on water and drown.

Jesus ******* Krist. Who just killed
  JFK? They blew his brains all over
  Jackie's pink outfit and pill box hat.
  We all died with him that fatal day
  in Dallas. LBJ and Hoover hated him
  and us for loving him. They shot us.

I lost faith in my religion and wander.
      Who can forgive my sins? Who can cast my
      demons from me? Who can bless me at death?
      Can I never be buried in sacred ground?

      Now my faith is in pills and ***** and soft
      places with perfume and happy endings.
      My church is a bar with a pastor named Tia.
      She speaks in tongues with a snake that bites.

      Her venom is the sweetest thing I've tasted.
      She brings me to my knees and I bow to her.
      I drink her blood and eat her in communion.
      I wake calm with my savior. I found my faith.

In anything? Me or you or us?
Kids or Uncle Reggie's cancer?
War's brutal destruction?
Love's gentle healing?
A kind word to strangers?
A smile on the train and
laughter among the pain?
Dreams? Forever after?

I wish I could describe
the totality of their sterility
of their banality
but it killed my brain.

Let feelings pass through like weather
    and never mind why caged birds sing.
    Guillotines left talking heads blinking.
    These things are meant to be forgotten.
    My people were starved in Ireland by
    the British who sold the crop instead.
    These things are meant to be forgotten.
    If we let hate marinate we'll burn in
    our own hell we create with gasoline
    and clubs and guns. Only ashes are left.

Birds cawing. Rats gnawing. Cats clawing. Craving.
  Bells ringing. Choirs singing. Dead bringing. Score.
  ****** faking. Thief's taking. Mischief making. Under.
  Alice small. Alice tall. Red Queen's fall. Floating.
  Birds cawing. Rats gnawing. Cats clawing. Craving.
  Death calling. End despair. Overfill syringe. Shoot.
  Nirvana calling. Fingers reaching. Lips turn blue. Bye.
  Tears spilling. Prayers empty. Graves full. Grief.

There's a piece of the moon
floating in clouds tonight
like ships on a lonely sea.
I lost faith long ago and hope
to god I'm wrong. Save me.
I need a miracle, saving grace.

God help me in these godless times.
A black sabbath, corrupted holiness
inhabits our hearts and souls.
Sulfur from Satan delivers his kiss.

I live day shifts. You live night shifts.
   Lovers living through different lives.
   We have a grown girl and dogs and a cat.
   I want more and you want more. Goodbye.

I exist inside a tiny space of your heart
called my universe I'll never understand.
You blind me with your drunken rage.
I'll never see your stars inside my eyes.
I remember your taste and white heat
burning me as I go down in your flames.

What am I?
You can't fix it,
can't make them forget it.
You can't take it away from them.
You can only treat it with respect.
It's peoples' pain and they own it.

The late 60's were sirens singing from
  Ulysses rocky shores. We smoked their
  joints and dropped their acid and betrayed
  our other lives. We grew long hair and we
  were groovy and far out, dressed as peacocks
  we ate from the feast until we had our fill.

Someone will die tonight.
Someone will be born and
someone will be admitted
to a mental hospital.
Someone's going to jail
and the City eats them.