Free! I won't have to walk the dogs.
I won't have to put the garbage out.
I won't worry if I can sleep or not.
Am I a drunk? Doesn't matter now.
The guilt that hangs heavy like moss
from the branches of my soul is gone.

I drool wearing the crown
and a bunch of people dry
my chin. I must matter but
I have no idea why. I just
want to blow stuff up. I have
cannons I aim at France and
order them fired and clap
and laugh at silly wars.

I love Love's Flame. I don't understand
where the fierce heat of her beginning
goes over time. I do my best to love
in Love's ashes. I dig for our lust.
I find spent love and empty hearts
yearning for another forest fire.

I can't remember your name.
I can remember my cruelty.
I was broke and didn't know why.
I left you in a rich neighborhood.

I'm older and wiser and fixed again.
I'm a kind owner of a rescued dog.

I remember the day we drove all over
looking for our perfect graves. We were
18 and determined to never say goodbye.
We settled for under a strong Oak in
fertile ground where our souls grow.
We swore to die together in one grave.

A cup I fill with coffee in the morning
  or with wine in the afternoon til' sleep.
  A needle she fills with magic potions
  that make her many ghosts for pleasures.
  A razor that calls like sirens from rocky
  shores to slash a vein and join her chorus.

I'm 71 and want another lover
who can drink my wine and laugh
at my jokes and dance in the dark
while I kick her shins and hold her tight
and she shares the smell of her hair
and we lie naked in bed and ****
like teens and never act our age.
I'm an absolute beginner and I'll
love you forever. Just keep smiling
then there's nothing more I need.

She found the love of her life.
They move into their love home
and build their nest and begin
to compromise and give up a piece
here and there and lose bits of them
until they look in a mirror and see
strangers and wonder where they
went. She's gone.

A mob lives in my head some nights
screaming like my angry lovers sounding
like sirens echoing down alley ways
going to emergency or going to jail
when I try to sleep at night.

   They shout angry slogans and
   scream ******* all night long.
   Sirens sound like bitter wives
   whining loud as white noise now,
   and some lives matter sometimes.
   Some never mattered in the womb.

I see him in my dreams.
He's not an old god on a throne.
He's an eye in my mind's eye.
I see him as he sees me and
His creation vast and alone
wanting to understand what's
behind the great curtain of OZ.
He died and we're his dreams.

Plant your flag in your soil of choice.
I don't love or hate you for politics.
I like you if you like me. I'll laugh
at your jokes and love your poems.

Raise your cups in a toast
to all the ones we love.
Here's to our mistakes
and those we made right.
We're human after all.
Here's to you and me.
Early love is easy. Toast
to those who suffered love
and carried on through years
and sleep snoring together.

I have no time to listen
to your supposition
of the conversation
of your observation
when you found her ****
swimming in an attitude
she thought it amusing
and started refusing
to name her admirer
who set her on fire.

The streets are alive with barkers
  and for rent by the hour lovers for
  any taste. Cross dressers and trannys
  confuse your drunken *** with desire.
  You ignore your family and catechism
  kneel in her church and eat the host.

Drink a toast to all us liars!
We keep the peace in marriage.
We keep love alive in old age.
We sleep cuddled in anger.
We never forget but never
remember as time dulls it all.

Lets have beers and shots and
share metaphors and broke hearts
and write poems to bring tears and
laughter and bury the dead finally.
Barkeep, bring us similes and drinks
to keep this wild madness alive.
We'll dedicate one to suffering wives
and suffering children and ourselves.
There's always something for us.
Poems cease at last call with periods.

It's so good but wreaks havoc
on my tongue. Like a lover
who breaks my back and tears
my life to pieces with kids who
are orphans from Dickens's
world. Chess pieces after all.

Butcher of the poor in black hoods.
  The projects destroy futures for most.
  Stacker of bodies, stormy, brawling, cruel.
  City of bully's with big shoulders.
  They say you are wicked and I know.
  You are fierce as a mad dog foaming
  through white teeth, tongue lapping,
  laughing as a young man laughs
  under the terrible burden of living.
  He cries stunned as his blood spills.

I look the same day to day like the
dogs and cat and cereal and toast.
I wake a stranger every day afraid
of different outcomes with unknown
villains plotting my demise. You are
the only constant in this universe.
You are my sword and armor and
resolve. You are my Bedlam with
restraints and pills and cruel men
with straitjackets for my comfort.
Strength is deep inside us all.
It's our ever present Hallelujah.

It lives in the world as we,
stealing what was ours and
living in it as its own now.
It won't even notice what no
longer is we surrendering
cells the universe collapsing.

Raise your beers to us common men.
We wear denim and carry lunches to
rough jobs with rough hands packed
by rough wives in rough drafty homes.
We raise kids with rough love who can
endure in rough times and love men
with rough ways. We are common folk.
We're no better than the rest of you.

Do I bend my knee at your altar?
You are a God to print my poetry?
I stand in my familiar shadow and
let our alphabet fall where it will.

******'s sin is mine alone.
  She never understood her power.
  Bubble gum and puffy **** and
  I desired her perfect flower.

  Her mother died to save her
  but she saved me instead.
  I brought her to my bed for comfort,
  the night she finally bled.

  ****** floats wild on the wind
  her cheap perfume my seduction.
  She died birthing my sin and
  baptizing our *******.

I hate myself for wanting you.
Wrong is such an aphrodisiac.
The price is steep but brass rings
are in reach once in lifetimes and
your beauty leaves me no choice.
The deed will leave me catatonic.

I live inside a mirror today
where everything's reflection.
Kiss my shadow's shadow.
Break my heart. It shimmers
in  puddles wrinkled in wind.
You only break a looking glass
and suffer 7 years bad luck.
I curse you with all my love.

I watch them under streetlamps
strutting near naked in tall heels.
They remind me of every fantasy
I ever knew and I desire them now.
Married far too long in lean times
I want love's lies in motel rooms.

We rattle the cages in which we live,
  not the poorest but near that bottom.
  Our boots are always muddy and hands
  callused from working in the trenches.
  Denim is our uniform and we hide anger
  behind our smiles and booties on boots
  so as not to soil your perfect houses.
  We work hard and don't need your gyms.
  We drink like you every night but we
  have cheap wine and beer while you
  toast with scotch and fancy martinis.
  Old pickups we drive on a prayer and
  hope our kids will prosper like I know
  you hope yours will get into Harvard.

Plath

  What about the children? You **** a new ******
  and leave us in a dustbin. Dedicate your book to
  your worshiped *****. Soon enough we'll be dust.
  Children's cries are mute in lust's thick walls.
  She sealed the children’s room with tea towels and tape,
  turned on the gas in the oven, and laid her head inside.

I throw pebbles at your window.
We need to talk. You come down
and we sit in the dark and shyly
hold hands and touch cheeks and
embrace with all our hearts and
make love in the night again.

I dress invisible and tiptoe to my spot
where I wait quiet with a rifle ready
to **** a deer. I look for my manhood
in death's dominance, a deer in my truck.
I drink a six pack. Country music plays.
In bed we ****. I cry quiet for the deer.

I eat your poetry like ice cream.
It settles in orbits in my mind.
A universe of words swirling
into meanings understood by
the lost souls called poets.

It offers cheap beds for
cheap thrills for white trash.
I love the ****** who love me.
They keep it clean with Mr. Nix.
The Waffle House is nearby
for a cheap date night after.

What was poetry for?
Did it change the world?
Will it stop her from leaving?
Poetry seems less and less as
new decades invade our dying days.
I might as well recite ABC's.

When your lies stack up like kindling
and she finally strikes a match and it
all bursts into fury that will not stop
until life is nothing but cold dead ash.

We poets watch the world our eye
    glued to a microscope. We pick it
    apart and we lecture in slow motion.
    We examine nerve ends as blood explodes
    when your soul mate breaks your heart.
    We've felt your pain and suffer with you.
    We are undertakers dressed as clowns.
    We are clowns who bury your dead
in irony. They never looked so good?
Poets always die misunderstood.

We all exist from random atoms
pieces made from star dust
billions of years ago and a
billion years out of reach.
We dig coal from the Earth
and plant our seeds into her
soil and love our women and
plant our seeds into them.
The seasons come and we
dance in barns Saturdays
and pray on knees in church
Sundays 3 blind mice eating
our harvest in silos all that's
left to hold onto after all.

Church choir grabs my heart and soul.
My anger disappears. I reach for all
your hands to help me to Monday's
challenge to help my child die easy.

I was ****** into a womb with
love's angry *******.
A terrible spark set me afire
on my way to Greenhills.
1949
I was born in March like a mad
hatter with no name in anger's nest.
Dad screamed discontent PTSD
yet to be diagnosed. WW2 flack
floating in our home unknown
we found foxholes anywhere.
You won't remember me.
I won't remember you as well.
Our features were melting into
the surrounding darkness.

'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone'

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

We all have bunches of stories that
define us. We tell them in our cups
when truth comes easy forgotten in
morning. I stand naked for a moment.

We've been beat near to death
  Irish mules to pull English
  plows through rocks and clay.
  Steal our country at your peril.
  We keep our dignity and fight.
  Our pubs crawl with hatred.

No turkey neck or jowls or man *****.
   I was considered handsome and the girls
   all sought my company. I was picky then.
   The fall is always hardest for the vain.

4 am we kids are on the stairs
eager to see our bounty in the
living room. We've waited all
year and we might explode if
Mom and Dad don't let us see.
I'll die for your secret garden
an entrance into Eden at last.
In tall grass we surrender our
precious innocense and create
our **** all your rules child.
We always played at love but
the kids are the ones who pay.

A pound of flesh an ounce of truth
  scales of justice fool our youth.
  Hammer and sickle we all embrace.
  The clingers gone without a trace.
  I'll die without complaint for Marx.
  We change the world with red sparks.

I always saw you on my horizon.
I went to meetings and confessed
helplessness and drank bland coffee
and ate stale donuts and smoked
an endless chain of cigarettes.
I walked twelve steps in your shoes.

I missed my family and relapsed.
They kept my bar stool for me and
I drank to our health and you.
I'll see you in my dreams hidden in
liquor's fog. Will I ever know normal?
Maybe when I've had a hair of the dog.

They can be anyone or anything you want.
  They walk the streets igniting fantasy.
  They beckon us with every trick they know
  we hunger for. Set our world on fire again.

I watch the ****** on 5th St. dressed to ****
  circle over the wounded with starving appetites
  for all the sweets on display and perfume to up
  temptation for another 5 or 10 for Waffle House.
  Love is easy with fixed price and no strings.
  All I want is someone to hold onto. I still wait.

Needed ASAP! A brain, a heart and courage.
  I'm a simple farm girl swept up in a tornado
  and landing on and killing some old witch with
  a cold heart and ruby slippers. Dorothy. Kansas.

I've lived all your lives.
I've felt all your joys and
suffered your pains.
My poet is empathy who
shares your shadows and
neighborhoods and *****
dishes and ******* and
broken hearts and promises
made among tangled webs
we navigate so poorly.

Boston. January. Temperature near zero.
  You had no heat. Naked under covers our
  breath smokes in passion not to be denied
  like a fire breathing dragon called Love.