Life isn't precious. It's comical.
It's a wonder the human race is
still here. We're addicted to any
thing that makes us high enough
to escape the dreary life we live.
We **** everything. We put ****
in our veins for a minute of peace.
We die to escape loneliness finally.

Love, hate, indifference don't
matter in this thing we live.
Passion moves mountains.
It can save hope we need
in these hopeless times.
We lose friends to what we
believe. We make new bonds
as we fight against this enemy.

The night is ending
   the light is bending
   into another day we  
   live as if we planned
   the whole **** thing
   all along but we know
   we're lost in riptides,
   swept up in tornadoes,
   we're dice tossed in a
   drunken frenzy crossed
   fingers and the house
   always wins. Hangovers
   are our mornings and
   a hair of the dog gets
   me to work on time for
   Friday donuts and smiles.

I gave you my heart but
    knew you couldn't keep it.
    I'm still expecting you to
    hold on to Love to a finish
    line that doesn't even exist.
    I set fire again and never look
    back. I smell the burning
    flesh. I hear familiar screams.
The burning flesh is mine alone.
The screams are in my head.

I'm 70 and still work the mines
to feed my soul and family.
It's all I have to hold onto.
My coal face is cracked like
the rocks we fight each day.
My friends are mostly dead
from black lung and cave ins.
I toast them with a shot
each night in my empty bed
and pray for death tomorrow.

Our crop failed another year.
Naught grows in dust and wind.
I'm weak with thirst and hunger
and have no more tears left.
I can bear doing without.
My hungry child's desperate
eyes bring me to a brink I never
knew existed. I'm perched on it.

5am we crowd in the rickety cage
   to take us down to hell's cold entry
   into the mines. We stoop and dig
   claws into the rock to drag coal
   into the carts we roll to a rich
   man's greed and we end our days
   in poor man bars swallowing the
   dust into our angry hearts where
   we keep score and wait for God.
   We sleep with our sacred wives.

We come from hopeless histories
  to America with hope in pockets.
  We work like madmen tireless to
  earn our keep and feed we Irish.
  I feed coal to iron furnaces and
  load cargo in ship's hot holds.
  We won't starve to death here.
  My great grandson scratches
  my story into your memory.

I am a man who doesn't
know how to love
no matter how many times
I try. I write poems
hoping my heart might be
captured by one love at last.
I am still not able to love.
I love impossible hearts.

I am a man who doesn't
know how to love
no matter how many times
I try. I write poems
hoping my heart might be
captured by one love at last.
I am still not able to love.
I love impossible hearts.

I wake each day in a house of mirrors.
I stand inside of a different me.
I see me ******* a *****
who begs me to love her
for the kid's sake. I can't.
I want a mirror to fool me.
I see my kind friend Joe
who always saw the good
and was killed picking up
a hitchhiker after all.
I want a mirror to fool me.
I see my father still wet
behind the ears flying
a bomber in a war as a pawn
for them who don't care.
I want a mirror to fool me.
I see my cousin with ancient
broken heart, the wound
that never heals, choose
slow suicide by *****.
I want a mirror to fool me.
I see a man who doesn't
know how to love a wife
no matter how many times
he tries. He writes poems.
I want a mirror to fool me.

Mad hatter. White rabbit. Tea party.
    Alice small. Alice tall. Cheshire cat.
    Hookah smoking caterpillar. Door mouse.
    The Red Queen. Steel yourself. LSD.
    Acid. Window pane. Loony tunes. Microdots.
    Tripping. Mind altering. I was then not.
    I have lucid moments. I'm catatonic.
    I just want to **** Alice again.

We're angry angels
   with broken wings
   and tortured souls.
   You think we'll save you?

There are just 3 things I need.
A heart and brain and courage
will conquer a world and fill
it with love, care and strength.

Please don't save me from myself
I have my needs and want them.
My shaking hand will write my song
just a ***** with his sharp pen.
The needle holds the promise
of a heaven and an Amen.

I was a catholic schoolboy, altar boy
  totally against abortion. I knocked up
  a cheerleader who still blows bubbles.
  I took her to planned parenthood. We
  lost our problem and were given condoms
  we don't use because we want to be close.

We all throw love at your feet
all you do is walk your street
strutting like the Queen of hearts
with all your pleasure arts.

I'm a little pink punk
    walking to the Waffle House
    with a stray dog named Wendy
    and it's love never in poetry.
    We have no white weddings and
    bride maids and bachelor parties
    or toasts or rice or noisy cans
    on a string or honeymoon. We
    have Motel 6 and Waffle House
    and tricks and dealers and us.

I love you inside your mind
  I love you outside your head.
  I love you in solitude or screaming
  stroking you gently or kissing thighs
  in dreams or nightmares bravely or
  shrinking in fear from your anger.
  I love you inside out and upside down
  north south east west night or day.
  I always love you most at 3AM while
  you gently snore and talk in your sleep.

I lived as long as I could.
Life wore me down day by day.
Pills and shrinks and shocks tried
to solve me. My poems put my
puzzled life together but all they
saw was crazy girl lost in modern
times without a north star. I
died with my head in their oven.

When the monsters come looking for
my heart you keep it hidden in yours.
You always save me from my demons.
Keeping them away from my doors.

When you dig scarce ice cubes
   from the water logged cooler
   it's close to bedtime. Take one
   more shot of courage to face
   one more tomorrow and do it
   all again as if you mean it.

I scream mute and
I listen deaf to your
empty promises you
called vows at paper
altars to cardboard
priests we saw in rain.

1970 I hid in a shallow hole
as explosions tore the earth
around me with impunity.
Communists tried to **** me
and I didn't want to die.
I remembered the fireworks
on the Fourth of July when
we first kissed and held hands.
I have come to doubt what
I once held as true. Wars are
never moral and sinners are
never forgiven for their sins.

You haunt my dreams at night.
You hide in mirrors and corners
while I go from here to there.
We were lovers and never were.
You ride cold air up my back
whispering until I sleep with you.

I play with your neck and pluck
your strings and make the room
dance and act fools in love and
when the noise dies I need pills
and ***** to come back to Earth.
My fingers dance in my dreams.

Every living thing in this life
is harboring its ending. We
humans think it's just us.
Maybe every being knows
we are doomed. We pray
hope wish but know we die.
Turtles cross roads know risk.
Bugs fly fearless near light
know a magazine can ****.
We will never have been.

I was always second string.
Red shirt dummy for practice
in summers of Spartans glory.
Bacevich was a legend coach.
I shone one hot August day
hungover and craving nicotine.
**** these poseurs of fame.
We scrimmaged and played
our usual parts, but I was angry.
I stopped the blockers like stone
and tore the runners down.
Over and over I was a Hero
for an afternoon. The Coach said
I'd be a Gridiron Legend.
Just for one day.

I have nothing to promise.
You want a piece of my heart.
It isn't for sale or even mine.
It owns me. I do as I'm told.
I bleed when it says. I love
when it says. I die when it says.

I've nothing left to offer
    and nothing left to keep.
    I smoked our treasures in
    a crack pipe made of glass.
    I'll never leave you poor
    offering yourself as *****.
    I absolutely love you and
    if our love stays the course
    we'll find our way in rehab
    and absolutely not divorce.

They shoot me full of poisons
   and charge me a fortune for it.
   They steal my hair and strength
   and leave my skeleton to explain
   to friends and family about nausea
   and don't touch me or you'll burn.
   I can't **** my wife. I'm toxic.
   Love is watching someone die.

Left behind with stuff we didn't need.
We found you as a puppy and kept you
safe and loved you 'til we had to scram
and left the stuff we didn't need.
Forgive us our sins. I ache for you.
The day will come I'm left behind.

Love was so easy at 17 with you.
Hearts full of Simon and Garfunkel.
The only truth I knew was you, Kathy.
We brought our love to life in an MG.
The world was our oyster. We painted
it in watercolors and wrote poetry.

Angry eyed angels carried my life
to its proper end among fomenting
graves frowning as they will do.
Will my soul be found or forgotten?
We walk miles in God's weather to
promises we never find alive.

Chess pieces off the board.
Playing in the park in shade
of oaks dropping Fall's leaves.
They lie stiff under sheets in
foreign fields loved ones won't
recognize in tears and sobs and
prayers of despair to a deaf God.
Darkness ends the games tonight.

I'm a forgone conclusion
    and an empty promise.
    My words fail to inspire.
    My loves are always lost.
    Trouble always finds me.
    Read between the lines and
    find the real me with you
    inside my heart on my sleeve.

I sit here stunned stupid by wine
   finally happy but still not satisfied.
   What's missing? What will fill the void
   of all the lovers who went wrong?
   I just can't find the right song to soothe
   my savage beast. I don't have a lot of time.

Wrinkled skin and grey and stooped a once strong
man doing sweat work for a buck to buy beer and
smokes to sleep and open eyes and do it all again.
I hated school. Dead teach death.  I was just a tourist
visiting my life. I'm old and still a tourist.
I can't stand my old forgetful dying self.

Our masters have given us answers
        abandoned the truth to bend us to
        totalitarian dreams where everyone's
        a widget, cogs in wheels of commerce.
        They have homes for all the seasons.
        We live in boxes with lofty promises.

We're just a bunch of chemicals
come together over billions of years
to this place we live and die
never knowing why.
We just are and we carry on
as we're compelled to do.
Keep the **** thing going as
long as it can until our giant
light bulb burns itself out
and we never know the why.

I still don't know what Love is.
  I know what it isn't.
  Love has no need of jealously.
  Love is never cruel or petty.
  It has no size or shape. It has
  no heart or soul. It doesn't smell
  of flowers or chocolates. It might
  sweat or cry tears or choke on loss.
  It doesn't quit when needed most.
  Love isn't a good **** or pretty song.

I checked out last week without notice.
I took what I needed and disappeared,
family and friends good as dead to me.
I followed the tracks to horizons. I met
other lost souls just can't take anymore.
We live under bridges and sleep in
fields in good weather. We help fellow
travelers and share when we can.
We died killing others.
They were the enemy.
Just not mine.
I'm gone.

I longed for you in your beauty
and fetching curves and promise
of travels to Mars and the moon.
You sit quiet but guarantee a riot.

We forgive you for our sins.
   If we never lived in your world
   with temptations forbidden we'd
   never suffer birth and death.
   You created suffering for laughs.
   Some blow their brains out instead
   of living this boring day to day.
   You must be pulling wings off fly's.

Death is ill timed, never expected
  and awkward for those left behind.
  Funerals are Death's surreal plays.
  Tears won't always come on cue.

  It's bad luck to talk about death.
  We speak kind of the dead. We don't
  talk of their human frailties.
  We deny our own sins and theirs.

We forgive the world for our sins.
If we never lived in your creation
with temptations forbidden we'd
never suffer birth and death.

I tear my fierce claws into you
without apology. I need to eat.
Put us in zoos and take pictures
feeding us like pets. We burn bright
in the night as Blake set us in print.
God cast us in hell's furnace.

I'm always hoping
without an ounce of it.
I'm always in love with
no waiting hearts.
I beseech the Almighty
without truly believing.
I'm just a ghost. A sheet
hanging to dry in a breeze
flapping about alive like
but just full of hot air.

It's a lonely revolution
   with me against the world.
   I keep it laughing so it
   won't **** me in despair.

I want to scream to the world
at 3am and wake them all from
dreams and complacency.
Look out your windows and
feel the flames licking at you.
Don't cower. Fight. Save us!

You people hiding in crowds who
  think I don't care of your pain
  need to ******* tears and know
  I bleed the blood you do and die
  in your pain while I think of
  loved ones who will miss the
  mess I am and always was but
  hold your hand to the very end.