Care about every ******* thing.
Feel everyone's pain.
Weep for every lost dog and cat
and wash the feet of the poor.

Live in a garret and drink
cheap wine. **** out the
window because the toilet
one floor down is busy.

Win hearts and scatter them
to the winds. Suffer alone so
the poems bleed your tears.
Speak in cryptic poet tongues.

What beautiful madness is discovered
  cleaning up after the dreadful dead?
  The living feast on sin's delicious
  offerings but we don't hide our sins
  because we always expect one more day.
  Loved ones hide our failings in hearts.

The mad dog foams and hates down
  the dry street in Maycomb and we
  need Atticus to put the bullet in
  its skull to put things right again.

Love is a dense forest of Joshua Trees
  in wind torn deserts without hope but
  full of lovers up for the fight of it.
  They can **** in cars and church pews.

It was poised to erupt in flames.
Every group with agendas poured
gasoline on the whole **** thing.
The spark was always gonna' be black.
Will it have to burn to the ground?
Can love even exist in rainbows?

It wasn't love. It was confusion.
Harvest moon's shadow all along
shifting in the midnight surf as
we walked to our forbidden bed.
Stain of ******'s surrender bled.

      there's hope in despair
      fear in bravery
      ignorance in certainty
      doubt in forgiveness
      love lost inside love.

Maybe I'm just a drunk old bird
complaining from the barn rafters.
I make noise and **** when it suits.
No one pays me any mind.
My world always grows colder.
Peck my carcass when it's time.

I'm all alone stranded here
without a prayer.
My boat broke on the rocks
and I eat sushi and coconuts.
I'm alone in paradise
which is a hell of its own.

Back in the day when our
grandparents were swimming
in ponds and kissing girls and
dreaming of them in sleep we
were yet to be imagined as a
possibility. They still had to
fight wars win or lose and hope
to come home whole enough
to keep horrors hidden from
those they loved most of all.

I'm sleeping in the guest room tonight.
  Why can't you be my centerfold from '75?
  I heard your voice from the womb and now
  it has a cruel pitch and it's not enough.
  You screech at my mistakes. I curse you for
  yours. We both swim in the same cesspool.

You beat this girl to death
    with a fence post, the destroyer.
    We cower in fear while you lose
    your mind among the living.
    You got away with ******.
    Her stain left us ****** as hell.
    How do you live with her death
hanging like moss from your soul?

Time is of the essence.
We have all the time in the world.
I've been thinking about time.
  Instants, blink of an eye, dog
  years, time of your life, years
  piled on years when time's weight
  crushes us back into this dirt we
  call earth and wish for more time.

I still remember your naked *******
   and the smell of my hand in your jeans
   and youth's innocence lost. You were old
   beyond your years. You tamed my beast.
You wanted me to be your first.
I was lost to you in the sunlight.

I'm such a needy poet.
Feed me drinks to make
me loved until I'm a bloated
drunken Dylan Thomas.
Do not go gentle. The force that
through the green fuse.
We poets are attention ******.
We look for the path not taken
so we can live in Frost's lost woods.
Now I sleep, perchance to dream.

You paid too great a price
  for your petty salvation
  Sin is much cheaper and
  delivers you to her haven

I've traveled on this grey ribbon
since I was born looking for my destiny
following my heart and biology to God
knows where. We're beasts we don't know
with desire we fear and love we need.
The herd moves on. I die alone in night.

It sounds like it could be a gated community.
I guess it is in its own way. I'd hate to know
the date I was gonna' die and the how and why.
Invited to a goodbye party where you must go.

Now I put a pencil mark on the
page and call it art. I splatter hate
on watercolor 300 lbs paper and
in a frame fools will pay fortunes.
My monkey paints and ***** on the
paper and it fetches small fortunes.

I step obedient in the line
  to the train waiting for us,
  the Jews. We took what mattered
  most. Children and old family and
  we tucked small sacred into pockets.
  Who'd do genocide in modern times?
  I lost my family. I lost my mind.
  I lived an afterlife, an abortion.

I **** and call it love.
    I love and call it *******.
    What can my ***** tell me
    of feeling love in my heart?
    I step over the dead still
    looking for a beating heart.

I woke up and hated me
  for what I called you in
  my drunken truth. I never
  want to hurt you but I do.
  It seeps out in weakness.
  I might quit drinking but
  it might turn to cancer and
  live within my blood and leak
  from my eyes and I'd turn to
  dust. Join me in a toast to us.

I'm a stooge on a stage
in a life ****** on me
not of my choosing. I'm
Shakespeare's Romeo to
a lost *****'s Juliet.
We wind our way forward
on a wind most foul
to Bethlehem's manger.
I curse the fools on the
stage tasked with nailing
my son onto his cross to
eat madness we embrace.

Our universe is on a slide where giant
  eyeballs will describe our lives in notes
  in some scientific journal of importance.
  We play our tiny parts as giants in love.
  You're constellations are prayers and beads
  we worry on. We live and die growing cold.

You're my 4th wife but
I'm dead now and your
in the plot next to me.
We loved hard at the start
and lived flaccid after.
I broke all the hearts.

When this poet dies my soul will
be buried in an anthology in
alphabetical order. I'll be placed
in the index. I'll be easy to find.
Between **** and syphilis my
magnum opus will sit forgotten
for eternity. We live poems and
die in fields of brilliant poppies.

We kinda live here and kinda don't.
Depends on point of view after all.
Is it half full or half empty?
Most of 'em think you did it,
the rest of 'em just don't care.
I was born on death row. I never
belonged where I was and
I was never where I belonged.
I was a square peg in her hole.
I always loved her but never me.

I speak to you from some dirt in a field
  I couldn't say where. We were soldiers in
  deadly combat. We all left intact lives to
  throw death's dice for some forgotten glory.
  We died in piles and found our way to burial
  as the months turned to years. Dead brothers
  in arms in historic battlefields with plaques.
  I miss your last kiss when you said come home.

We shake our fists at a world
  that's passed us by and leaves
  us wanting more with old skin
  and old ideas and no relevance.

I want to love you
again like before.
We were kids. ***
was our gift. We
had no use for food.
We only wanted more.

You fell in love, my girl, I'm
happy for you and open the
champagne to celebrate!
We welcome the Scotsman
to our clan. I see how he
holds you like I did years
ago and know he'll keep
you safe and warm and
make you happy after all.
Let's toast your Love!

Hold your fingers like claws
on the guitar neck and stroke
her strings so she'll sing your
love song for silent hearts.

It clicks and clacks beneath my fingers.
  Letters make words make lines make poetry.
  I love and hate and lob grenades in foxholes
  you hide in when we're fighting. I'm drunk
  and dangerous pieces of truth ooze out of
  my dangerous mouth I can't control. I'll
  sleep and wake blinking in dismay and wish
  I had a weapon to click and clack beneath
  my fingers to write my despair and love.
  Can we forgive another day? Try again?

When did you awaken my monster?
I took as many punches as I could!
I had enough. I want to **** my father.
I still want to **** him but he's dead.

Rest in your love's arms tonight.
Sleep inside her dreams and frolic.
Tomorrow waits. We can worry for
our children then. Now we wander.

As I ascend to the heaven of her shot
  I think of your taste and smell and
  almost get an *******. Blood flows in
  veins of her creation. I almost love
  you more than ******. I did in rehab but
  it seems so long ago now we die together.

If I brought you the sun would you smother it.
  Would you deem a moon unworthy and turn it off?
  If you had redemption could you swallow pride?
  When I die will you forgive my refusal to love?

The summer of love broke vows and
choked promises from our throats.
I grew my hair and quit robot jobs.
I wore carpenter jeans and earth shoes.
I ****** and called it love and loved
and called it *******. I'm always leaving.

I'll write lyrics and strum strings
to enhance your experience. I
want to entertain you and earn
your admiration and love to be
who you hum in hot days and
hear in dreams of yearning.

If my life is a mosaic of people
I meet, no matter if a lover or
a waitress taking my order, then
it's my universe every inch along.
They disappear as death takes pieces
of the puzzle. I lost people, I'm less.

I meet you over and over again.
We're perfect together then not.
I like the cut of your jib until I don't.
My Medusa the curly haired
realtor with ******* beckoning.
I eat you up and suicide again.
Ella with daddy issues is a love
I had long ago. We **** and suicide.

I thought I knew myself.
I walked into a hall of mirrors
and found me in the looking glass.
I didn't like who I saw.
I was shallow and narcissistic.
I thought I cared for others
but I only wanted to see my
kindness reflected off them.
I put change in the poor box
so the noise made me heard.
Enter Hall of Mirrors and
you can never be you again.

Don't make me the enemy
in your war with yourself.
Let her chase her love without
our doubts and fears. Shake in
your winds together and build
castles of your own in your skies.

Christ! I hear the ice like thunder
in the tumbler and he pours wine
and drinks in metronome time.
Night after night he dissapoints.
We were perfect. Then we weren't.
Time ticks, ticks and ticks in time.

Seagulls crying over who knows what
   riding ocean breezes we'd all die for.
   We fight drunk in our room, a prelude
   to ******* on the sheets with anchors.
   I hear the 9th symphony when we mend.
   We lie as one and hear seagulls laugh.

I'll sprout again like stubborn sin.
  Kiss me goodbye but I'll refuse to die.
  I haunt your heart and I won't depart.
  I am a forever stain, I won't leave again.

I walked down crooked aisles
  to promise our broken vows
  then dragged lovers through miles
  of mazes lost in endless ends.

I called her from a phone booth
     by Jack in the Box and asked if
     she was bored. She said come over.
     It was cold in Boston and her heat
     shut off so we warmed up with wine
     and naked under covers and shared.
     She takes me back to normal before
     I drowned the watercolor in the pool.

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 a sea of tears.

Life goes on.
Not as good.
Still it breathes
wonderful life and
we can still touch and
kiss and god help us
be a man and woman
nearly die out of breath
but survive for tomorrow.
We'll live like this forever.

Every poet has written a first
poem they'd rather never mind.
No one springs from mother's
womb Yeats or Eliot or Frost in
full bloom. Broke hearts come
before broke dreams come
before broke psyche. We all
start with our first rejection,
then an aunt dies. We learn
to empathize and we're poets.