I've had a broken heart or two.
I broke a few myself. Sorry.
Love is a double edge sword.
You can't love in moderation.
The best love is a storm at sea,
in for a penny, in for a pound.
Fierce fear but love has an eye
of calm if you find it inside her
and hold on for dear life.

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.

I try to contain my mad dog
in some kind of cage but he
refuses to be less than he is
and snarls and tears my world
to shreds while I applaud.

Gather types of people together
and tell them group B hates them.
Trot to group B and say A hates you.
Tell group C they all hate you and
tell all the groups the same thing
until the rainbow catches fire.

******'s sin is mine alone.
  She never understood her power.
  She wanted innocent flirtation
  while I desired her perfect flower.

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

  ****** floats wild on the wind.
  Her cheap perfume keeps me hard.
  She died birthing our sin.
  She had to deal the final card.

I'm selling you peace of mind.
Free. Just go outside and put
one foot in front of the other
again and again and walk
your way to serenity. I swear
It's that easy and true.

He mourns all the anonymous souls
   buried randomly in the potters' field.
   How do we become that distant from them?
   He has tears enough for the entire world.
He is us if there's a chance for redemption.

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.

Cradles to caskets and everything
  between you need we have for sale
  at the General Store. We're living
  at the edge of society with savages
  just outside our walls bloodthirsty
  and hunting for scalps and women.
  Remingtons for sale and Colt pistols.
  Tend your fields and break horses.
  Whip mules to pull your plows and
  pray to your god for rain and sun.
  Feed your infant and **** for more.
  You need field hands for the harvest.

Is it wrong for me to want you?
  It simply tells the truth.
  Can't we just dance naked in our arms
  in the dark, hot breath on our necks?
  Life lasts but an instant and it's gone.
  Let's pretend for a beat it's forever.

We were all so full of bravado. Graduates.
  40 years later the class reunion reminisce.
  Fat jocks in wrinkled skin and jowls talk of
  tackles and blocks and winning passes back then.
  Winners and losers are on display.
  I can't face the flesh of the memories.

The woman with the crazy hair
and the neon heart in her window
falls gently beneath me and I
never felt love like that again.

******'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 *******.

We're on the beach while
   the sun surrenders the horizon
   to the Harvest moon.
   I'm stunned by the display.
   My world is swallowed by
   saints who sin for sinners.

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 love you more than life itself!
You took my virginity with your
needle and launched me like a kite
upon a warm summer breeze.
I never want to leave you, but
my life has been stripped bare
by the vultures. It's just us now.
I hope to a god of sorts that I
never go to the corner where
you sell yourself short, after all
I gave everything for your sting.
I'll die if you won't let me go, Love.

I see everything in black and white.
Black man, white man, shades of grey
spells the end, my friend. I always
loved you and I'll miss us gone.
We crossed the color divide and
God ****** died for it.

We're all being swept to sea in a
riptide of madness in a sinister
world of mad science and trusted
aides with long knives and smiles.

Reggie

    He's dying in his bed above his bar.
    The jukebox plays soundtracks
    of life and people live out loud
    drinking and laughing in fierce
    lives below. Life on fire!
    He dies smiling above it all.

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.

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.

Christ! When I was in high school
a band made a song that reached
through the years and touched my
70 year old self and I'm stunned.

He's had a complex life.
Chance is his name and
his twin sister is Charlie.
They were adopted by a
couple but the husband
left after 6 months and
the mom lost her mind.
The grandparents brought
the chicks into their nest
and are nurturing and
loving and I wish I'd
been raised there by them.

It struck without warning.
   Find a bathroom. Too late.
   My body betrayed me and I
   was horrified as it flooded
   pants and shoes and aisle 8.
   Adult diapers were top shelf.

I'm invisible. I'm inevitable.
I'll snake my way through the
veins you hide with sleeves
and excuses when you shoot.
You'll disappear in crumbs
left to pay your way to dust.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Some similarly hideous beast
will offer you stardom for your
wound that never heals.
LA is full of predators who
lust for the young beauties
flocking there from small towns
to be discovered at lunch counters
but end up on director's couches.

We're all being swept to sea in a
riptide of madness in a sinister
world of mad science and trusted
aides with long knives and smiles.

The world I know is black and white.
Food is bland and love impossible.
If I smile it's by accident not joy.
He sterilized an ice pick and mind ******
me until he found my identity and killed it.
Lobotomy banished my demons and my self.

I hope we did you proud.
  Mike died young of cirrhosis
  I live on in alcoholic haze
  no connection with the living
  just a **** or two and meet
  another **** in some dive bar
  where your ghost cheers for
  conquests without a heart.

I was obsessed with you back then.
I can't remember your naked body
or eyes or voice that was music or
your fragrance or thighs and all.
You're a lovely piece of memory.
I miss the rest of you. I loved you.

You might want to ask for my
  blessing someday. I ask little.
  Be kind. Be a gentleman. Hold
  her hand when she needs it.
  Give her your coat in the cold.
  Protect her from her monsters.
  Know she'll never deceive you.
  Trust her love. It is absolute.

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.

She makes me feel inadequate.
  I'll never measure up so **** it.
  Just a mother who hates how I
  make my bed and does it over
  every time and I start to see the
  cracks in her shell and the madness
  that finally brings her to her knees.
  She sees a shrink to put her back how
  she used to be but the puzzle is short
  of pieces and nothing ever seems right.

Death and taxes.
Love and broken heart.
Right and wrong blur.
We fall into rabbit holes.
We love Alice to death.
I am the Cheshire Cat.

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.

With my neck in the guillotine
and the mob hungry for blood
my final thought was us naked
and touching each other's there.

The hangman's noose around me
standing on a trap door  I thought
of your soft voice comforting me
while I wept in my agony.

Standing tall blindfolded  before
a firing squad I thought of you
for comfort. You always believed
in me. I always loved you for it.

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.

It eyes me with suspicion
like I'm a heretic.
Will it burn me at a stake?
Am I Joan of Arc or Jesus Christ?
The congregation can't be satisfied.
Can't be bothered with the ways or whys.

Time
Space
Gravity
Appetites
Addictions
Scars
Broke bones
and hearts
History
Trapped in a body
Caged in a mind

Your gold hair is a halo in the
     heat lightening of our summers
     growing closer to kisses and touch.
     Our gravity was lost. You drifted
     into other orbits. I heard things.
     I saw tracks on your arms and your
     bones turning tricks on the Strip.
     You still have a halo in midnight
     neon.  I stare from my bar stool
     as you pass in the night searching.
     We're both lost together, just
     lost souls in different places.

When a cynic cries
  his stone heart dies
  blood flows from his eyes
  and forgives all his lies

Fragile Genius
He died undiscovered
by his own hand at 26.
He left 3 albums to the world.
It was as if Nick Drake
simply faded away,
a victim not of excess,
but of some profound,
deep-seated unhappiness.
Like Vincent the painter
he rose from his own ashes
to set the music world on fire.

I'm at a carnival midway.
My mouth's agog at the freaks.
Tents for 10 cents to see naked.
Lobster boy displays deformity.
Bearded lady drops her veil.
***** covers the cement floor.
The stench is bathroom overflow.
I try to wake from this nightmare.

I've seen a universe in my bedroom.
   In a ray of sun it looked like dust
   but I saw an order in the chaos and
   knew 6 Alcott was on a speck of dust.

If we want anyone to give our poem
a glance we need to go crazy.
Batboy Lives in My Attic.
That Time I Killed My Wife.
Boy Discovers His *****!
Open Season on *******!
Bring Parents to Your Room Day.
Sell it.