Is truth a sword or scalpel?
Off with heads or lobotomy?
Bury it how you must.
Truth is power to peasants.
Keep my castle safe.
Keep my debauchery.

I've been looking for something
since I was 5. I looked at fire and
nearly burned the woods down.
I looked at cigarettes mom smoked
and caught hell. I watched my god
gramps drinking beer and vomited.
I saw Jimmy Kuhn's dad's poker cards
with naked women on them and I
stole the Ace of spades who became
my lonely lover in the bathroom.
I've been looking for her ever since.

I need you tonight.
I need your dark love
the love I never had.
Drug to fill this hole
stab my vein and give
me the poison I need.
Hold me close tonight
and never let me go.

I'll wear your costumes
and dance your steps
graceful as a swan
and eat your sins
until they fill me and
I ask to be forgiven.
I'll fall down your
cruel well and die.

We search everywhere for Love.
We never find it, just broken hearts.

Plague has shut the world down.
Everyone is suspect. Family and
friends and dogs and cats are lethal.
Move to lonely and sad and live alone.

Love is not forever. It comes and go's.
  It's not a North Star to guide your heart
  in shifting waters. It makes babies and
  breaks hearts and tears families apart.
  It makes impossible promises with an
  earnest whisper we all must believe.
  We drag broke hearts to bars looking
  for real Love this time. Will we find it?

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 still see you in the garden
strong and bent over tearing
weeds from the fragile flowers
keeping our children safe.
We're Jews in Berlin in 1938.
A dragon's breath is on our necks.
A crooked cross beckons to nail
us to some wooden hatred.

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.

Noun, adjective and impossible to be is normal.
  It makes us hide our nervous tics and twitches.
  I have panic attacks and breakdowns and need
  pills, ***** and endless lovers to feel normal.
  I see shrinks and dealers for the drugs offered.
  I'm a one trick pony that wears out welcomes.

I'll fall in love forever.
I'll fall in love with the hospice nurse.
I fell in love with Susan Tucker at 8.
I always fall in love with kindness.
I wish I could love a billion of you
and maybe I really do after all.

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

There's nothing here.
There's nothing there.
I'm gone somewhere
but I don't know where.
I still feel love and pain
and all our up and downs.
Will you appear tomorrow a
visitor from outside the walls?
Will you bring a shadow of us
to fill the terrible nothing?

I'm hurt that no one ever thought
  highly enough about me to steal
  my identity. I wouldn't want to
  but I know how boring it all is.
  I'm not rich. I'm married to Jane.
  She's complex. She's wonderful and
  horrid. She's just like me. Complex.
  We bend. We roll our eyes. We see
  our flaws and ignore them anyway.
  Who wouldn't steal this identity?

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.

Play the part you've been given.
We'll play ours as well, the 12.
Who set the table for a last supper?
Jesus was walking on water
before he turned it into wine
and we drink our courage.
We betray him before we nail
him to his page in history.

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.

It ticks and tocks the second hand
on the wall counting in jazz rhythm
my slow but constant disappearance
from this to that behind the mirror.
I've never felt solid. I may be a ghost
from the start. I slept with many angels.

Every day's the same.
Life's passed me by and I'm
just an old man killing time.
I stab it hourly. I'd **** for
a lover to give me life again.
I can't afford the hourly rate.

It can't be silenced. It echoes
louder than thunder and guilt.
It roars inside the conscience
and makes us all beg for mercy.

She was lovely. She was blond.
  She took me to her bed naked.
  She went quiet guilty nun on me.
  I spent my seed and left her praying
  to whatever deity lived in her head.
  I sat with the living on my bar stool.
I wonder to this day what the proctor
graded me on ******* a lonely corpse.

I shoot up and live death awhile.
  I keep dropping dead and come alive
  and die again and death holds the
  best dreams for us living zombies.
We lose families. We lose ourselves.
We wish prayers helped or AA or
sponsors or your heart and soul.
I dream of our first night *******.

Coney Island, Cincinnati

   You were glorious and spectacular
   more fun than a barrel of monkeys
   a thrill a minute with roller coasters
   and Ferris wheels and side shows, cotton
   candy and near beer to persuade dates
   to the tunnel of love and a kiss or 2.
  
   Now the splendor is just rusted iron
   and rotted wood and peeling paint and
   graffiti and broken windows. We live
   old and fat and bald in misery we got
   used to long ago. We ride this Beast in
   terror and thrills to our bitter ends.

Sister ******

    Strung out full of needle marks
    still proud defiant and sneering
    with black teeth and bag of bones
    you say "*******". So I go away.
    I come back in the morning. You're
    gone to emergency or morgue? I try
    to find you for our kids' sake. We love
    you but we can't compete with ******.

Harvests can be bountiful
    or they can be wanting.
    I've known you both ways.
    I know elegance no matter.
    Always a pleasure when we dance in
    ballrooms or barns or Night, Love.
    One of us will kiss the other's hand
    goodbye in a casket then dance alone.

I was posed in the bathtub naked
  with a razor on my wrist to die
  the phone rang and went to machine
  my mom said "we hope you're on meds
  take care we love you and I'll call
  tomorrow to check up. I love you."
  I loved my mom more than god but
  I cut big veins and died after all.

I saw a dying brother bleed out.
   I saw a madman **** his flock.
   Parades celebrated the funerals.
   Little boys masquerading as men
   played war. Real men died for mud.
   Loved ones prayed their rosaries.
   No prayers were ever answered on
   our street. Gold stars filled sad
   windows. Widows cried in private.
   They never wanted to dance again.

We're not here for a baptism.
  We're here for an execution.

She and I shared a heartbeat.
We loved the same ice cream
and music and movies and
wanted kids and to elope and
hated our parents but loved us.

We had a fight.
He was tired and spent
and I was frisky and bent.
I felt rejected. Ugly and fat
and my insecurities lashed out.

What are the rules?
Who has the high ground?
Who falls on the sword?
Who breaks the silence?
He moved out and I lost.

Like me all you want.
I think you're swell.
I think you're funny.
I like how you smell.
I like your taste in music,
your wonderful cooking
and the cut of your jib and
how you're good looking.
The L word is a hex upon
the you and us and me.
I like you almost enough
to **** the guarantee

Within me is a huge empty space. A void
   that yearns for reason and meaning and
   a universe of splendid understanding why.
   Why me? Why here? Why now? Why death?
   So many why's with so little explanations.
   I can't help but think there's no God at
   the levers just a wizard of Oz and Toto.

We loved ourselves but loved
us more together and we danced
naked drunk to our music in your
dorm room in a black spotlight
we could only see when *******.
It was the last time we touched.
I'm trapped inside an ancient ruin
from 1967. I'll end my poem here.

Love is fog that blinds you.
     It is perfumed lustful fangs
     into your neck as you laugh.
     Lust comes disguised as love
     to tear your holy vows to hell.
     Love can never pretend at lust.

I'm over served and under read.
   I'm almost every poet ever lived.
   We thrive in squalor and denim
   and body odor and the stink of us.
   We've been banished from polite
   society until we are published,
   feted and rude to ******* snobs.
   The rich love slumming with us.

I painted the beauty beyond my barred
   window. It all lived in my head anyway.
   I walked and smelled the scenes in our
   outings from the asylum I was a guest.
   Are we mad to think we exist at all?
   What god would leave so many questions?

I'm so tired tonight.
Maybe I'm drunk.
I follow this madness
in the "news" but don't
have a clue after all.
How can we find the enemy?
When it hides behind the
NY Times and Post we won't.
The betrayal is here and it's
a dagger in our hearts.

You seem to hate me. Have we met?
  You call me horrible names and wish
  me dead. I'm not a ****. Have we met?
  I reach out. bjdonovan50@hotmail.com
  Dare to touch my soul and talk to the
  devil you think I am. Let's be friends.

You broke my heart then
I broke your heart later.
On death's bed do we ask
why love even keeps score?

They know the finish line's in sight
  like Christmas morning running down
  the stairs to discover new treasures.
  Will they dream into another ******?
  Will the flat line alarm be their final
  farewell to a vast nothing? We'll see.

I was searching for TP at Walmart.
I turned into the frozen aisle and my
heart told me this woman in this flowing
revealing dress was the reason I was born.

Everybody is screaming into
microphones over each other.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
We're left ignorant wanting more.
Poets used to speak the truth for
us but now they've gone mute.
We need to go to war with words
lead the charge for change to it.

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.

They were bigger than life
  and moved mountains to bend
  time and possibility for a
  future we never imagined.
  They're long gone but we
  still know e=mc2. We all
  orbit around sun and God
  might or might not be dead.

I used to believe what they said,
but I finally grew up.
People are full of **** and say
anything that will get them laid.

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.

Familiarity breeds contempt.
How can we stay together?
I adored you. Now I don't.
You adored me but not now.
We're tangled up in living.
I can't leave anymore.
I can't start over again.
The Valentine in my shirt
won't last much longer.
I'll finally die on time.

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.

No real commitment. Not a burial.
  Just flurries, enough to excite
  her knees apart for a time or two
  and moves on leaving her with child.