The sun looks angry today.
Harsh shadows are everywhere.
Winds are kicking up and fires are
running wild. Pity the wildlife.
Abandon your homes in the hills
and hope the brave can save you.

This old poet poses with his worn out lines.
     Tender poetry of youth and love's beginnings,
     faltering steps beyond puberty's uncertainty.

     I've pounded my love on typewriters, each letter
     has a part to play in this drama with a weight
     all its own. Smash a key and it opens old wounds.

We swarm to be heard.
We write to plant our seeds
in your furrows. Ideas take root.
Cocktail chatter and bedroom whispers
spread them far and wide from church
to AA to shooting galleries.
We shout words in sound proof rooms
wrapped in straight jackets and put down.

Do you know the answer?
Do you even know the question?
We're all just dumb beasts of burden
when all is said and done.
I want pleasure where I find it.
I'll pay the wages of sin for it.
I'll betray Christ for the silver
or hand God to the atheists for
an hour with a pipe or needle.
Don't hate me for my addictions.

One more glass of wine
  Into my time machine
  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.

Launch your poems into unknown
waters. Pick your top 10 faves and
send them off to the great beyond.
Leave this nest and find true flight.

She's troubled and twisted
    my earth bound mistress
    offers me all my dreams
    without faulty promises.

    She lives in constant rain
    but loves without any pain
    and reaches me in places no
    honest woman could ever do.

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.

They want to be heard for the poems.
Algorithms have no eye for Bukowski.
Dylan Thomas would have been ignored.
Genius has no formula to chalk on boards.
Poets want a public square to nail their
personal crucifixions and bleed out loud.

They heft the scull like a tortoise
shell and gently touch it to water.
They hold oars and take places and
wait for commands. Soldiers willing
to die for greater good of the boat.
Row. Poetry comes to life as the light
reflects 8 men rowing as 1. Like poetry
it looks effortless. Smooth and smart
it's a ballet of boys rising against odds
to become men worth rowing crew.

I loved each of you with all my heart.
     You were my fierce light in the dark
     corridor that is my life. I treasure
     each touch, smile and secret we shared.
     You were my favorite. You always are.
     You were all just as broken as I was.

"I've been with saints.
I've been with sinners.
They both ruin my knees".
She told me that later.

I'm old. You passed several years back.
I live half remembered life as my memory
is robbed a little more each day.
I have the ticket stubs from our first date.
The Graduate. I always see me in the back
of the church at your wedding pounding
glass wailing your  name begging you
to be with me when the light goes out.
You're always beside me in bed at dark.
I smell and taste and hold your ghost.

Church bells are mute this time.
Carols are quiet in a silent night.
Tree lights are dim and children
laugh without mirth. It's a funeral.
Christ was stillborn to a ****** and
carpenter in a Holiday Inn Express.
Return all the toys and ***** the candles
and pour the eggnog down the drain.
We might as well burn the churches
and sell the Vatican holdings to feed
the world's starving and clothe the
naked and cure the sick and all of that.

Your beautiful corpse reminds me
of the kindest lovers I abandoned.
You're still Anne from death by gas.
Hair and makeup perfect after all.
Your poetry had you rowing out to sea
to die in saltwater ugly and shriveled.
You could never sacrifice your beauty
even for commitment to fierce suicide.

Blink and you might finally see the truth.
Perched on a throne of wasted years you're
out of time. Your machine is broken down.
Are you scrap, cremated or buried?
Did you have a god? Were you an atheist?
We'll pray for your soul just in case.

Where are the accolades?
One more beer and I'm Yeats.
Another **** I'll be Frost.
If I die on tour in NYC I'm Dylan.

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.

I've outlived everyone of you
******* who wanted to ****
on my grave. I'm not pretty.
I'm a lump of clay but still.

I was barely used to living.
The rug was yanked from under me.
I woke into the afterlife.
It's familiar. The people here
died already but I like them.
They get my jokes and drink like me.
We smoke **** and sit on stools
at an endless bar. Everyone has
an endless tab and we all yell
"Drinks are on me"!
Violence erupts. Nobody dies.
Hell's not as bad as I feared.

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?

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.

Where the slaves were auctioned is
      a market selling trinkets to fools
      who don't understand why the black
      man who carries their bags to their
      rooms won't look them in the eye and
      thanks them for the tip and dismissal.

We watched from a rooftop
across the great city
4 in the morning
lit up and pretty
a little drunk but
mostly just tired
dawn broke and
I was inspired
in central park
we made our bond
you said I love you
now and beyond
I said I love you
you answered ****
love floats in jetsam
drifts in bad luck.

You can't be too rich or too thin.
A throw away line from your youth
that took root in your psyche and
made you our anorexic beauty queen.
Porcelain skin we bow at your feet.
Reed thin and just enough love to
keep the masses at a safe distance.
You hold court at the discotheque.
You bring lovers home every night
but never feel that spark you need.
Trapped in your depletion you're
doomed to die already a skeleton.

As soon as I stopped caring about
impressing readers my poetry was
all about writing for me and it was
as it should always be. Poet.

The night I saw you at Rugby's
was the night I was struck by
a bolt of lightning that woke
me to the wonders of Love.

You're done your share of suffering.
A lamb set afire to fulfill ancient rituals.

    You're cursed with a drawn out death sentence.
        Cancer is your grim reaper. Death with irony.
        The cure is worse than the disease. Poisons in
        your blood hoping to bring this monster down.

        You won the first battle. The war rages on.
        We celebrated and toasted that it regressed.
        It lived to fight again. It invaded new areas.
        Radiation to the brain tried to **** the *****!

        The enemy was routed but not vanquished. It
        came back with a vengeance, determined to
        outlive its host and **** and pillage as the
        victors always do. We hope you'll be pain free.

        I pray for you to die in the rain as it's death's
        Absolution. Forgiven. Reborn into another womb.  
        New lifetime to fill the pages of your life with
        whatever comes your way. We will never forget you.

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.

We ***** these poems faster than HP can
handle. You need a fire hose to keep up.
We're a chatty bunch with endless sins we
need to confess into your priest hole.
We need to know our penance so we can
wipe our slates and fill them up again.

He hid in the bedroom I grew up in.
He showed Himself years later when
I visited my parents at 6 Alcott and
slept in my old bedroom. He was there
and made me wonder about all of it.
I put him in my shaving kit and
kidnapped our savior. He haunts
me in my cups every night. I hold him.

My liver is leaking.
   My heart escaped prison.
   I've never felt more alive.
   I'm in the combat zone where
   ****** sell love and queens
   give love away for a song.

A long hair bearded man sits on a throne
taking a **** and reading poetry by Frost
and Auden and Elliot and Dylan Thomas.
He works as a janitor and lives frugal.
1956 and beats are howling for the truth.
2020 and a scream for the truth again.
I'm a long hair bearded man on a toilet
reading Howl and Kerouac, and Burroughs.
The next generation will whisper for truth.
Poets will bleed through the state's censors.

Birds cawing. Rats gnawing. Cats clawing. Craving.
  Bells ringing. Choirs singing. Dead bringing. Score.
  ****** faking. Thief's taking. Mischief making. Under.
  Alice small. Alice tall. Red Queen's fall. Floating.
  Birds cawing. Rats gnawing. Cats clawing. Craving.
  Death calling. End despair. Overfill syringe. Shoot.
  Nirvana calling. Fingers reaching. Lips turn blue. Bye.
  Tears spilling. Prayers empty. Graves full. Grief.

He was a cousin born with a brain tumor
they removed but left him most befuddled.
He came to visit in Charleston's edges where
we didn't have a **** thing we didn't provide.
I was the girl who worried about everything.
Petty Bette they called me but **** them all.
What if he falls off the porch and gets hurt?
Don't fret, child, give him a piece of string
and he'll trouble nobody. Amen. He spent the
rest of the day pondering that string like
it held the answers to the universe. I think
that string might be the boy's God almighty.
The lord works in mysterious ways I'm told.
When I die in my fog I'll ponder that string.

I'm 71 tomorrow and I'm losing ground.
I still run but slow. I lift less weight.
I know we die in increments. I don't want
to live forever and watch my friends die.
I'll take my turn and go on time. I hope
to see Bailey settled in her own nest.

I was a hippie in 1969.
A long haired barefoot
freak with yellow stains
on my white carpenter jeans.
I had a lover like no other.
She bumped around my brain
like a pinball machine in pain.
I wonder how she's doing now.

Everything is fragile now.
  I take special care walking.
  A fall could break a hip and
  send me to death's landfill.

  I used to climb trees and fall
  and bounce up to climb again.
  I rode bikes downhill as fast
  as I could risking everything!

  I smoked and drank all night
  with loose boys and girls. We
  skipped class and ****** in
  impossible spaces. We lived!

  We have bingo and "dances" where
  we shuffle with our walkers.
  Fading memories bent like
  question marks, with no answers.

Each poem is stained with wine,
   sweat, tears and sometimes blood.
   I'll write gently of my doomed
   loves. We were sincere and naive,
   too young to taste death's smell.
   Promises were made and abandoned
   for lust. My only friend after all.
   Never trust poets for truth, just honesty.

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.

Your perfume on the pillow
    is the only thing you left.
    My life's taking on water
    I just want to drown all the pain.
    Things have a way of working out?
    Sommerville and Harvard Square,
    Mass Ave, Boston you were there
    your Aphrodite I ate my share,
    you naked in the public square.
    This is what I am, a broken man.

I asked to be forgiven.
     You didn't have it in you.
     I'll build a cross and carry
     it 12 lashes and be nailed
     upon it and die in agony with
     a crown made from thorns in
     your heart. Pierce me with
     hatred to die all alone.

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.

Staring into death's eye is final.
I have no need for secrets or guilt
or hate for anyone who ever hurt me.
Scars don't survive dead. Scabs on the
heart are delicate food for the worms.
Earth's a distant star where souls meet.
I'm a jar of ash on your mantle. You
think me alive until your turn to die.

Appalachian range older than me
was where we played our music
to a bunch of college kids high as hell.
We miss our beds and loves and normal.
Porch 40 is where we hang our shingle.
Sylva is where our mail stacks up
and our true loves hold our hearts
gently in their own until we're home.

I walk the steps to my gallows.
I smell anger's blood at the door.
We're fighting. We love and hate
like old enemies, salt and the sea.

Crown of bobby pins and bandana,
   she hoists a beer bottle scepter,
   dime store paste royal necklace,
   moth holed sweater Queen's cape,
   her well worn lawn chair throne.
   She keeps watch from  her tower,
   surveys her realm on Alcott Lane.
   Nothing escapes the queen's watch.

a poem by Howard Nemerov

A Primer of the Daily Round

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens, just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

I don't crave attention like other poets.
    I couldn't care less about your opinions.
    You never read my poems anyway. Too long
    or short or blah been done to death yeah.
    I never was published and I'll die on a toilet
    in black and white like Elvis. I'm just you.