There's a place among the living
   we've provided for the dead. Remains
   in graves we never walk on. Bad luck.
   Superstition keeps our dead harmless.

   I died helping the sick and dying. Ha!
   I actually died in my sleep. I was dreaming
   of being strapped in a guillotine during the
   French Revolution and I lost my head.

   I've lived a good and bad life. Depends on
   who writes the moral code. Do we condemn
   our lustful desires? Do we arrest for stealing
   a loaf of bread or meds for our children?

   Society has a lot to answer for. Who died
   and left you boss? My chemistry and my
   biology are my puppet masters. I am a naked
   ape who has been "Blessed" with self awareness.

Written by BJ Donovan

We bought a broken dog
and took him to our broken home
to live with this broken family.
We tried to fix him with broken
training. I was too broken to get
it right. The more I yelled the more
broke we got. I had a drunken insight
one evening walking him in a full moon.
He reminded me of me in my childhood.
I saw things through our broken eyes
and held him close. I promised I'd fix us.
He saved us both from broken lives.

What am I?
You can't fix it,
can't make them forget it.
You can't take it away from them.
You can only treat it with respect.
It's peoples' pain and they own it.

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'm an old man with my young man memories
  that would make a ***** blush after all.
  Lots of ***** and naked and *** and more
  was how it unfolded and I loved them all
  and still do. I know I can't reach back to
  say hello. Some of them blame me for their
  unfulfilled lives with empty wombs but I
  can't save me and can't save them after all.

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.

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.

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.

We poets watch the world our eye
    glued to a microscope. We pick it
    apart and we lecture in slow motion.
    We examine nerve ends as blood explodes
    when your soul mate breaks your heart.
    We've felt your pain and suffer with you.
    We are undertakers dressed as clowns.
    We are clowns who bury your dead
in irony. They never looked so good?
Poets always die misunderstood.

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.

A mob lives in my head some nights
screaming like my angry lovers sounding
like sirens echoing down alley ways
going to emergency or going to jail
when I try to sleep at night.

   They shout angry slogans and
   scream ******* all night long.
   Sirens sound like bitter wives
   whining loud as white noise now,
   and some lives matter sometimes.
   Some never mattered in the womb.

They caught my stray heart.
   It went into a kennel and was
   put on the auction block where
   women would rescue it and try
   to keep it. It always jumped
   their fences and got away.

I lost faith in my religion and wander.
      Who can forgive my sins? Who can cast my
      demons from me? Who can bless me at death?
      Can I never be buried in sacred ground?

      Now my faith is in pills and ***** and soft
      places with perfume and happy endings.
      My church is a bar with a pastor named Tia.
      She speaks in tongues with a snake that bites.

      Her venom is the sweetest thing I've tasted.
      She brings me to my knees and I bow to her.
      I drink her blood and eat her in communion.
      I wake calm with my savior. I found my faith.

I live inside a mirror today
where everything's reflection.
Kiss my shadow's shadow.
Break my heart. It shimmers
in  puddles wrinkled in wind.
You only break a looking glass
and suffer 7 years bad luck.
I curse you with all my love.

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 71 and want another lover
who can drink my wine and laugh
at my jokes and dance in the dark
while I kick her shins and hold her tight
and she shares the smell of her hair
and we lie naked in bed and ****
like teens and never act our age.
I'm an absolute beginner and I'll
love you forever. Just keep smiling
then there's nothing more I need.

Empire Builders

They sit on couches with the Mrs.
watching TV and planning tomorrows
thousand chess moves to dominate the
market and destroy their competition.

I've got no time for your suffering.
I've got no time for your struggles.
No time for your ugly riots and fires.
I pour the gas and set myself in flames.

We were in a riptide
  catching our breaths.
  15 and nobody home we
  jumped off sin's steep cliff
  and practiced 'til it was right.
  I fell in love. You loved *******.

I hate myself for wanting you.
Wrong is such an aphrodisiac.
The price is steep but brass rings
are in reach once in lifetimes and
your beauty leaves me no choice.
The deed will leave me catatonic.

Drink a toast to all us liars!
We keep the peace in marriage.
We keep love alive in old age.
We sleep cuddled in anger.
We never forget but never
remember as time dulls it all.

I wish I could describe
the totality of their sterility
of their banality
but it killed my brain.

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 would never dance again.

I was Catholic from birth born with
  original sin and doomed to rosaries and
  Novenas and nuns, priests and confession.
  My guilt would tear God to pieces.
  Heaven would be empty and hell cool ash.
  Atheists would dance if they knew how.
Zealots still speak tongues with poison  snakes.
  Preachers would still make their fortunes.

I'm gone inside of moments
and lost inside of days and
live inside of hours with
chores wishing I was dead.

If you and I were in the vicinity
of the same age I'd invite you to
get coffee. It's an invite to be lovers
but now I'm just a ***** old man.

I broke the chain of cruelty
    from father to son beatings.
    I was cruel to a dog we had.
    I set him free in a rich place
    he'd find love and kindness.
    I'm between time and Timbuktu.
    I see me in a thousand mirrors.
    One of them might be perfect.

If it sounds insane it's true.
   The shark is in the goldfish bowl.
   Killers swarm our picnic field and
   **** the enemy where we had lunch
   a year ago and ****** marriage vows
   and promised 'til death parted us.
   Today we're on a rail car to a camp.

I was conceived in the wrong womb.
  That's my life in a nutshell.
  It was one I never wore well.
  Greenhills, OH. Suburbia writ large.
  Lovely family and all but Bumpkinville
  so boring I took up smoking 8th grade.
  A swimming pool but I craved an ocean.
  I wanted a boardwalk and carneys and girls
  bold enough to kiss me like I needed.
  I wanted canyons of skyscrapers to wander
  and junkies and perverts and hookers who
  knew the price of meat. I wanted a library
  with every book ever writ held out for me
  to devour and digest so I'd be smarter than
  my father and teachers and the *******
  Parish priests who loved their altar boys.

I don't know what they've done to you, my love.
    They claim they fixed you but I fear they stole
    your essence, your flame that burned too bright
    but kept us both warm in the bitterest winters.
    You look almost the same as before except your
    eyes seem vacant. Both seeing and blind together.
    I miss your outbursts of passion that thrilled
    and scared me. They always ended in mad *******.
    Now we don't ride the bed together. I tuck you in,
    a kiss and pulling a sheet over you like a shroud.

I came to the same fork as Frost
but took the worn path and never
looked back or wondered what if.
It made all the difference after all.

It's easy to fall in love in Cape Cod or
     the Vineyard or Nantucket in season, with
     roaring seas and ocean winds flying kites.
     Late afternoon we lie together in youth's
     embrace eating forbidden fruit. We love.

     It's tough to love after a broken heart.
     Plagued by bitter memories and subtle hints to
     look elsewhere. Doubting my appeal I try guilt.
     It just takes longer to the final gasp of death.
     Move on. There's no changing our chemistry.

I don't play along with HP's MO.
I wish I could but the young poets
you choose to feature haven't been
bent and broke as age can broker.
Few shine and I love them but,
they're rare and most are puppy love.
I'll live here quiet in shame
and watch from the distance
and wait for the virus to die.

Pills make me happy when I'm sad, and tired
  so I can sleep, and wide awake in mornings.
  Pills help me when anxiety steals my breath.
  Pills  save me from a cuckoo's nest lobotomy.
  Pills make me feel normal like the rest of you.
  Pills let me feel lust on our special date night.

The streets are alive with barkers
  and for rent by the hour lovers for
  any taste. Cross dressers and trannys
  confuse your drunken *** with desire.
  You ignore your family and catechism
  kneel in her church and eat the host.

A cup I fill with coffee in the morning
  or with wine in the afternoon til' sleep.
  A needle she fills with magic potions
  that make her many ghosts for pleasures.
  A razor that calls like sirens from rocky
  shores to slash a vein and join her chorus.

Another year killed in cold blood
with nothing to show for it. Tick Tock.
Maps always lead nowhere.
Directions are puzzles.
I'm 71 years old. I still have a brain
and a heart and courage. Dorothy
died awhile ago and I miss her
and her little dog too.
We laughed too loud not long ago.
She'd be 98 and giggle like a girl.

These are just horrible God ******
truths hidden behind the curtain
of The Wizards of Oz.
Soldiers fed to meat grinders of war.
Generals in the rear play chess
with cavemen from Boise
with no skin in their game.
They drink and **** and live.

I'm around the bend
and up the creek. My
skin is parchment and
my eyes are cloudy and
ears full of lies.
I'm not fragile.
I don't shrink from
the crisis created by
Goldfinger. I'm
Bond. James Bond.
Follow me to my
happy ending.

We all have bunches of stories that
define us. We tell them in our cups
when truth comes easy forgotten in
morning. I stand naked for a moment.

I drool wearing the crown
and a bunch of people dry
my chin. I must matter but
I have no idea why. I just
want to blow stuff up. I have
cannons I aim at France and
order them fired and clap
and laugh at silly wars.

Where do you come from?
  A billion brain cells click
  and turn and you laugh or
  cry. You never forget. It
  simmers for years until one
  night in your cups it moves
  your fingers on keys and
  you give birth to a Poem.

I want pleasure. Mother's milk
and rock me gently to dreams.
I want laughter and kisses and
wine and lovers dancing naked
in midnight's full moon who
make me think I matter.

I bring you invisible to the party to
   meet my friends on an autism spectrum.
   They drink every third beer and **** on
   the hour. They avoid eye contact and guess
   your IQ and love your smell and fear you.
   They like us. They invite us to come again.

If I pluck the strings of
   my worn out heart and it's
   as though an old man were
   leafing through an album
   with a ghost forgive me.
   I'm living in old photos.

****** river flowing red
deflowered on her bed
by a ******* brutal beast
long gone after his feast

I have to hold you by your edges
    careful not to smear your makeup,
    not to muss your hair, ruin lipstick.
    You are my porcelain china doll.
    I'm your curator. Look but don't touch.
    I'll keep you perfect forever.

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 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.

She was born and raised in Charleston's
rural islands with a view of the world we
could never understand today.
The slave market is a flea market now.

A picture from a thousand kisses ago.
We were so in love full of desire we
knew would last forever. We are always.
Until we weren't. What broke besides
our hearts? We never understood. We
just blamed boredom and each other.

A picture from a million kisses ago.
Older and wiser we still broke our
bed and didn't miss a beat. We were.
Then one day we found others to break
more beds and lost sight of love. ****
was what we did. Until we didn't bother.

A picture of me on my 90th. Wrinkled
and alone in assisted living with a
cupcake and candle and little cardboard
birthday hat aching for youth and
beaches and bars and old lovers again
young to break more ******* beds.