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 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.

Every 28 days comes
the red tide we were
gifted as girls our curse.
Our red badge of courage.
Sherry marked his white Levis.
He put a red pen in his pocket.

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.

He's dying in his bed above his bar
    where juke box plays soundtracks
    of life and people dance out loud
    laughing and living fierce desperate
    lives below his death bed. Life on fire!
    Reggie dies quiet. His bar closes
    for his Memorial. All his customers
    remember Reggie and forget bar tabs.

I always saw you on my horizon.
I went to meetings and confessed
helplessness and drank bland coffee
and ate stale donuts and smoked
an endless chain of cigarettes.
I walked twelve steps in your shoes.

I missed my family and relapsed.
They kept my bar stool for me and
I drank to our health and you.
I'll see you in my dreams hidden in
liquor's fog. Will I ever know normal?
Maybe when I've had a hair of the dog.

You're perfect.
I know I should love you.
I don't understand ways of
the heart and Cupid's cruelty.
I fell in love before and felt
betrayed by Eros.

Jesus wants to bring you
  back to life
  but you don't want to.
  You really have no choice with
  the power of God on His side.
  Just walk among the living
  then just die in your own time
  forgotten as you would've been.

The day we went swimming in
our waterhole in underwear and
saw us as special boys who had
no rules was the day of our birth
baptized in the muddy water.
Our paths have diverged over
time. We set the world on fire
and made a difference at last.

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

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.

I was drowning in drunk minutes
waiting for 10 pm. Bedtime. I held
the minute hand to fight the riptide
and landed in silent seas of dreams
where my torn life is stitched back
like a monster I never understood.

I'll climb into the cockpit
of this beast that threatens
to beat the speed of light
though I might disappear.
I have Einstein's photograph
in my pocket for good luck.

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

You have to see the garden of my broken heart.
Everything is old as dirt itself and the biggest
Sunflowers and Roses and Trees split clear in two.
Tears grow love in barren soil.
I thought I was loveless until I met
her walking from the garden
with rose blood dripping
from her fingers for the unloved
to finally taste love. I did.

I was born a turtle. Kids put me on
the road and watched me squashed.
I was born a parrot and captured and
broke into an odd pet in your cage.
I was born a duck and cruelly drowned
for your convenience. My father was
at war and lost his kindness and I
was squashed, caged and drowned

He was too good for death.        
        Rusty should never have died.      
        My world is diminished now.
        Each day without him thinner air,
        less light, too cold and too hot.
        All dogs go to heaven so they say.
What kind of twisted God condemns
Golden Retrievers to death?

The whole world is out tonight.
Dancing and celebrating and seducing
one another over drinks and  taxi rides
to his bed and a disappointing ****.
She wakes early and dresses and flees.
She hopes he'll call sometime today.

There's a piece of the moon
floating in clouds tonight
like ships on a lonely sea.
I lost faith long ago and hope
to god I'm wrong. Save me.
I need a miracle, saving grace.

You brought us all to certain life, flesh and blood
  and every piece of celluoid with blinks of eyes we
  think it's real! You follow us home into our dreams
  replay every scene all night long and we wake wiser.

I'm scared I couldn't.
I'm scared I could.
I thought I wouldn't.
Then I finally did.
I followed my heart
and divorced my life.
My lover sets me afire
where we feel it most.
We live modest now.
We eat at home alone
together every night
with black in my soul.
The condo's quiet, no
sons or dogs or her.

I wear it proudly on my breast.
Shame the hell out of me if you must.
I scratch my words on your own stains.
I write my poems on your forgiven sins.

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.

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.

They always look torn to shreds
and halfway to dead but never
die. They gather like clouds and
demand attention and food.
They **** on your suit and hair
but pay you no mind at all.

I'm an old poet with a young heart.
  I'm Scrooge on Christmas morning.
  I'm George Bailey at the end thankful
  because it's a wonderful life after all.

I'll rip my face off and give
you one you'll fancy for love.
I can shape my body however
you want if you'll desire me.
I can pour gasoline on me
and burn to a cinder if you
will carry me within you
inside your secret garden.

My desires stay in their little prisons
like your ******* locked in that bra.
I release them with liquor. They crawl
all over the bar and my mind. I see you
in spotlights on stages waiting for me.
We're young again at the beach with the
rock we dive and swim through and the
sun makes us gold and we **** in bed all
night long and wash our beautiful sins
away in baptism in the morning surf.
I puke in the gutters at closing time.
I stagger to my rooming house and drop
into bed and ache for you all night long
dreaming of you bra free like we met.

I'm ancient.
Stuff seeps out.
Can't ignore it.
Always a stain
and smell of death
around the bend.

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.

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 *******.

These nuthouses are full of
   sad stories. My heart bleeds for
   our circumstance. Sad is all.
   When they asked about you I said
   she's right as rain, a perfect wife.
   They said you were dead.  They lied
   and put me in a room full of dark.
   Bury her in my shadow if you find it.

You can't read my mind.
You've no idea what it's
like being close to you.
I'm stunned by your beauty.
Your laugh infects me.
Your wild hair brings me
to my knees in adoration.
I cower in fear of my love.
I'm quiet. I'm distant. I dream
of you that night. I write this.

The only one I ever fear
is she who haunts my dreams.
The one who carries my heart.
She loves me more than life.
She knows everything about me.
I'm her world. I'll be her grave.

She found the love of her life.
They move into their love home
and build their nest and begin
to compromise and give up a piece
here and there and lose bits of them
until they look in a mirror and see
strangers and wonder where they
went. She's gone.

Bury truth in the backyard in
the shade of the Deceit tree.
Be careful not to disturb the
skeletons in the closet.
All families have secrets.
Forget the abortions.
Change the wedding date so
she arrived 9 months later.
Uncle Ed never killed a man
and overdosed in a crack house.

They ask me what I want.
   I won't tell those *******.
   Why would I? I'll tell you.
   We're strangers in a bar.

   I want to move back home.
   I want to move on.
   I want to apologize
   to...everyone.

   I want to watch my wife
   learn to laugh all over, I
   want to make her feel good.
   I want to make her ****** again.

I heard you in the distance calling
   to your lover. I'm always so jealous.
   Call me. I'll be whatever you want.
   Silence so loud it breaks my heart.
   I've never heard silence like this.
   I hear silence only the dead hear.

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'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.

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.

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.

The late 60's were sirens singing from
  Ulysses rocky shores. We smoked their
  joints and dropped their acid and betrayed
  our other lives. We grew long hair and we
  were groovy and far out, dressed as peacocks
  we ate from the feast until we had our fill.

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 ******.

I have nightmares and dreams.
  I hope for the best and fear the worst.
  I'm just one of God's creatures in a zoo
  called my mind. Walls everywhere I can't
  go beyond. Gravity, time, our biology
  keep me inside my tiny world tethered
  to my appetites. Will death set me free?
 I live again in nightmares and dreams.

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.

I was born in the deepest winter storm.
Made by God's own children I was packed
strong and given heart and brain and courage.
I was destined for great things but couldn't move.
I knew the meaning of life and was God's voice.
I was mute and by summer I was forgotten.

Buildings stand shoulder to shoulder
  like giants ready for battle.
  The rich live in ivory towers. The rest live
  in concrete boxes in this city of extremes.
  Our hearts beat faster. Our desires burn hotter.
  We live with blind eyes and silent protest as
  atheists **** God with science and formulas
  while we light candles and put coins in a box.

I exist inside a tiny space of your heart
called my universe I'll never understand.
You blind me with your drunken rage.
I'll never see your stars inside my eyes.
I remember your taste and white heat
burning me as I go down in your flames.