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.

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 ancient my life
       packed neat in boxes
       in the attic
       by my wife
       for my final heartbeat
       and my burial
       in our plot. Send the lot
       to Goodwill to be forgot.

For birth
for need
for jealousy
for greed
for love
for lust
for envy
for trust
for anger
for hate
for planning
for fate
for breath
for darkness
for death

I smoked the wine
   I drank the smoke
   I was gone when I
   rang my doorbell.
   I was Tinman with
   no heart you took.
   I'm rust and dust
   just inside Bedlam.

I was lost inside myself. I was at
  a party, loud music and beer a
tiny madness tugging at my mind all day.
  I walked naked from the bathroom.
  They wore costumes.  I was
  the only one to come as you are.
  Only that not understood
  is truly irresistible.

I reach into my ice bucket.
I feel like the Titanic ruined
as I cover the bergs with wine
and crash into my destiny again.

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.

I brought my little girl into the garden.
She delighted in colorful blooms and
fragrance and my tender love that will
never die. She'll give it to her little girl.

I visit them all.
  I crave their stories.
  Maybe I want their lives.
  So many lived more proper.
  Some thought they lived sacred.
  Hate seethes from some graves.
  It's red fog in night's demise.
  Tears are everywhere in this ground.
  Wind whispers secrets. I listen.
  Life is Death's reason to exist.

Rest in your love's arms tonight.
Sleep inside her dreams and frolic.
Tomorrow waits. We can worry for
our children then. Now we wander.

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.

I'm way too old to just die.
My capacity to accommodate
biological death is diminished.
I'll turn to dust and just blow away
in the morning breeze and wash
into gutters in the next storm.

From the get go when we're torn
  out of comfort into the mad sun
  we can never be sure it won't happen
  again. Maybe we are born nervous
  wrecks. What treachery is next?
  We all die? Why are we even here?

I'm older than dirt and you are
breathing on land for the first
time. I want to shake my finger
at you and say get off my lawn.
Please understand I stood in
your frames of life seconds ago.
We're born in hubris and die
in sorrowful feeble humility.
I wrote **** poetry at 20.
I hope I write better **** at 70.
The poetry I read from young
poets here is amazing.
Your poems will steer your
generation. Be the conscience.

We said "I do" before clocks ticked.
That was a time when broads like her
still existed thank all the gods! She
loved with the biggest heart and ******
with the most abandon and breathed fire
that scorched you to a cinder even though
she never would. We danced on tables in
bars long since gone. We partied with the
Fitzgeralds and Hemingway and entertained
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris
when it glowed as bright as noon at midnight.
We died in the fierce light with no regrets.

They shoot me full of poisons
   and charge me a fortune for it.
   They steal my hair and strength
   and leave my skeleton to explain
   to friends and family about nausea
   and don't touch me or you'll burn.
   I can't **** my wife. I'm toxic.
   Love is watching someone die.

I feel trapped inside my skin.
   I feel trapped inside of time.
   I feel trapped inside of life.
   I have a bottle of escape pills.
   Painless dreams out of prisons
   sing to me from rocky shores.

I'll write lyrics and strum strings
to enhance your experience. I
want to entertain you and earn
your admiration and love to be
who you hum in hot days and
hear in dreams of yearning.

Pluck a string and strike a key
and play a song with poetry called
lyrics and make me feel like I never
did before. Make me laugh and cry.
Make me see the errors of my ways.
Help me right my wrongs and forgive
those who are all as broke as we.

We're at war, you and me.
The damage has been severe.
We hate the enemy!
We've forgotten why.
Both sides are even.
Can we call a truce?

It's ugly.
It's necessary
so we know
beautiful.
The difference
blurs after awhile
it's only skin deep.
Your flaws are what
makes my heart dance.
We'll live forever.

Laborers in ties tending computers.
  9th floor and paper airplanes out
  the window. Benny Boo night shift
  games with Joe and Rick and Bill.
  Candy machine our pinata. We clutch
  our essence desperate not to be cogs.

In no particular order these are
the poets I read and their poetry
influenced mine for better or worse.
Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost,
Dylan Thomas, Langston Hughes,
T. S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, Charles Bukowski,
Stephen Dunn, Anne Sexton, Kenneth Rexroth,
Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Billy Collins,
W. B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams,
e. e. cummings, W. H. Auden,
Theodore Roethke, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath,
Leonard Cohen, Ogden Nash and Fr. Paschael O.F.M.

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?

Like Vincent my art's invisible
now but maybe future generations
will find fire in the night sky
and read my blood on the page
and know what life was like in
my time spinning on this marble.

Did paints or paintings make you mad?
The Starry Night made the moon the sun
and night the day. It was your soul on display.
You lived in that world until you couldn't.

On an altar of fierce desire we
  two virgins devoured each other
  on a blanket in the tall grass
  of Winton Woods park.
  Woman Blood
  Man *****
  One for just an instant
  and a spark created life
  that changed our world
  forever and all we cared
  about were baby names.
Kathleen Ann.

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

The virus is lust.
It propagates us.
Keep me alive and
feed me love and grace.

Voluptuous woman full figure and
tight short jeans bending over your
garden as I walk my dogs by your
yard and I wonder at your wonders.
I imagine you'd be wild in bed.
You might scream and sweat as I
tasted you where it matters.
We'd sleep as spent lovers do.

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.

Needed ASAP! A brain, a heart and courage.
  I'm a simple farm girl swept up in a tornado
  and landing on and killing some old witch with
  a cold heart and ruby slippers. Dorothy. Kansas.

Each pencil is an arrow, every pen a spear,
     each typewriter key a grenade of "truth".
     Propaganda sways masses where writers steer.
     Who are we to doubt the almighty news?

You bury your boys.
  We bury our boys.
  Our tears can never
  bring them back.

  What's the score in war?
  Number of men killed or
  maimed? Which is worse?
  No man returns the same.

  Those at home waiting
  will never know him again.
  He's silent or screams at
  night in dreams of war.

  The children will cringe
  at his cruelty he hates
  but never understands.
  It's war's carrion breath.

We were giddy with the promise of war,
adventure of a lifetime after all.
We were boys on men's threshold.
We saw our generation explode in
****** mist and die like fish on shore
with the mustard gas. Broken men
returned home and never
could love or forgive again.

Set up the chess board for us.
String barbwire between us.
Introduce Gatling guns to the battle
and make it a meat grinder and weeks
become months become years and it
seems there are no pieces left to save.
Widows and orphans and lovers all
weep for their ghosts in our cellars.
The broke men who returned had
lost limbs and most of their minds.

Poems hung out like laundry
  on the strings of my heart to
  dry in gentle summer breezes
  wave goodbye to all my lovers.
  I never wanted to leave but I
  knew that someday you'd **** me.

Where all our monsters live
in luxury with wads of cash
if you stab a back or slit a throat.
Sell your soul pennies on a yuan.
Give the rubes a buck or two and
promise them what they need
to survive another term. You
retire a billionaire and they sell
businesses pennies on a dollar.
Suicides keep morticians rich.

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.

I've been put upon all along
    for this broken heart song
    so keep your tears for later
    when you read my final letter.
    I still love you but I surrender
    to our fractured pretend splendor.
    I tried to live in ticks of time
    that bled like a watercolor crime.

I fall in love easy
with all the others.
Snake hair and *******,
thin as ice I skate on.
We play our parts on cue.
We laugh and cry sculpted.
Life like posed in wax in
Madame Tussaud's museum.

I look in my mirror and talk
to the old man staring at me.
Why are you smiling? Death
is not far away. We wasted
our best years. We chased
her and lived in bars and
racetracks and funerals of
broken souls just like us.
We keep smiling and tuck
another Ace in our sleeve.

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.

We are poets. We are emotional to extremes.
      We love more and hate more and suffer most
      of all.  We feel everyone's pain and write it
      in our blood for you. You're welcome.

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 like clowns.
    We are clowns dressed as undertakers.

Forever turns out to be a long time.
I devoured you on our wedding night.
You were all I'd ever want to eat again.
Wedding cake got old after a year or so.
Vows so sacred became children's prayers.
We used to always kiss goodnight but
now we sleep in different bedrooms
because I work late and you dream
of a lover you once had who promised
to have and hold 'til death do us part.

April 20th is our holiday.
We smoke joints at 4:20 pm.
Flip a finger to the world.
We won't march to your drummer.

We come from hopeless histories
  to America with hope in pockets.
  We work like madmen tireless to
  earn our keep and feed we Irish.
  I feed coal to iron furnaces and
  load cargo in ship's hot holds.
  We won't starve to death here.
  My great grandson scratches
  my story into your memory.

We know we are going to die,
just not today or in our sleep.
Pencil it into your Day timer
then you can erase your erase.