There we were sitting on bar stools
side by side and talking about women
and the way they smell. Some earthy and
some flowers and some like stale *****.
We told sick jokes and remembered good
old days when men were fierce and girls
were gentle and tamed their beasts.
We parted. He paid my tab. Yellow teeth.
I remember his laugh. It was sincere.
I stumbled out drunk but he walked sober.

I was going to Twitter today.
I needed to get my fill of venom
and hate to feed my outrage
and fuel my despair and fear.
I ended up here instead.
I'm listening to upbeat music
and hope we all gather in a field
called Woodstock and drop acid
and get baptized in pouring rain
naked and free of anybody's chains.

Cradles to caskets and everything
  between you need we have for sale
  at the General Store. We're living
  at the edge of society with savages
  just outside our walls bloodthirsty
  and hunting for scalps and women.
  Remingtons for sale and Colt pistols.
  Tend your fields and break horses.
  Whip mules to pull your plows and
  pray to your god for rain and sun.
  Feed your infant and **** for more.
  You need field hands for the harvest.

My girl favors sweatpants and sweaters
  like a nun. Under her armor she hides
  Victoria's secrets and pierces my heart
  and slays this dragon with her thong.

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'm a poet. My job is to drag your heart
   kicking and screaming through your past
   reminding you of kindnesses and cruelties.
   Against my wall blindfold and last cigarette.
   Truth is my weapon. There is no confessional.
   We're naked and always ugly in our own light.

Have you ever read a poem and been
profoundly touched? Your world
trembled for a moment and you
were compelled to write  a poem
to shake other's worlds.
A leaf, a door, a poem unread.

We've read your submission and don't
have a place for it in our magazine
at this time. We look forward to future
submissions and wish you well.

We have billions of submissions and
can't possibly read them all so we
count on poets in print to fill pages so
the rest of you must busk for change.

They bully us constantly to
be at a place and time or else.
tic tock seconds we race to please
the clocks we fear as they snap
whips and rule the fools we are.
We live years and die in seconds.