We're embryos in a prison, no escape.
  Released after serving 9 months inside.
  Finally on the outside in a searchlight;
  aliens grab for me while I cry in terror.

  Time passes and I'm allowed to join peers.
  Daycare is where we compare notes and learn
  about wardens keeping us from our freedom.
  We pinky swear allegiance to our new cause.

  We are imprisoned in elementary school and
  bored to a death sentence. Cursive, add, subtract,
  multiply and divide. Memorization of everything.
  History is reduced to indoctrination. God save us.

  Middle school is blemished skin and puberty at
  odds with one another. Let's get close. Eww!
  Cliques are the prison gangs. You belong or not.
  We take care of our own and you can go to hell.

  High School is the big house. ****, nerd or normal.
  There's a special cruelty reserved for "losers".
  Those are people different from established groups.
  They're prey to be driven to their own demise.

  College is the great escape. Finally on our own.
  We can drive our own lives wherever we want.
  Study and obey the rules, or party every night.
  No middle ground. **** the torpedoes!

  I enter the work force. I'm an associate at Target.  
  I'm tethered by a walkie talky.  We're drones.
  I feel like I'm a cog with a target on my back.
  I marry a coworker and we serve time together.

  We raise a family of prisoners and near the end
  when our health is waning, I go into the garage
  and put a hose from the exhaust into my window,
  and finally find my way out of Alice's Wonderland.

Stephen Dunn is dead at 82.
He captured life on the page
in lines I felt when I was 42
heart's know nothing of age.

Valentine in his shirt pocket
suffered from Love's black kiss
used to be its favorite neglect.
It's always been a hit or miss.

I'm shadows
of the gallows
from long ago
carnival show
our cold sheet
yearns for heat.

I thought you loved me
the same way I loved you.
I was just a piece of ***
after a beer or maybe two.
Always a broken heart
right beneath the surface
falls through thin ice.
We always pay a price.

When I grew into my ball's
puberty I drank a first beer.
I puked that night on walls.
Then I knew how to steer
my own course in my life.
I know right from wrong
I know songs of *****'s
from Ulysses's shores
blinded by the sun light
in never ending night.

If I could bring you
close enough to my heart
where you could hear
the universe's tiny start

you might just forgive
my appetite for lust
my passive aggressive
lack of anyone's trust.

Revolution
  We seeded discontent
  increased the angry want.
  We butchered our oppressors
  became the new expresses
  we were elite suppressors
  buried unwashed confessors
  called it the flip of a coin.
  Queen, off with their heads.
  The sheep survived and join
  Reds starve them no breads.