Love is everywhere
the light is unless
you eat my pets or
**** my kin again.
Welcome to America
Land of the free
with weapons for
you and for me.
Walter Cronkite died
buried with truth.
My brother's bible
New York Times
makes communists
socialists and Nuns.

You're a burr in my saddle
a stone in my shoe
annoying rattle
driving to you
in my **** box car
held together with glue
to remove a spider
for my love of you.

I went to 6 Alcott Lane
I grew up joy and pain
For sale after the funeral
Mom and Dad now unreal.
Just sad empty spaces
ghosts call our places
Christmas mornings
Echoes of warnings.

We leave you in droves.
You betrayed our beliefs.
Treason to Constitution.
My uncle was a priest.
****** a congregation.
**** the evil devil  beast.

I rode rails with Kerouac
dragged hearts through
one night bomber flack
full moon of eerie blue.

Willing virgins sacrificed
on altars of sacred Beats
Scream out "Jesus Christ"!
applause from cheap seats.

The whole **** bunch of you
drag me down a rabbit hole
with more lost hope insane
Xmas morning lump of coal.
Let me be eaten by Haitians
surrender of all the nations.

Who do you beg to forgive
when Katie estranged me?
What can you do all alone?
maybe just write poetry.
Set yourself on fire to be
another zealot set free.

The second hand reminds
the minute hand to move
that reminds hour hand
time's advance to prove.

Corner of here and there
whenever and where.
I beg for change
always rearrange
shtick for crowd
I want them loud
tossing money
****** funny.

You made vows you broke.
Promised serenity. A joke
without laughter a king
with a crown of thorns
nailed on cross of wood.
We rode the rails for free
from here to the eternity
I can be what I should be.

Drugs don't stop
the shaking now
but I still try again
the promises louder
needle full of water
Rehab false slaughter.

He snores and farts in sleep.
Unabashed as we kids creep
looking at Grandpa's books
borrowing them like crooks.
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
My 100 Night's in the Bar
tanned in neon's sunlight
stumble home in moonlight.

Polio or stroke or death?
Macabre Picasso thought?
Pocket watch ticks breath
was I only sold and bought?

All the loud explosions in your head
many generations have been dead.
Dancing to Victrola music drink gin
toast survivors we can love again.
Missing an arm or leg or heart
sit with me and kiss for a start.

Too much fools blood to drink
I made monsters to never think.
Mad as a hatter follow the hare
down the rabbit hole if you dare.
A tab of acid and Cheshire Cat
I married a 10 who turned to fat.
Rusted tin man and cowardly lion
Dorothy's world is finally dying.

Me and My Arrow

I swore you called me Dad
walking barefoot to the bar
with your brother Sean
and a ***** gallon jug
cheap beer in the jar.
saw The Point a delight
put you two in beds
kissed you night.

I shoot up and live death awhile.
  I keep dropping dead and come alive
  and die again and death holds the
  best dreams for us living zombies.
  We lose families. We lose ourselves.
  We wish prayers helped or AA or
  sponsors or your heart and soul.
  I dream of our first time *******.

We planted our hearts
in our backyard doubt
waited for sacred water
all we got was drought.
Love is a quiet slaughter
never suicides shout.

Another stranger in my bed
all the others left once fed
leaving echoes inside my head
Shrink's pills here instead
mourning her beauty's dead
marriage completely bled.

Surrounded by all this earthly ****
in my happy hour a Springsteen hit
New York City Serenade takes me
back to my youth where I'm naive.
I'm a nasty fat ghost dead certain
at inevitable confessional curtain
judgement's cards are on the table
thumbs up or down or just a fable?

I'm lost each night
for an hour or two
in wine's sweet flight
nothing better to do
I fly too close to the sun
then fall back to the Earth
I never die in dream fun
pained morning a rebirth.

Foothills of the Rockies
  Aspen's spread gold leaves,
  grey branches in the trees
  shake in the Autumn breeze.

Young is easy.
     Old is hard.
     Young knows it all.
     Old knows better.
     Young fears nothing.
     Old fears forgetting.
     Young moves free.
     Old moves tethered.
     Young has parties.
     Old has Irish wakes.

The last dance
a final chance
for midnight's
magic romance.

Tear your heart
with broken strings
pull it kindly apart
as the Angel sings
knit it together
as winter is dying
her grandmother
never stops trying.

Peep hole in my sleep
third eye judges me.
God all seeing creep
it never sets me free.

Jack Daniels slept in my bed
kept me warm for empty years.
My lovers, always bored, fled.
Always chased a shot with tears.

Harder  to live, just be brave.
Dollars now just worth dimes.
Nothing worth a **** to save.
These are known as harder times.
Eating cat food or moldy bread.
Forgive my crass expression
hunger has gone to my head.
Another greater depression.

Friday August 30 2024 11PM EST
Time ceased to be frozen rhyme
tick tock just a broken clock
Love's birth ran out of time.
The end of human kind
Earths' sun went blind.

I chew a bit of this pill
and feel a little less ill.
I swallow a blue moon
sleep through a typhoon.
A tab of acid in my tea
the world bewilders me.

Wrapped in flagged boxes
happy remains from foxes.
War's a dead zero sum game
both sides always the same.

Chardonnay brings dreams to life
     until morning's brutal genocide.
     I untangle old lost memories,
     carry on throughout a busy day.

     Night always arrives while thirst
     demands attention. Dreams resurrected
     answering impossible questions.
     Morning kicks down the door again.

     Day follows day, feels like forever.
     I must have gone mad.  I stared into
     the sun then jumped to a final peace.
     Finally, I found my own great escape!

Birth and Death and between
we call ticks on the clock life
filled with laughs and tears
first periods and brassieres.
******* a disappointment
raw without the ointment.
Can't remember your name
though you swear I came.

water dripping
clock ticking
counting sheep
just can't sleep
haunting violins
insane mandolins
constant litany
of sins dripping.

I craved your poison breath.
   You made me dig my grave.
   You ate me after my death.
   Mourned me too late to save.

If man is made
in the image of God.
What beast births
and buries us in sod?

I bring us back to life.
We bonded at the Air Force
Museum. Your crazy shades
a truly fashionable divorce.
Stopped at Perkins for lunch.
I miss you so **** much.
I'll join you much too soon
on the dark side of the moon.

Vincent's starry madness
let loose with his paints
ghost's at Midnight Mass
praying for living saints.

Fantasy sets fire to my fierce heart
throbbing for a stranger on the bus
who makes me wet in diesel dreams
I finger our Eden for both of us.

When it came it surprised me how quickly it was done.
   I expected the end to take some time, maybe a little drama.
   Within an instant I went from cutting grass to being a bit
   piece of some enormous, all knowing energy. Overwhelmed.

   I was no longer me.  I was everything that had ever lived!
   Plant, animal, microbe, every thought ever thought, every
   feeling ever known from every world that ever was.  Each
   blade of grass screaming when cut down in its prime.

   I thought wars would be the most horrible of all, but
   it happened to be the personal cruelties visited upon
   cells by cancerous bullies who cared only for themselves.
   Life is hoarded by all.  Only the strong will survive.

Sleep in a stranger's bed
2 days later head and crotch
magic lover's itch instead
of marriage down a notch.

He found my need and fed it.
I'm an empty vessel in a shroud.
A thousand ****** kept me calm.
I died for you to make you proud.

I'm just another trophy to make
me lifelike with glass blue eyes
convincing color of the skin and I
promise I'll keep safe all the lies.

You'll laugh at my dad jokes
and Camo Crocs I wear.
Laugh out loud and cry
have a baby name her Bill.
I'm living in your memory
I'm the flower and butterfly.

I start looking for night at noon
   in dark bars searching on bar stools.
   I couldn't sleep in a raging sea of a
   thousand clowns and useless fools.
   I live in asylums' promises of hope.
   The storm is coming for us all again.
   Find a home find a harbor an anchor
   find a God who will forgive that sin.

I don't know where I am
this vast wilderness my life.
I starve for your touch again,
instead I feel your knife.

Are you soft or are you hard?
Are you in or are you out?
What says your Tarot card?
All that's certain is doubt.

Outside my front door
the world dies in war.
It evaporated everyone
exfoliated life is done.
Blow my mind away, Son.
I know god is now gone.

I go each day and put my offering on the bar.
  Heal my broken soul 'til the things used up.
  Be sure to keep a tip for all your hard work,
  saving all us from choking on the coal dust
10 percent for our funerals buried inside
the mine's indifference who lives or dies.

Love exists in a carnival
house of mirrors
each reflection fetching
in certain light such dears.
One night I'll decide
eat the lead of my .44
commit my sacred suicide
avoid blood on the floor.

Wanted: Temporary wife
to tend to my pretend life
in Boston footloose guilt
the beer and ****** quilt
keeps me safe in dreams
nightmares leak in seams.

Was it the anger
or complete insane
exciting stranger
or the birthing pain
our ****** mistake
the devils handshake
stubborn weight gain
never any answers just
put a bullet in your brain
leave the red goodbye stain.