We were young and beautiful.
     We tasted each other and feasted
     on our banquet. I smell you still
     I'm 73 and you're beside me in bed
     in dreams that are more alive
     than my daily crawling to death.

I never believed in anything
as much as I believed in you.
I'll never forget you. Your
heartbeat is still in my own.
You taught me how to love.
You taught me patience and
humility and to be kind when
it wasn't deserved but needed.
God's own Golden Retriever.

I fell in love with a boy
and I gave him my toy
he said it was forever
always be together
Romeo and Juliet
I'll never forget
our stage in light
the final night.
The curtains close
frozen in our pose.

insane love is the best love
you fight yourselves to death
then **** yourselves to life
your kiss is your first breath.

I lost faith in faith
and belief in belief
when you broke my
rose color glasses.
I see evil people
lusting for control
of mankind in cages
dancing on stages
**** the unwanted
the old the gimps
hookers and pimps
darkies and spics
addicts on trips.

You weren't seen
in my blind spot
too old so young
perfect ink blot
no trouble at all
self absorbed dad
in and out of love
edge of mind mad.
I forgot to care
for the tattered
broken Daughter
always mattered.

It was on a cardboard sign
held by a hobo 5th and Vine.
Shame on the cars waiting
for the green lights hating.
No eye contact made
when I drive off you fade.
Was he in need or a fake?
Jesus heartbreak or a snake.

Night defeats the sun
    and hangs its pale imposter
    in its own sky
    to wax and wane
    and woo young lovers
    under the boardwalk.
    Monsters hide under beds
    while skeletons fill closets
    and life gets lived always
    hanging in the balance.
    Dawn beats back the dark and
    makes us live another day.

I had a room in a garret.
She had a room without heat.
We had holes in our hearts.
I called her from a phone booth
and went to her cold bed. We
pretended love and slept warm.

They tried to break me.
I kept spitting out the bit.
You can't tame the righteous  
Fire burned my spirit.
Wedding bands won't
shackle me like chains
I buck and snort and rebel
burn you with my flames.

In 1940 it was scandalous.
  Let no man put asunder.
  It drove a wooden stake
  through God's great heart!
  Man's hubris knew no limits.
  Shame on the failed divorcee.

  Today with God on life support
  divorce is like a parking ticket.
  Marriage is ******* for a year.
  Kids are game pieces played in
  partner chess moved to beds on the
  board until you're too old to play.

I've been chasing you forever
broken hearts left behind
love smoke in fingers never
a real ghost I will ever find.

old enough
to know better
never old enough to
forget her pleasure
lost the map to it
the buried treasure
search my heart
for promised start
never find an X
no Eden's ***
no youth's excess
no more I confess
I broke all hearts
flame less bonfire
of the broken parts
screams of desire.

Cambodia
Prison camp S-21
Angkor kills but does not explain

your blood bleeds into my veins
so I can feel your pains
whatever god you pray to
beg for deliverance.
In the good old USA we are
unaware of unseen suffering.
Usually but not always.
we met at a wedding and
you shared your story
in broken English until
I understood that you
had been in the killing fields.

I'm a blind man without a sun.
We live in different mirrors.
You have light for everyone.
I am where is what disappears.

Jesus Christ promise me
  there's hope for us still
  that you'll drop from the
  sky and set things right
  keep the communists away
  and stop the lies and let
  me drink my wine in peace
  and write madness in poems
  while You do heavy lifting
  and we won't be so reckless.

'Til death we vowed
heads fervent bowed
We'd been drunk wild
belly full of child
18 and 19 naive
tonight we believe.

I lived in a garret in a rooming house
with dead flowers in an old crystal vase.
We dead always live inside our vanity.
I was in a womb waiting to be reborn.
I was in Boston, 1000 miles from home.
The Italian and Irishman were my friends
and St. Georgine from Jersey saved me.
I'm old still crawling in the birth canal.
I'll be delivered any day now in tomorrow's
muted light my ashes in an old crystal vase.

It carries bruises from years
of fighting wars with lovers
hating my weakest fears
always avoiding others
all hidden distant stars
brutal parchment stains
like albino mega scars
no one  claims cremains

The disaster took me by surprise. I never
  saw it coming. Madness piled on madness like
  a quilt made of patches of blown up skin.
  So much debris in the air we lost breath
  and went blind and called for our lost loves.
  We slept snug beneath the quiet aftermath.

I'm worried. I heard a crack
   in the universe last night.
   When too much weight is on
   humanity to always do right.
   Our team is losing this fight.
   It is a terrible fright tonight.

I set it on fire and burned
it back into hell to sleep
another decade or two
you said something that
was really important.
I never heard you above
the screams and hatred
I'm on the outside again.
Armageddon.

The more I read poetry
It seems like obituary.
Death in a coal mine
of the innocent canary.
Let us say what needs
to be said finally.

First it steals small names
   then dreams of cunning lust.
   It smothers white hot desire
   then steals my flaccid trust.

   It hides joys I knew and my
   hate I once kept in my head
   steals lovers not forgotten.
   It buries me before I'm dead.

I want you all to be okay
    just quit dying day to day
    why the empty hourglass?
    count corpses as they pass.

Never live or die
just disappear fly
too fast to splatter
too small to matter.

Time capsules in walls
from there to the now
birth to hair on *****
sparse and grey somehow.

Kiss Susan Tucker at eight
Mrs. Reddy crush when ten
virginity offered on a plate
lost myself in a garbage bin.

I've known you for years. Grandad introduced us.
    You always made the room glow and laughter flow.
    You forgave me when I betrayed those I promised
    to never betray. You made me smarter than I was
    and clever when I was dull and modest when clever.
    There's always a madness in the air when you grace
    us with your presence.
    I plan your funeral. I bury you in a potter's field.
    I buried you  before.. Like Christ you rise.
    I put a stake in your heart and salt on your grave.
    You refuse to be banished from the lives we live.
    Maybe you'll stay buried inside me in my grave.

1968 Far Out

Wear Birkenstock's
ignore the clocks
grow your hair
forget underwear
be brave don't doubt
turn on and drop out
Naked on Alcott Lane
only myself to blame
I paint a full moon
inside our living room
sleep inside acid dreams
nothing is as it seems.

2021 Old Times

Obey the clocks take
your pills that make
you kind of normal
a bit less formal
*** will break you
I welcome my rue
I dream of our first
time to quench thirst
in tall grass Romeo
and Juliet long ago
so much life lived
so little still believed

I'll drink your poison tonight.
It was not your fault but mine.
Forgive me but you can't because
you don't know how. Maybe in my
mourning I'll nail me to your cross
and die for you one final time.

Mullets and discotheques,
gold chains round the necks,
lines of coke, smooth *****.
Buying drinks, making passes
back when everyone was gay
then the scourge had its way.

Skeletons rattling breaths
clutching the hospice deaths
Really nothing left to say
just hold my hand to pray
friends please bend a knee
thank their God their free.

I steal what I want.
    The sun and moon and
    your heart and stars
    time and beauty and
    wistful looks crying
    I'll build a universe
    for us. We are King
    and Queen. I steal dreams.
    I always dream of you
    You dream of me too.

My love is not a page
full of pretty poetry
more like fires of rage
atomic bomb imagery
melted hearts boiled tears
I gave you charred flowers
once in many loveless years
a Pompeii Bouquet of hours.

I betrayed Jesus Christ with a kiss
and his father God to the atheists
nothing seems to matter anymore
I can finally **** through any door
and drink from any water fountain
love any woman I desire in the rain
makes no difference what her stain
colorless lovers feel couple's pain.

Pour your tears in my eyes
and I will weep for you.
Wrap your despair in a red box
with a satin bow and gift it to
me at Christmas to bear alone.
Shove your sobs down my throat
and I gasp for better times.
I find it kind of our last hope.

People in relationships
are not half of each other.
We are complete in ourselves.
Just complement each other's
strengths and weaknesses,
when you meet the mothers.

Drunk love is magic
kinda true and tragic
born in a Dali womb
a melting clock tomb.

play the hand
a twist of fate
pay the band
never too late

the red door
says a mime
Tia's encore
wrinkles time

Answers are hiding in questions;
truths barely hidden in lies.
Fancy women fill my heavens.
Cupid wore me down. Love dies.

I needed honesty at last and
walk out of the bathroom naked
jaws drop eyes shock me  in a cocoon
of truth condemned now I'm free.
I broke sacred vows and my kids
and turned into a statue of salt.

I saw a dying brother bleed out.
I watched a madman **** his flock.
Parades celebrated the funerals.
Little boys masquerading as men
played war. Real men died for mud.
Loved ones prayed their rosaries.
No prayers were ever answered on
our street. Gold stars filled sad
windows. Widows cried in private.
They never wanted to dance again.

I'm just a junkyard dog.
Old scars tell my story.
I'm left water and scraps.
Alone in the dark I sleep
and dream of a better life
and love with *******
I smell beyond fences.
Love is just out of reach.

I'm riding bulls in bars outside my mind
before I fell in love with the rest
of them everyone these days if only
you knew my heart, the damage I carry in
my psyche like a pouch of Judas silver.
Betray me with just one more kiss.
You're the voice inside my head
that one I'll finally always miss.

Sardines inside a subway car
Pickles packed inside the jar
Soldiers so close in a foxhole
Welfare office for the dole
A billion windows with a story
some of love or hate or glory
huddled masses in a dormitory
overwhelm every inventory.

Raised glasses troops back home,
  five dames toasting a new need.
  Maybe tomorrow's no more alone.
  Wombs hoping for a lover's seed.

We've had our fun
with Yeats and pun
illicit lovers and
others at hand
I love you best
now time to rest
tomorrow night
resume our flight

We wear white hats
and ride white horses
to rein in the sheep
to right wrong courses.

She left me a long time ago.
  I found her ****** in a crack
  under the bed overlooked cargo.
  If I knew where I'd send 'em back.

Notable characters I've known
touched raw nerves I exposed
vulnerable like being alone
forever in a Polaroid posed.

poems scattered around the room
in my never ending fool's errand
as poet laureate of Watercolor's
perfect world of happy accidents.
We drool and weep out of context
but scratch a portrait of Sexton
asleep in her car in the garage.
We copy Plath's ****** scene of
geese escaping winter to warmth.
We suffer cures of lobotomies.