I put the tent
on hot cement
where we never went
Jesus moves hell scent
cools our sins spent
praise our pain's sweat.

I expected to die by now.
I'm lost in a lost world.
Bette's 92 lost in her past.
I visit she sees ghosts,
thinks I'm her brother
asks about our mother.

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.

My face betrays its youth
in cratered flesh and truth
trenches of war torn living
in need of your forgiving.
You need confession as well.
Pour cool tears into our hell.

I'm dragging myself cross country
   once again trying to find a place
   that I can recognize as home. I'm
   aching for my own kind. Tired of
   temporary jobs and lovers in bars
   I don't recognize in the morning.

Friends and lovers
   years ago in Boston
   I reach back in time
   call you on a loose
   wire and I hang up
   without a message
   I don't know what
   to say tonight
   maybe tomorrow
   sober and older
   wiser and denial
   always an option.

Poets are rats in no man's land.
Death rotting on the bone is a
cratered field of dead poems.
We charge into the endlessness
set our words on fire and fall
onto them as sacrifice.

You want to speak to my heart
you broke not too long ago.
I'll see if it's here. Who is calling?
It's not ready to hear you yet.
Call back in a life or two and
maybe I'll forget your cruelty.

I'll die for
a day or two
and return
to you.
In fantasy
and dreams
in our naps
all as it seems.
We look at stars
drink a beer
make our love
as one my dear.

I'm a country song
in a bar doing wrong
hope to sleep in beds
unknown tails heads
I bleed mercy after all
always sought after fall
Join me in my lonely death
give me your last breath.

Death's lipstick kiss
fire's breath and rain
in blood war's red mist
we pray stop the pain.

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 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.

My mind is cavernous. There's enough
    room for madness and love and petty
    slights and high school crushes I
    thought I'd die without. Nooks and
    crannies where insecurity thrives
    are everywhere. Bats are in vast
    belfries. My giant eye that stares
    me down each night sits where it
    pleases. Old lovers swing from
    drafty eaves flipping me their
    birds. My heart bleeds into a pool
    where all my mistakes feed endless.
    Guilt has its own penthouse suite.
    I dream among the attic's memories.

I crave love.
I hunger for White Castle.
Your hair smells like rain.
Box Chardonnay is coolio.
Keep me in your thoughts.
I'll spy on you in dark from
the tree in your yard and
sign the divorce papers.

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.

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.

Moments still eat seconds that
eat from minutes that feed from
hours while we toil at jobs that
steal from ticking life's hourglass
sand in tiny pieces never quit
until we are just dead clocks.

It's a beauty of a red rose.
  It's a watercolor on a bed sheet
  petals bloom from his wound.
  She'd had it and found a gun
  and courage and anger enough
  to put him out of her misery.

Rip our jaw away
silence the sway
we have for folks
excite provokes.
Feed us to Judas
one more exodus.
Nailed to thunder
left us to wonder
why are we so alone
for humans' atone?

Death is ill timed, never expected
  and awkward for those left behind.
  Funerals are Death's surreal plays.
  Tears won't always come on cue.

  It's bad luck to talk about death.
  We speak kind of the dead. We don't
  talk of their human frailties.
  We deny our own sins and theirs.

  We forgive the world for our sins.
  If we never lived in your creation
  with temptations forbidden we'd
  never suffer birth and death.

In the time it took me to brush my teeth
the universe was born a billion years ago.
Heaven and hell woven by the very fabric
of our existence. Complexity only a grand
watchmaker could ever begin to envision.
In motion chaos has a way with order and
beauty is scarred and love is lost and you
and I drift apart in the most ordinary way.

5am we crowd in the rickety cage
   take us down to hell's cold entry
   into the mines. We stoop and dig
   claws into the rock to drag coal
   into the carts we roll to a rich
   man's greed and we end our days
   in poor man's bars swallow coal
   dust into our angry hearts keep
   score waiting for God's smite.
   We sleep with our sacred wives.

We're loose power lines in an angry storm. Dangerous
  because we state truths that mere mortals don't want
  to hear. They color inside the lines and live within
  the box. They seek safety. At times I envy them.

  I refuse to live in a black and white world.
  I drag crayons wildly on the paper and draw
  what others can only entertain in nightmares.
  We'll gather in alleys and graffiti our hearts.

Don't go back in the deep end
for a breath or two, be real
don't break in two just bend
hearts need time to heal.

The sky's so clear
  in the atmosphere
  stars perch on a tree
  caged birds set free
  my mind takes flight
  into the cold night
  an old lover beckons
  naked in the street
  I'll chase her heat
  I saw her in a window
  her curly hair in a bow
  when I just can't feel
  what's dream or real
  my dogs walk me home.
  I still dream alone.

the dearth of death
is birth and breath
when a broken bed
betrays my stead
petulant reaper
becomes my keeper
when madness rules
this house of fools
I'll always pledge
this razor's edge
to my neck's vein
to spare you pain.

He reminds me of me at 10
  best of intentions and trust
  a world that hasn't had time
  to **** a spirit and hope yet
  I'm not that cynical. I'm 72
  still love women at a distance
  and dream young boy dreams
  where we dance all night in
  7th grade with dark beauty's
  desires I never understood.

I will love you
when I die I'll
stir your brew
in death smile.

God must be Irish.
He can't forget a slight.
He only sees darkness
never sees  the  light.

We nailed Jesus Christ
son of God to a cross.
Waiting for tribulation
for His heinous loss.

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.

I was conceived in the wrong womb.
  That's my life in a sentence.
  It was one I never wore well.
  Greenhills, OH. Suburbia ad nauseam.
  Lovely family and all but Bumpkinville
  so boring I took up smoking 8th grade.
  A swimming pool but I craved an ocean.
  I wanted a boardwalk and girls
  bold enough to kiss me like I needed
canyons of skyscrapers to explore,
  junkies and perverts and hookers
who knew the price of meat.
I wanted a library  with every book
to devour so I'd be smarter than my father
and teachers and the ******* Parish priests
who loved their altar boys more than the poor
sick needy masses of their church.

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

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

Mommy works a waitress
I quit my job proud protest.
We walk barefoot to dive bar
a gallon jug to fill with beer.
We watch The Point on TV.
We three just wander free.
Mommy cries real tears
frightened by real fears.

Written by Phoebe Waller

    I would say ****** into liquidation.
    and I ****** up my family
    and I ****** my friend
    by ******* her boyfriend
    and sometimes I wish I didn't
    even know that ******* existed
    and that I know that my body
    as it is now really is the only
    thing I have left, and when that
    gets old and unfuckable,
    I may as well just **** it.
    And somehow there isn't
    anything worse than someone
    who doesn't want to **** me.
    I **** everything. Except for
    when I was in your office.
    I really wasn't trying to have ***.
    Either everyone feels like this
    a little bit, and they're just not
    talking about it, or I'm completely
    ******* alone. Which isn't ******* funny.

My drunkard hand shook so much
I chipped the fine china teacup and
spilled the ******* tea on my despair.
I pulled the poem from my pocket
and gave it to my host as a gift.
He printed it in The New Yorker.

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

You don't have to be clever.
You don't need to rhyme.
You have to be honest.
You need courage to
write truth upon pages
for others to read and
risk their judgement.
Favored or reviled.
Both have sharp edges.
Poets are never innocent.

Here lies my innocence, my religion, my hope
and dreams and trust and my caring anymore.
I bury my despair and belief in another lover
next to my naivety. My bones are picked clean.
They are bleached in an O'Keeffe painting
next to the cattle skulls and scorpions.

I promised something last night.
  I was slightly askew. What was it?
  Remind me again. I was in my cups.
  Take ballroom dance lessons? Groupon?
  What the **** is that? I hate dancing.
  I have two left feet and an old man's
  aversion to new tricks. Spare me.
  Try me again tonight at happy hour.

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.

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.

All boozed up on Chardonnay,
   swapping virginity lost stories
   drinking from ***** straws and
   holding ****** as scepters while
   ropes of ***** crown our heads.
   We puke and cry and wear our
   hideous bridesmaid's dresses at
   the wedding and catch the bouquet
   and send the married couple off to
   a honeymoon in the ****** Islands.

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.

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.

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

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.

I see a stone a leaf and a door. I knock.
  It opens and I float into clouds that make
  me step gently. I want to kiss everyone I
  have ever known. Yoko lives for my sake
  in my mind beckoning. I go to her and die
  inside her womb hear ticking of her clock.

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.

It's huge
melodious centrifuge
stealing rhythm
with no misgiving
from each to give
to each to live
fabulous Commune
a marvelous tune