We worship on bar stools in smokey
  churches with neon gods and clergy
  behind the altar with the holy blood
  bottled in rows in front of mirrors.
  Our hymns play on a jukebox while
  we sway in harmony feeling the grace
  flowing between our souls as one.
  Our bible is the newspaper and we
  confess our sins to each other.
  At last call we're given absolution.

I could've been at his deathbed. Maybe offered
      some solace and comfort and sent him off
      with a proper "God's speed"!
      I Declined an Invitation to My Father's Death.
      I might've played right into his hands and now
      guilt plagues me as I listen to sad songs and
      write sad poetry and hope I remember to call my son
      tomorrow so that maybe he'll be at my death bed.

Santa Ana winds
angry fire maker
arsonist unbends
pizza oven baker.

Reuse old souls astride of graves.
Life begets death begets life without fail.
I found an available womb: Donovan.
William and Jean. 23 July 1948. Sail.

March 23, 1949. William John Donovan, jr.
Born against my will! Welcome to home.
Who are you people? I need familiar!
I hope to some God I won't die all alone.

Samuel Beckett -
“They give birth astride of a grave, the light
gleams an instant, then it's night once more.”

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.

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 work the streets at night
dressed for business in cars
I do my best to look pretty
makeup hides my scars

They always pay in cash
never kiss me goodnight
beats cleaning toilets
without the delight.

Birkenstock's and halter tops
no bras no rules free love
drink acid from the tea cup
bury God the Father and son
smoke hash eat ****** and
keep your sanity balanced in
space and time we have left
with alarm set to overdose.

There were leaves barking
  and dogs fluttering in the wind
  birds were swimming in deep water
  and fish were flying in the clouds.
  Communists defined their reality
  made the rules put us all in gulags
  wore big hats and lifts in their boots
  in mansions they killed us bit by bit.

I don't know how to tell you
I don't love you anymore.
I never want to hurt you so
I'll just turn love off and
you die of thirst not sudden.
I'm a coward. I hate me too.

I will forgive you
I hope you will
remember the dew
naked on the hill

Dawn Chorus by Thom York

Back up the cul-de-sac
Come on, do your worst
You've quit your job again
And your train of thought
If you could do it all again
A little fairy dust
Thousand tiny birds singing
If you must, you must
Please let me know
When you've had enough
Of the white light
Of the dawn chorus
If you could do it all again
You don't know how much
Pronto pronto, moshi mosh
Come on, chop chop
If you could do it all again
Yeah, without a second thought
I don't like leaving
The door shut
I think I missed something
But I'm not sure what
The middle of the vortex
The wind picked up
Shook up the soot
From the chimney ***
Into spiral patterns
Of you, my love
You take a little piece
Then we break it off
It's a ****** racket
It's the dawn chorus
If you could do it all again
Big deal, so what?
Please let me know
When you've had enough
It's the last chance

More than her cat died that night.
  Childhood a decaying corpse as well.
  Nothing lasts forever or should it?
  Maybe our soul? Maybe heaven, hell?
  Prayers before bed on bent knees
  seem silly now. It is a mad world in
  which we pretend to know how to live.
  No instruction manual. Just a final 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.

At 3am we were drunk and ******.
My conscience called my phone.
My conscience said leave me alone!
We crawled back to a quiet womb
with black light in a tiny tomb
born in fierce sunlight at noon.

In the time it took me to leave you the
universe was born a billion years ago.
Heaven and hell woven by the very threads
of our existence. Complexity only God's
watchmaker could ever begin to envision.
In motion chaos has its way with order and
beauty is scarred and love is lost and you
and I drift apart in such ordinary ways.

Mullets and discotheques,
gold chains, too much cologne,
lines of coke, smooth *****.
Dance the night into the day
back when everyone was gay
then the scourge had its way.
Really nothing left to say
but for my dead and dying
friends I ask bend your knees
listen to their rattled breath
inches from their death
and hold my hand to pray.

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

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.

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.

Each and everyone I knew
I'm blistered in my grave
cold earth warms my blue
lie dead wait to be saved.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I put my brittle ego on the line
  each time I send you a drink or ask
  for a dance or your phone number.
  I break a frozen monster's mask.

  I wish I could guide my young self in
  a time machine and calm our fears.
The nest fell apart a long time ago.
I've lost count of the broken years.

I'm your portal to eternity
      take my hand and dance with me
      whirl and curtsy you will see
      how wonderful to be so free
      unadorned with puppet strings
      no more irksome gravity
      no appointments to obey
      no monthly bills left to pay
      no more Hail Marys to pray
      my soul found its home today.

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 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

My old blue veins
are a map to a lover
bleeding past stains
still left to discover.
Tomorrow never comes.
I am yesterday's news.
We were the only ones.
I sing tomorrows blues.

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.

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.

Buried our fun week's end
in work's tilling brutal earth
we reach forever as I bend
pick cotton and giving birth.

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.

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

Saturday night barn dance
banjos and fiddles romance
a forbidden hayloft chance
we birthed us in a trance.

To be my friend you need a sense of humor,
  my lover also needs a tolerance for tears.
  I have friends and lovers who laugh
  for hours orbiting my odd but special sun.
  I give everything to orbit theirs as well.
  Kindred spirits, my own kind, I get them.
  We're slightly bent and drunk a little off.
  I live loud, laugh louder but I'll die quiet.

Every part of me recycled
into flies, maggots and dirt.
Give back all that made me
from my fathers lust squirt.

Mom's heavy lifting pregnant.
Her piles, puke and constipated
the zygotes don't know or care.
One day they'll be cremated.

I'm barely awake from a dream. I
    need to call home. 6 Alcott Lane
    Greenhills. Is my room still there?
    Is the Xavier pennant still nailed to
    the wall, and Christ on the cross?
    That room was my growing up womb.
    
    I found my *** in that room. I puked
    beer in that room. I played with my
    plastic super heroes in that room. I
    was sent to that room when I told my
    parents that Kathy and I were pregnant.
    There's no place like home they say.

Dresden

Oh, ****. Here comes my rage again.
I thought the drugs kept it at bay.
My shrink promised it would but
said we might have to adjust dosage
and we'd talk next week. It scares
me near to death. Loose wire in rain
snaking itself wild full of death.
My kids barely shake in fear but
they do and it just spikes the rage.
I love you! I'd never hurt you!
******* it to hell!I'd never bomb
your cities to infernos like Dresden.
I'll tuck you in at night and battle
monsters under your beds.
I'll take you fishing.
I'll fix your flat tires.
I'll never burn you alive
from a great height God like.

The river ran backward
   the day you suicided
   posed lifelike in water
   yesterday's undecided.
   The books left unread
   words still left unsaid
   dead praying for dead
   no feelings of dread.

I hate when people I know die.
The rest of humanity is a lump of clay.
I see my friends souls fly
strangers just die another day

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 put lipstick on a pig and
    called her my love. She was
    a queen of Somerville. I love
    willing women of beauty.

    I knew it wasn't going to go
    the distance. It was shallow.
    Not love but a siren singing,
    tempting me to a rocky shore.

    There lies our relationship
    an empty lung or two, burst
    arteries, exploded heart and
    putrid once beautiful flesh.

What is the difference
between  rogue and hypocrite?
A rogue knows he's a rogue.
A hypocrite thinks he's God.

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.

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

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.

I hope to God I don't become
a stalker of Stephen Dunn.
He's my touchstone and poet.
I read and learn and rein my
deaths in and focus on my days
walking dogs and cleaning a catbox.
I'm old and wrinkled and stubbornly
afraid to change my modus operandi.
My poetry may not be printed
but it's my most sacred diary.
Forget the confessional. I put
my sins in lines on the page
and think any God can see it.
Mr. Dunn, If you have a class
in my city I'll take a chance
and sign up and hope you help
me make better poems but please
don't burn my confessional down.