My poetry starts with nicotine.
     After awhile I mixed in alcohol.
     Catholicism is a main ingredient.
     Puberty is a wicked mix of Absinthe.
     Next I add a father broken from war.
     My mom could be friend or betrayer.
     I had to maintain a delicate balance
     between being real or just amusing.
     Amusing is easy. Real is impossible
     yet here I am confessing once again.

She comes to dinner wearing a corpses sheet
with a hangman's knot around her neck
holding a straight razor to her jugular vein
with a bouquet of dead roses wicked thorns.
Sitting in the Buick hose in the window
I fall asleep forever dreaming of you.

the time it is a coming
the end is getting near
guitar strings strumming
the sorry sound of fear
I die without last breath
nobody notices or cares
body burned in an oven
cremains in a cheap jar
destined for our Heaven.

Death is everywhere
Shells scatter soldier
bodies in puzzle parts
never fit together again
pray on dead's graves

We drink mint juleps
We flirt in old oaks' shade
We kiss make promises
forever and many kids
dance on dead's graves

I died yesterday
light floats away
into night's star
neon sign in a bar
my obituary cool
bury a dead fool

He played the piano beautifully.
    He went to war and lost his arms
    in a skirmish. Almost sounds like
    a rugby match with deadly charms.

    War is a meat grinder that shreds
   bodies and limbs by the thousands a day
    a week a month. Haig's Butcher Shop
was what everyone would always say.

I'll write of our pact as novice lovers.
We made our baby to show them our
fierce vows to our communion as one.
Love always lasts forever we believed.
We were West Side Story in suburbs.
If only I could have died like Tony.

I was hatched into this life.
Egg and ***** agreed to
share a place together.
Happy father and mother.
Parenting is hit and miss
Carousel brass ring
another broken thing.
What else can I bring?

appetites are brakeless
    incessant sinners faceless
    ghosts hang everywhere
    whisper inside our lair
    we call it our dreams
    fearful what it means
    stare at the sun we see
    what will set us free
finally
gently
over edge of earth
back into universe...

I bought breakfast for a Communist
to discuss our differences. He drank
***** and I had coffee. I don't feel
superior just sick from last night.
He hates god. God is evil to poor.
I said he deprived the poor as
the rich process fat from masses
to boil it into flame to read Marx.
I asked if I wore his Marx hat
and shout among the masses
could I convince them God is
not dead but Marx is long dead?

I'm not equipped to be an easy love.
I don't know why. Women can be the
nectar I need and ease my aching heart.
Desire is always offered with an
enormous cost that I'm unable to pay.
I try to make a silk purse from a pig's ear.
I give her pearls and lipstick.
Party girls don't want to meet the parents.

We share deepest secrets.
  I know your odd appetites.
  You know my worst regrets.
  We toast our sweet delights.
  I hunger for my own kind
  on the ends of a spectrum.
  Ordinary people are blind
 to nature colors of Autumn.

On the beach in early fog
I love your saintly halo
watching the surf crawl
at your feet in afterglow.
We'll do it again tonight
light candles and ****
we might take flight
make a baby with luck.

You burned me up
  in your bonfire of
  the white hot fury
  of gasoline love.
  Real love is lost
  when lust is queen
  man or beast anything
  with a hole in between.
  With internet **** I howl
  alone at the full moon
  spill my seed in tissue wait
  for another shot at noon.

Where are we going
Calvary or Bethlehem?
  Not one more track
  of your sacred smack.
  Our ships go down
  and we all drown
  with our devils
  in our deep blue seas.

I told my cat to live forever.
   I gave my baby girl away.
   I listen to a song that breaks my heart
   I can't shed a tear or I turn to dust.
   I can't accept my tail end life
   just pick up dog **** and sleep alone.
My life becomes a catalogue of six
things to never do again.

We are never prepared
  shock of wrinkled grey
  House of mirrors distorts
  Roger Bacon has been
  lurking in my shadows
  scared I'll be the next
  in the arms of Christ
  on the list of the dead.
  We just got used to us
  for blood and screams
  old men chasing dreams
  live beyond their means
  bursting at their seams
  play their monkey schemes
  nothing is as it seems.
 Life comes and goes
  lurking in shadows.

I've looked for you for years.
   Soulmate, where is your shadow?
   I see your black hair and tears
   a Gypsy who will be my maestro.

   We ride lust unbridled in heat.
   Where are you? Are you a lie?
   Is it time to admit our defeat?
   Cross my heart and hope to die.

Do you think
I don't know
I left you to sink
in the undertow?

I know I broke
all that mattered
we never spoke.
I died splattered.

Calling all stations...
I'm ****** and alone
lost in my thoughts in
Autumns cornfield maze.
My memories tease me
and almost please me
but fade before the end
messages do not send.

I think I understand our subtle hatred
  for each the other. How long can we live
  in each other's shadow before we disappear?
  I had your children bloated while you took
  a lover. I ached for suicide but went nuthouse.
  Shrinks and pills and shocks convinced me
  to put my head in our oven and let it go.
  I thought of our children at the very end.

I threw my family away
beer cans along the way.
Ohio to Boston ******
saved me from asylum.

Tiny dress and **** me shoes
       bring me back from the dead.
       I was sleeping in a graveyard
       inside the cavern of my head.
       You made my heart beat again.
       It throbs wild like a beast
       hungry for the promised sin
       starving for a siren's feast.

I met you at a party
  in a house of mirrors
  you snake haired Medusa
  thirsty for my tears.
  We danced in lightning
  groped our way to love's
  eager bed. Promises made
  to be broken in day's light.
  My face was stone as you
  swallowed my soul in flight.

We were baptized in wars violence.
Friends blown up bless us in blood.
Flak blows dear friends to death as
we watch. We're angry and terrified.
We're at bat and bases are loaded.
We roll dice. We **** and **** us
fingers crossed will death get our
next door foxhole and we live on?

did I see you in my blind spot?
were you ever really there?
were you no more than a blood clot?
we hid in shadows at a county fair.
we tried to make our baby Jesus
to walk on water and water to wine
you bled just a lost ****** ******
nothing came to life but our time.

Do you know these people
  dirt poor with joyful eyes?
  No tears or pity asked they
  work hell's cloudless fields
  every meal fatback and beans  
  sharecropper hands of stone.
  Sunday overalls starched go
  to Church praise Jesus, atone.
  Saturday nights there's music
  and moonshine and slow dance
  they give up the ghost midnight
  still clutching in fierce romance.

I want to be a scapegoat
or a monkey's uncle's aunt
or insufficient postage owed
maybe a thing I can you can't.
Can I be your toy and ****
in your bed our ersatz love?
Friction is a fickle friend
maybe needs a latex glove?

Not a poem or tradition
just if only perdition
my end of world lover
kiss bye as we smother.

I hope we did you proud.
  Mike died young of cirrhosis
  I live on in alcoholic haze
  no connection with the living
  just a **** or two and meet
  another **** in some dive bar
  where your ghost cheers for
  conquests without a heart.

Susan Tucker
Thomasina Latina
Virginia Keenly
Linda Hotze
JFK Killed
Curly hair girl
Kathy my Love
broke our *****
made our Katie
in a Ford Mustang
killed your father
broke his heart
summer of love
tore us apart
burn the bras
halter tops
I drowned
in *******.

I saw it sprayed on a rock.
  "Why Do You All Hate Me?"
  I thought I don't know you
  so I can't hate you but if
  we meet for coffee I'll try.
  Maybe you'll hate me instead?

Our world grew quiet like the dead.
   I never heard silence like this before.
   I knew it was over when we ate alone
   and slept apart and watched our own
   shows. We always adapt. We're good at it.
   It's easier than fixing what is broken.

I was 5
insecure
living
not sure
dad was
war torn
bomber
reborn
in flak
no way back.
PTSD
what it be
a misery
die me free
if only
it'd be.

If I said it once
I said it a thousand times.
It comes and goes and comes
echoes persistent rhymes
clock ticks of my nightmares
heartbeats of my dreams
infinite souls in harmony
keeping time with screams
licked a slithering snake
for every ever afters sake.

We bury a great Lady
who kept us safe since
1776. She was ***** and
pillaged by the DC vipers
in expensive shark skin suits
and 500 dollar haircuts
thousand dollar ******
and selling the country
piece by piece as jobs
disappeared and they
became billionaires and
we wept at our burials.

He shouted in a whisper
my name in his phlegm.
I miss you at the end
can we just start again?

It's a hoedown in the barn
Saturday night fiddles
harmonicas love riddles
we meet lovers on a farm
Love is tender no harm
necklace worn like a charm.

A dime a dance
  seeking romance
  maybe seduction
  buying a chance.
  If hearts align
  among the stars
  our perfect sign
  and perfect scars.

In 2 days I turn 73. Tonight I watched West Side Story 2.0.
Kathy was Maria to my Tony back when I was 18 and she 17.
We were in Love with love and nothing could deny it. We made our
baby girl in defiance and cracked our world in pieces. I cried at the
drive in movie on our wedding night and entered strange reality and
a new world in 1969 summer of love and walked a tightrope over
friends straight and bent ones in psychedelic colors and free love
that ended up costing us everything we ever really cared about.

There's a Yankee ship coming down
our river. We surrendered but blood
is still wet and bad. We keep our rebel
flag flying. I'm 15 and hold my dead dad's
rifle proud with unsure courage today.
I saw the cannon smoke before the sound.
and it sent me to the promised land my
head was vaporized and then my body fell.

Countless pieces birth to death
put in place first to final breath.
Paint watercolor of lovers' fight
darkness to love over into light.
Too many shapes don't fit right.
I press harder until they fit tight.

When I wake again
I've lived too long.
Another day in prison.
My life is really gone.

I'd nail my madness to the tracks going West
   seeking freedom wearing a Dandy's NY vest.
   How long can we endure the vastest unknown?
   **** Indians and Buffalo and bury us in stone.

I missed me when I had to go away.
  They said it was for my own good.
  I sort of existed in a Lithium fog.
  I was gone from me except in dreams.

I dreamed of the sun born from hell.
I dreamed of angels called sisters.
I saw a cruel king with eyes of hate
who threatened me with his love.

  Now I'm kind of back. They kept pieces
  of my brain, the pieces that made me
  cut myself in a tub of tepid water to
  bleed out this life of threatened love.

Without sin I'd be a cardboard
  cutout of a plastic life lived.
  I burned bridges and made
  impossible vows and charmed
  ******* off and excited *******
  and made lovers wet and happy.
  We all felt alive and touched
  for years in our golden dreams.

I arrived on time
through tiny slit
of slickest slime
***** a tiny bit.

My skin is plastic. My veins are rubber.
I might melt in the boiling summer heat.
Each day I grow weaker. I'm closer to corpse.
Let's move to the desert where death looms
in shower stalls with scorpions and coiled
snakes in rare shade just waiting for us.

So quiet on the surface
   as it's eating you alive
   like a starving furnace
   you never quite survive.
   Morphine keeps it quiet
   tortured silent screams  
   while cancer cells riot
   heaven's delicate dreams

I wish I weren't so angry
but I watch my world *****
and pillaged by Communists.
The USA is now USSR shaped.
We fear where we were brave
meek lambs on slaughter floor
they killed our middle class
put in communes for the poor.