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?

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.

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?

I'm a worn out old man.
I want to go back to Alcott
where the world was in a jar
and we were masters of the
woods. We knew the creeks and
lake and swung on vines Tarzan
like and ran home to supper and
homework and TV and slumber
and dad off to work at 5am hacking
in the bushes and off he went in
the flesh colored rocket ship that
was a a '57 Chevorlet Bel Air.

Fat ladies in drag beckon me then
   wish I were somewhere else. I ease
   my way into a thousand hearts and
   they soon know I'm love's sweet lie.

   I'm just an actor with a beating heart
   who pretends love but never knew it.
   I visit gay bars for the techno music
   and drinks. I never stay for last call.

   Self loathing is a Catholic thing. I
   seek a stage with a Dom to pretend
   whip me with Bohemian Rhapsody as
   the soundtrack of my humiliation.

   The final act is louder and brighter
   and with the colors of India it makes
   promises that it can't possibly keep.
   We are all actors doing what it takes.

At 6 feet apart
mask no kisses
love has no heart
only near misses.

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.

Just square pegs round holes.
  Unable to fit in approved roles
  looking for love in gay bars
  neon lights exploding stars
  I saw you in the magazine
  you take me in a limousine
  to decadence I've never seen.
  you make me a beauty queen.

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.

Hungover on a bench
in our own Eden Park
smell of the beauty sins
from screams in the dark.
Pretend marriage in flight
never able to lose the night.

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.

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.

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 got fired today.
   The money always gone
   again. I'm sorry.
   Ain't we got fun?
   Camping out on Main St.
   Puking over the bridge
   into the river's waters
   Ain't we got fun?
   I'm just a tattered *****
   beauty worn thin by time
   Ain't we got fun.
   anything for a dime.

Truth reveals itself near midnight
when I swim in deep pools of wine.
I'm lost. My family died in my depths.
I need shallows to hide in.
I need a goddess named Georgine
to help me find my North Star.
I'll sail back home and find my
broken life and fix it best I can.

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?

He screamed aloud
  with tortured voice
  no one leaves alive
  never had a choice
  the lever switched
  long ago silently
  doomed his ship to
  the bottom of the sea.

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.

Crown of bobby pins and scarf,
   she hoists a beer bottle scepter,
   dime store paste royal necklace,
   moth holed sweater Queen's cape,
   her well worn lawn chair throne.
   She keeps watch from  her tower,
   surveys her realm on Alcott Lane.
   Nothing escapes the queen's watch.

He was a strong, hard drinking man.
His charm was never contained.
You loved him and wanted to be him.
He was a scoundrel you'd never hate.
He charmed his way into my grandma.
He taught me how to live in bars and
how to make people laugh out loud.
He showed me the good in everyone.

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.

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.

Can we pour tears on the page?
  Paint war's horrors in poetry?
  Draw portraits with words?
  Make you feel love? First kiss?
  Broken heart? Pet's death?
  Parent's divorce split in two?
  Anguish of love in back seats?
  Can we poets make you feel it?
Life's butchers pacing beats
always end up eating ****.

Stepping high through the cotton fields
  so pregnant for picking the ***** midwives
  delivers cotton to white men calling yields
  counting the gold, nobody counts black lives,
  sush, keep quiet, the master needs his slave
  she is perfect his Sally so light so golden
  she bears his tainted fruit quiet and brave,
  history digs up graves and DNA TJ's beholden.

You are too perfect.
Your skin makes me cry.
******* are always *****.
We **** and we will fly
too close to my past sun.
Trapped in a shrink's room
****** babble for ******.
Russian roulette my *****.
We drink to all and naught.
Dead cremains hit the floor
while we screamed and fought
explodes into our Nevermore.

Mixed messages can be confounding
   but if looked at through an alcohol
   filter they can be deciphered as if
   spoken in clear and precise language.

   Passive aggressive onslaughts are hell
   disguised as innocent comments. Clever
   warfare that has plausible deniability.
   Be vigilant and you can discern it.

   Manipulation uses ills often; migraines,
   back and/or neck pain, depression and the
   mother who visited her madness upon you.
   The first marriage tore holes in you.

   I married a 1 who became a 10. What can
   I do? signed Desperate. Dear Desperate,
   You can become a 10 or find another 1 and
   hope the new 1 will not become another 10.

The picture was from long ago in 1920's.
  Forget color they lived in black and white
  muted times with talcum powder and fancy
  hats and brooches. They look posed for a
  wax museum. 4 are smiling big but 1 is
  reluctant and looks forlorn. Maybe her
  husband died in Europe's wars or influenza.
  They're toasting something. Raised glasses
  to what I wonder? We all have things to
  celebrate and all have things to mourn.

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.

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.

Birth to Death is life.
On a pinball machine
bounces off bumpers
into brand new clean

gone a new you
no stretch marks
summer of love
**** in Eden parks.

I did French leave
I abandoned you
I went to Boston
built a life new.

Sacred *******
black crucifixes
an altar boy
the priest toy
lesbian nun
so much fun
spank girls
warm curls
flag unfurls
****** pearls.

Drunk as a baboon
under a full moon
I walk the wild  dogs
a pack of wild hogs
drag me near mad
I curse them as bad
I stumble and fall
they lick my jaw
and they pull me up
pup by pup by pup.

Not for profit tax free
Non Government Organizations.

Not Elected
Just selected
Deep state piled
upon deep state.
Sleight of hand
in dark of night
we take your land
without a fight.
You live in a box
in a tiny square
no need for locks
we always care.
Burial plots
are Timeshare.

ROTC at XU and baby on the way.
    Full time job and losing my mind.
    I took your speed to keep going.
    I thought we'd be my parents.
    It seemed so effortless for them.

    Paisley shirts and bell bottoms,
    lava lamps, pass the joint and
    long hair and free love
    This has to be the 60's.
    My world split in two.

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

Everybody dies. How doesn't matter.
    Life's a bad movie with a sad ending.
The living still send bills, call you up.
    Emails not returned to those sending.

The inks wet in the memory book.
Sooner than later you're forgotten.
Cremains in a dusty urn on a mantle. 
Funeral flowers turn black and rotten.

8 years old

Climb trees and break bones.
Swim in creeks and get bit.
Kiss Susan Tucker in the dark
go home with her on my lips.
Smoke gramp's spent butts
from his Buick's ashtray.
Drink his beer bottle dregs.
Frenchman's Holy Communion.
Lust for Jimmy Kuhn's dad's *****
card deck with naked ladies. I stole
the Queen of Hearts and fell in love
the rest of my life. She ruined me.
I loved girls on a pinball machine.
I always tilt the table on purpose.

          20 years old

I'm riding the edge of my mind
2 kids and a fat wife I deserted
before I fell in love with all
the other disappointed lovers
in a distant land called Boston
punched holes in innocent walls
alchemist making my anger love
thunder always roaring above.

Dark women with coal black eyes,
   that's where all the passion lies.
   Fire and ice, extremes burn cool
   enticing poets into their pool.
  
   We already know broken trust
   now we know burned out lust.
   Hold me like a plastic doll
   poke me while I break my fall.

It's a fragile thing I cry for.
Mommy and Daddy are long gone.
A million drunken mad clowns
storm this circus of my life.
I don't live in a straight line.
I live inside a pinball machine.

We have a name for everything.
This thing in which we exist is
called life. Like tadpoles exist in
a shallow creek swimming
among their gods.
Like fields of poppies
swim among the wind in
their own piece of heaven.
As rivers flow gently or angry
over the banks to punish those
who try to contain it.
This thing that we name.

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.

Do I know you from somewhere?
You seemed so near in my rifle scope
across no mans land I tried to **** you.
Let bygones be bygones. Forget the rope.
I'll be your waiter can I fetch drinks?
Bury the hatchet and hold onto hope.

I'm not a communist.
  I'm not a socialist.
  I'm not a sadist or a
  satanist. I'm not an
  anarchist. I'm not a
  bonafide capitalist.
  I'll steal food to eat.
  I'll lie to get a beer.
  I'll love you for a bed.
  I am an individualist.

I'm wearing Camo shorts
a wife beater undershirt
I'm 75 run 2 miles a day
ignoring arthritis  hurt.

I live with 2 dogs, blind cat
and the wife of my dreams.
Our happy hour from 7 to 11
Franzia romantic as it seems.

You'll promise love.
You'll stay strong.
Almost like being free.
You broke my neck to ****
the pain and I hid my heart
from love's terrible lies.

I'm a cowboy who's run out of time.
  My world is almost all fenced in.
  I'll be a wild west show pretty soon.
  Towns will be cities and trains will
  **** cowboys and Indians and Bison.
  Bury our hearts at wounded knee.

I'm 75
still alive
beat the odds
defied the gods.
My libido dead
wet the bed
depends instead
Keep your head.

I am inebriated
I am liberated
from God's eye
judging til I die.
His eye is blinded
staring at my sun.
I am God's drunk
I am His only son.

I was 13 in a hormone driven rage
  trying to put the moves on Linda
  in a hayloft. He was in my ear
  whispering his disapproval. I was
  deaf and have been ever since. ****
  it. Kennedy was shot in Dallas that
  day and the worlds been upside down
  since the last time I heard Jesus.

I always saw you on my horizon.
I drank to your health and to ours.
I went to meetings and confessed
weakness and drank bland coffee
and ate stale donuts and smoked
an endless chain of cigarettes.

In my cups we danced in the neon.
On bar stools and raucous laughter
with my dreams hiding in liquor's
free fog I gave you life and baptism.
Can I ever know normal? I'll be home
at last call when I reach my rope's end.