I love you inside your mind
  I love you outside your head.
  I love you in solitude or screaming
  stroking you gently or kissing thighs
  in dreams or nightmares bravely or
  shrinking in fear from your anger.
  I love you inside out and upside down
  north south east west night or day.
  I always love you most at 3AM while
  you gently snore and talk in your sleep.

I live inside a mirror today
where everything's reflection.
Kiss my shadow's shadow.
Break my heart. It shimmers
in  puddles wrinkled in wind.
You only break a looking glass
and suffer 7 years bad luck.
I curse you with all my love.

I love you, but
not enough to *******.
What is that about?
Loveless marriage is
something I never heard
until you said something
about possibility and I cooled
towards red hot poker ***.
Now we both **** ourselves
like monkeys in a monkey tree.

Poem For People Who Are Understandably Too Busy to Read Poetry

A poem by Stephen Dunn




Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's *** you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

Love between us is friendship.
   Lust between us is forest fire
   fierce chewing us to ash now
   blowing in wind. We are desire.
   Nowhere left for us to run we
   wonder what pleasures require.

D.C. Addicted ******

Civilization crumbles with laws
made of DC lies from the jaws
of mindless government ******
barter dignity at Dollar Stores
buy the fish on Motel 6 floors
commies finally won the wars.

Drunk Grandpa has a phone
and texts me concern
warns me of his mistakes
hopes that I can learn
where the mines are
buried I keep my legs
he means well I love him
he begs me to hope, pray.

Cremated fireplace ashes in a box
  with my name on it. Is this me or
  an imposter who was a ******* ****?
  Sounds like me anyway just a *****.
  Take my cremains and flush me down
  a favorite throne with a padded seat.

I don't need another drop.
I'll stumble to bed tonight.
I hope I dream of you and
not her with the snake hair.

Our God Almighty
so we breathe easy
forget about gulags
and pedophiles ******
betray us from above
lick us for your love
wear the rubber glove
embrace pain's shove.

……..” The chair “…….
It’s a chair, just a chair,
Deep veined mahogany,
Hessian layered,
And filled with hair.
It’s a bed, just a bed,
A book without a binding,
Silently recanting,
Where once lay a head.
It’s a glass, just a glass
But, my God it’s sacred,
Lips once lingered,
Indelible morass.
It’s a frame, just a frame,
Capturing heaven,
Such youthful abandon,
And filled with your name.
It’s a home, just a home,
That became a building,
That become a shrine,
When all alone.
It’s a chair, just a chair,
Of crafted joints,
With sabered legs,
And skillful debonair.
It’s a chair, just a chair,
Utilitarian,
It sits a corner,
Now you’re not there.
Seamus Ginty

You'll laugh at my dad jokes
and Camo Crocs I wear.
Laugh out loud and cry
have a baby name her Bill.
I'm living in your memory
I'm the flower and butterfly.

I was driving across a burning desert
    in a Uhaul full of crap escaping from
    worn out love. I slept in a sandstorm
    in a motel of scorpions in the shower.
    We tell you where we've been but never
    where we're going. We just don't know.
Life becomes a travelogue of hope for
a happy ending to a perfect destination.

I'm blind but see everything.
I feel heat, hear breathing,
feel sweat on hands and face
as we kiss know hearts race.
I touch your secret garden
you hold my ***** harden.
Dark we consummate our love.
We sleep, dream stars above.

I have become inured
  the never ending drama
  too much I've endured
  **** the magic karma.

  Too much to process
  the beheading queen
  I've much to confess
  I'm not who I seem.

I didn't turn into a pumpkin.
I have both of my shoes.
Now I take a sleeping pill
and dream my dead alive.

On the edge of another summer of love
  we always mistake for a Garden of Eden.
  We had beer to drink and hash to smoke.
  Cool, man. Let's reach the moon
  tonight and touch God's robe.
  I was ****** and laser focused
  on the center of my world that held
  love that I'd terribly betrayed.
  I weighed a thousand pounds in guilt's gravity
  lost within the Garden of Eden again.

I promised lovers what they wanted.
  They gave me what I needed to survive.
  Kathy, Betsy, her and her and her again
  that left her imprint. I'm old and forget.
  They all show up in my morphine dreams.
  I'll die among them all with an *******.

You staged my imminent demise
in your dreams behind your eyes
I was just an afterthought
a cheap trinket that you bought

Death is everywhere
bodies puzzle pieces
never together again
pray on dead graves.

We drink mint juleps
flirt in old oaks' shade
We kiss make promises
dance upon dead graves.

Slightly ****** and drunk
  we enter into far out reaches
  of the universe to microscopic,
  subatomic worlds. We wonder if
  life's a dream, then argue whose.
  Is time travel possible? Maybe
  we're all from the future or past.
  If we changed an event from the
  past would we exist in the now?
  3am we all dream of tomorrow.

My true love was a desert
beautiful and deadly soul
scorpions and rattlers and
poison creosote she stole.
She fed me her deadly milk
of scarce and stubborn rain.
I'll die in her cursed sand
and feed our lover's pain.

Come closer into the light.
  I need to smell your beauty
  to quiet demons in my head.
  God's tears cleanse our souls.
  Come closer still, touch me,
  calm my tremors still my hands.
  Closer hold me closer and we'll
  transcend broken in our world.
  Dance closer, watch the stars.
  Hear death's music ever closer.

I am kind.
  I am cruel.
  I am loved
  and a fool.
  I am guilty.
  I am free.
  You'll find me
  suffering in
Cincinnati,
Ohio.

I lost my wedding ring
it fell into the mud
with all the other ones
our horror of blood.

The end wouldn't come.
***** to death by many
rag doll kissed by some
just a **** for a penny.

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 have nowhere else to go.
I can break vows and crucify us.

Your breath rattles in a fragile chest
the heart feebly clanks to push blood
when there's a bit in the aorta. You're a
young man in an ancient failing body by
an unknown disease. You lean on a cane
slumped in a chair waiting for a miracle
that won't come for you. You're a skeleton.
We fear death. We fear you. I fear ignorance.

I wish you were alive
so I could apologize
for disappointing you.
You took my kids fishing
when I was drunk wishing
for miracles in Boston
the kids in an orphanage.
****** kept insanity at bay.
I never knew how to just say,
"Thank You. I love you, Dad."
In an honest man to man way.
Eye to eye we just up and die.

It was an antiseptic space. The doctor said
   something I couldn't quite hear because loud
   seconds echoed from recent life I lived instead
   and the waiting room had an infested crowd.

   I heard stage 4, in your blood, invading your
   entire body, maybe 3 months. The noise shone
   louder. Each tick became a bomb in a war zone.
   Deafening. I thanked her and shuffled home.

   My girl just turned 2. Collateral damage.
   What god does this to my wife and our baby?
   I'm smaller each day disappearing in young age
   I smile air kisses goodbye to my fading family.

Confederate veteran sizing up his devastated farm.
His family all dead, fields burned, house ashes
of memories. He holds his pistol to his temple.
The day Old Dixie died he pulled the trigger.

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 more fear or dread.

Strip our beds
of all the sheets.
Wash wet dreams
off the ***** streets.
Sleep on warm grates
wrapped in old news
sleep in a needle waits
dream death's blues.

Chardonnay brings dreams to life
     until morning's brutal genocide.
     I untangle old lost memories,
     carry on throughout a busy day.

     Night always arrives while thirst
     demands attention. Dreams resurrected
     answering impossible questions.
     Morning kicks down the door again.

     Day follows day, feels like forever.
     I must have gone mad.  I stared into
     the sun then jumped to a final peace.
     Finally, I found my own great escape!

I drink wine from the box not the bottle.
     My empties are very functional. I make
     chairs to sit in alone for happy hour.
     Beds to sleep alone in case I can't atone.
     Dog house to be alone in when you're angry.
     Walls between us too tall to ever surmount.
     Even my own coffin hot as hell herself.
     I could never build a bridge back home.

I dreamed I was a lesbian
stage frightened thespian
infinity inside a clock
a manikin but with a ****
blindfold at a firing squad
playing racquetball with god
Einstein teaching ABC's
an atheist on his knees
a poet ******* in a tree
a monkey typing poetry.

They always say
you're not supposed to fight
in front of your kids.
Everybody fights
in front of their kids.
That's family.

I've held on as long as I can
to this slippery eel of life
that feels all wrong for me.
I never found "The One".
I never measured up.
I float away from time
with a needle in my arm
finally an honest smile.

I live inside extremes
between total despair
and boiling anger. I
will **** me or you
or I will be the one
to lead us to the water.

I have a blind cat that knows me
and sees things I can't even imagine.
She meows loud each night
demanding to be heard.
If she wrote a poem it would Howl and
change the course of Human Events.

When your shrink pays a *****
   he swears is his wife
   you pay by the hour
   his pills keep me sane
   my eye always burns
   my psyche always yearns
   for truth not found on couches
   answers asked as if he knows.

Swim against the current and
promise me to never die.
Riptides and sharks and cramps
we die alone but angry.

Bette Mann doesn't exist.
The world's a lesser place
without her fierce resist.
We will never replace.

I write my essentials so as not to be forgotten
   by the time my funeral service and the casseroles
   and my cold ashes in some anonymous jar are an
   afterthought while the living move on as we do.

   Know that I was born March 23, 1949, at 5:32 am
   in Cincinnati, Ohio. Named William John Donovan
   the second. Firstborn son, 2 older sisters. I'm sure
   I was shriveled like a prune and PTSD after the chute.

   I lived a typical baby boomer life in that time.
   A whole bunch of hi jinks and other mistakes marked
   my time. A million laughs, a billion grins and pain
   and regret, etc. The scale is centered as far as I know.

   I'm now 69 (oh how long I wanted to say that) and I'm at
   a delicate place. I must dismantle my life. The **** collected
   is monumental. It's precious to me, only me. Proof of stuff
   I did at school, sports, work and clothes that defined me.

   Books are my essence. They map my life more than anything.
   I pile myself into boxes. I drop them at Goodwill. Goodbye.
   Soon I'll be empty enough to disappear. Please read this
   prayer and put me in a special place inside your heart.

Am I your lover?
Or pretend Mother?
Criticize and flatter
find war's splatter
on the kitchen wall
wake in shame all.
Perfect hair perfected
my children neglected.
We'll always own stain
and confused love pain.

There was an easy way into your heart.
There's no easy way out. You thought it
was forever but there's no such thing.
You don't need to hear it or even fear it.
We ****** goodbye in your dorm room.
I went to Boston and was reborn again.

She suffered out loud in poetry.
He punished her with his many
lovers who never read a poem.
She punished him with suicide.
Poets slit throats with razor
sharp lines and metaphor.

I'm god awful alone with friends.
Why? What piece of me is missing?
Is my world always just pretends?
Married again and again dismissing
cracks in my mind the shrinks deny
the quacks follow Freud 'til we die
over and over they ask only "Why?"
no answers to questions always lie.

I died but the clock kept ticking
   and I wished I could start again
   but the second hand kept sticking
   I cracked the code and had to win
   I was buried on Easter weekend I
   thought I'd see the Jesus Christ
   leave His grave and finally fly
   I stayed dead I was sacrificed.

I'll come for you
I bring a bottle
and ****** or two
loosen the throttle
set fire to the bed
sleep in splendid ash
wake you give me head
I always pay with cash.

A bag of red hot suns
one of cool full moons
serenaded by Pink Floyd
with powdered spoons.

I'm naked at the party.
Such wonder and awe.
Welcome to my mind
a puzzle with a flaw.