Hating me
set's me free
from the guilt
my cell I built.

Give me our broke vets
under bridges in tents.
I give them all money
for a cheap pint of honey.
Thanks for your service.
July 4th makes you nervous
1812 Overture torn apart
from bottom of your heart.

Love always dies.
Heaven or Hell?
Her sobbing cries
in a wishing well.
We tore love apart
as we made it raw
I ate your heart
in my loveless jaw.

Look at these dames
  set hearts in flames
  they toast their boys
  use war's cruel toys
  bring us home a win
  we'll carry on again.
  Our men were buried.
  We never married.

If we were strangers in bars
   I'd tell you things about me.
   Secrets nobody knows. Desires
   of confusion I don't understand.
   Women created in beauty's shadow
   like diamonds in a winter's sky,
   sparkle and shine like peacocks
   in my mind. If we were strangers.

Keep the killer afloat above
targets through black flack
avoid the deadly white dove
promises never going back.

Life is real
we lie
we steal
we cry
girl killed me
robbed her womb
too small to see
tiny attic room
we would've
had a ton of fun
you could've
known your son.

There's too many broke pieces
need to be fixed before we move.
Each one reminds me of time and
place too sacred like a graveyard
to be disturbed. Sell it as it is.
Let buzzards buy and discard.

The god ****** British
drove me from my home
across the sea to America
I became  John Donovan.

We Irish spread seeds in
winds of certain change
ethnicity lost its way
melting *** rearrange.

Breaking *****
  and protocols
  **** all the rules
  ignore the  fools
  under the radar
  meet in the bar
  toast to the fun
  good guys won.

We put Jesus away for the week
back to our world for the meek.
Slaves 9 to 5 and kids at night.
I disagree and lose another fight.
I drink beers and man the grill.
Drunk enough to sleep I eat a pill
for an easy landing tomorrow,
another week survive the sorrow.

The first born of the dead
  an arrogant poet called him
  loan me a bit of eternity
  put a good word in with God

  You could have built a table
  but you weaved a ****** fable
  40 lashes and nailed to a cross
  Your mother wept for her loss.
  3 days wrapped in a burial cave
  rise with eternity's souls to save.

How can we possibly be original?
Suicidal poets have been done to death.
Ogden Nash made us chuckle with wordplay.
Robert Frost took us through New England.
e.e. cummings lost the shift key on his Royal.
Dylan Thomas wrote language of gods in
a tiny boathouse in Wales in his cups.
Ezra Pound hungered for his own kind.
Allen Ginsberg broke the rules when he
mentioned unmentionables. *****
weren't roosters anymore.
Do we stand a chance in this century?
Anybody?
Shock. Astound. Hunger. Justice.
Anarchy. We all know heartbreak.
We know injustice. We use bad words
all over the place. We want to be loved.
Our whole class raises arms, pick me!
Let my voice be heard. Please.

I hide the truth
swear the lies are true
gaslight my vows
swore an oath to you

Now I'm gonna' **** you
drag life from the bone
flesh feeds the buzzards
we all end up alone.

I woke up and hated me
for what I called you in
my drunken truth. I never
want to hurt you but I do.
It seeps out in weakness.
I might quit drinking but
it might turn to cancer and
live within my blood and leak
from my blind eyes I'd turn to
dust. I'll have another glass.

I wrap my arms around my tears
raining upon my misery. I'm in no
position to make demands. I beg for
you to unfold me upon myself until
they see the real me as you did. You
knew me with Virginity before you
took it from me and left me to bleed
from the wound that never goes away.
It never shows mercy. It cheapens me.
It leaves the smell of blood perfume.

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.

Kiss me like there's no tomorrow
hold my hand like yesterday
dance with me on time we borrow
with life's memories to replay.

I call this death
end of breath
laughs silent
life is spent
No dreams
light beams
dark as buried
casket carried
planted deep
soul to keep.

Lovers come and go.
Life's a relentless
ticking time bomb
our horrible mess
breaks of pleasure
we create and ****
under guilty pressure
with surgeon's skill.

Everybody's angry
Everybody's afraid
Everybody's in love
Everybody's enslaved
Everybody's dying
Everybody will fade
Everybody's lying
Everybody's played
Everybody's misunderstood
Everybody's depraved
Everybody has a god
Everybody prays
Everybody sleeps
Everybody has 1 more day.

Lovers are ******* hurricanes.
Shouting out God's nasty names
during the fevered ****** games
after the storm all that remains
nothing's lost but never the same
nothing ventured nothing gained.

Hold my hair out of my puke.
Clean me when chemo's nuke
lands inside my cancer foxhole
and liquefies my very soul
change the sheets of ****
and never lose your wit.

I move my rook to Queen
a bold move never seen
in the 60's summer of love.
Pieces go down and go above.
Waifs put in an orphanage
Queen turns an ugly page,
Catholic guilt on the stage
I burn my religion in rage.

Life

birth and death
first and last breath
time's chaos between
a pauper or a queen
all is only a whisper
a one eyed cat's purr
broke 5 year old leg
my ***** and her egg
start it one more time
is it reason or rhyme?
repentance or a crime?
wretched or sublime?

A carny biography
of ******* photography
married Aunt Glenny
his shiny lucky penny
beauty thin as a rail
hard as a track nail.

In the backseat with
   barely dressed girls
   I study skin stretched
   on a ****** bone fetched
   by Lust's determined dog
   found in Love's blind fog
   there's always some regret
   that I can't seem to forget.
   You're not what I thought
   but always what I sought.

I drank my weight in wine.
I tripped the light fantastic.
We fell in love on the blue line
and went home and pretend ******.
I dream of you crying with joy as
I barely catch my breath. You!

I'll let my bladder
leak and explode,
ignore the sirens'
song from a road.

I would never suicide.
My children need me.
I have nothing to hide.
Neglect we never see.
An ounce of ****** is a
pound of prevention.
Divorce was surrender
never my true intention.

He found my need and fed it.
I'm an empty vessel in a shroud.
A thousand ****** kept me calm.
I died for you to make you proud.

I'm just another trophy to make
me lifelike with glass blue eyes
convincing color of the skin and I
promise I'll keep safe all the lies.

I'm not real
just your fantasy
some lost dream
when it was easy
lost your religion
found your sanity
inside the mirror
captures vanity

19 and called to serve in Nam.
  You said no strings keep me.
  We ****** as if there were more
  the flight to war is always free
  the flight home in body bags
  tin medals on the shredded boys
  flag draped coffins all the same
  dead sons playing war with toys.

I'm tap dancing as fast as I can the
    sparks jumping off the sidewalk like
    demon flares half insane in the dark!
    I'd bend over backwards to please you.

    I don't know what rule I've broken but
    I'm sorry. Your brutal silence breaks
    my back. I'm stillborn in a quiet place.
    My dead dreams are mute and fakes.

Men were home from war and
back to work busy making kids
with the boss of the house and I
won a lottery and came to life in
a sweaty moment of busy parents,
two girls trying for a first son.

Elder aunt adored
lazy Summer bored
reading Hardy Boys
stroke mystery toys.
Sleep in tent on her lawn
chickens wake at dawn.
Spoils us with ice cream
old man's boyhood dream.

I'll bury you in parts
   left after explosions
   all the broken hearts
   tear stained emotions
   leave me to my own
   in fields of neglect
   where nothing is grown
   love will never resurrect.

I want to be 16 again
looking for mortal sin
Catholic girls' willing
to spend God's shilling
to forgive the 'shoulds',
naked in Winton Woods.

Why do we obsess on your death?
Wear mother's furs and die in a car
painless, breathing her dead breath
as your own in the closed garage.
You painted your suffering in such
splendid colors and signed it AS.

I'd still take you in tall grass.
I first planted my ****** flag
in your ****** ground and bled.
We spent Love's sweet spot making
our daughter in Mustang backseats,
shattered glass castles and broke
your father's heart and buried him
along a great divide of generations.

I enrolled in college
accepted in Clown U.
My parents are ecstatic.
I finally see their view.
Ivy League it's not but
I might get a 4 point O
join Cirque du Soleil
free tickets to the show.

I'm at a carnival midway.
My mouth's agog at the freaks.
Tents for 10 cents to see naked.
Lobster boy displays deformity.
Bearded lady drops her veil.
***** covers the cement floor.
The stench is bathroom overflow.
I try to wake from this nightmare.

I was thinking of our
wild drunk forest fire
from years long gone
ashes of lust's desire
sent a Facebook message
to reminisce good times
still ****** about my marriage
  and all my little crimes.

People study me like a Picasso
two heads and eyes to match
all on one side inside a lasso
some kind of legality catch.
I stare at you in your seat
sip your wine at noon's show
I'm frozen for you no retreat
I stare you stare we both know.

I dreamed I was a lesbian
  trapped inside a manly man
  infinity inside a clock
  broken heart inside a lock
  blindfold at a firing squad
  playing racquetball with god
  Einstein teaching ABC's
  an atheist on his knees
  drunk poet feeling free
  a monkey typing poetry.

He splashes light in our eyes,
  heart breaks that make him cry
  remembering yesterday's goodbyes,
  begs her to explain. She just sighs.
  She was a ***** he loved, ghost white.
  He splashes light against the night
  making stars like madness that whirl.
  He splatters a crazy sun in the girl
  with crows in skies warning us of doom.
  He cuts his ear off in his attic room
  wraps it in paper scratched with vows.
  In madhouse on starry nights he howls.

I'm very profound at last call.
I stagger home to spill my poem
upon a ****** page for drunk poets
to bless my selfish stains as love.

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 slept in a UFO last night.
Creatures crawled over me
with probes and putting my
fluids into tubes I could see.
I watched tiny beasts swim
seeking the one we all want
in my ***** like tadpoles
in a frenzy of life's hunt.

I never believed in anything
as much as I believed in us.
I'll never forget dog breath.
You taught me how to trust.
You taught me patience and
humility and to be kind when
it wasn't deserved but atone.
I need you more than ever to
show me the way back home.