I brought you to life
   in a poem. You'll never
   love in moderation. Love
   screams out loud and catches
   its breath and sleeps 'til noon.
   Then it happens next full moon.

My brain won't stop spinning
like plates balanced on sticks.
I've drunk my share of *****.
What's wrong with me? Am I
diseased? I worry I might die.
I thank God and chemists
I have my sacred Ambien and
fall into a rabbit hole to Oz.
Visit me in my dreams naked
just like a million years ago.

The Floyd, *******,
brought my soul to surface
I finally felt home again
sit and rest from a rat race.
I've been mad for years
swim against the tide
ocean drinks my tears
I find your coves to hide.

My mother's father Grampa
was a fallen woman's champ.
Amusing drunk wicked smile
he had his fancy bow tie style.
French and sniffing all about
sows seeds of grandson doubt?
Truth with age revealed a fact.
He was just a cheap carnival act.

I think I understand our subtle hatred
  for each the other. How long can we live
  in each other's shadow before you 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 gas oven and let it go.
  I always thought of our children 'til the end.

Chess pieces off the board.
Playing in the park in shade
of oaks dropping Fall's leaves.
They lie stiff under sheets in
foreign fields loved ones won't
recognize in tears and sobs and
prayers of despair to a deaf God.
Death ends the games tonight.

I cracked on the subway when the noise
sounded more and more like mother's scold.
I tried putting it out of my mind but found
it was my mind and I froze up cold.

I heard words. Catatonic. Insane. Psychotic.
Taken to my new home in my straight jacket.
It offers amenities like all the pills you can
swallow and **** the insurance! What a racket.

I meet with doctors wearing glasses
smoking pipes asking about nuns
and *** and bathroom habits and dreams
and catholic schools and BB guns.

They say I can have visitors. I'd love to
see you. We have so much to talk about.
I'm so sorry. I never meant for it to happen.
Forgive me. We're watched. I have no doubt.

My dear old friend
I can't watch your end
between the seconds
ticking it's threatens
life's final surrender
the great pretender.

I'm a drunken man
  with a fragile heart
  could be an ending
  could be a start
  I'm fun full of laughs
  but too many years
  I have drowned
  beneath my tears.

As our world dies
a nuclear death I
hope the band plays on
like the brave musicians
on the Titanic and music
buries our Empire of ash.

I remember your touch I hunger for
like the night we became us on the
back stairs as the party faded away
into white noise and my heart beat
into yours and I knew my world just
fell to pieces and broken promises
and broken children were coming.
I relive it one second at a time.
I still look for you everywhere
trying to find the back stairs.

My frightened little boy
  still lives inside my head
  always in background noise
  'til I'm drunk and go to bed.
  I take a pill to keep him
  from screaming when I wake
  so I can drink my coffee and
  his fragile hands won't shake.
  Every lover wants to save him
  suckle from her ****** breast
  but he drinks her dry and none
  is ever left for the needy rest.

I let you brand me
as I branded you.
We drove off in a
loud tail of cans
to our honeymoon
high hopes and
asleep before ***.
Never had a chance.

Climb down off your cross
never mind your loss
stay in the moment with us
guilt is so **** useless.
Love while you still can
embrace her understand

I never made it to Christmas
or Birthdays or school plays.
I was drunk and chasing ***
to bed somewhere for lays.
I know my failure up close
live in forever confessions
forget me with each dose
erase me in shrink sessions.

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.

Christ or dollars
I'm on my knees
cross or stud collars
but only if I please.

I need redemption,
successful lobotomy.
Am I the exception
or Rose Kennedy?

I do not think there's any time
to worry of End times rhyme
or Eve's betrayal of raw greed.
Lucifer planted her ugly seed.

I was married and then not. ****.
  Vows don't demand beheading anymore.
  We earnestly married in farce.
  We drowned in my guilt and moved on.
  I was in wilderness for 40 days and nights.
  You called crying when Pepper got hit by a car
  and died. I came to your dorm room and we
  drank beers and got naked and ****** away
  our naivete. I never saw you again.
  I went to Boston for my next chapter.

I love Love. The idea. The rush. The chase.
I love the act. I love the lust. I love the end.
Love always has a timer.
Love always has a headstone.
Every love poem
has been written.

I wrote you a poem
  saying I was alone
  imagine us holding
  hands walking along
  cobble stone streets
  look in shop windows
  ready for Christmas
  I buy your sweet time.

PTSD LGBQT ADD OCD ABC XYZ
look in the Shrink's book they
pretend to know our afflictions
catalogued with treatments.
Our despair is hope in hopeless
shadows cast from burning bushes.

The full moon fills my window.
  Worries bounce around my brain
  like pinball's on gravity flight.
  I wait for a sunrise judgement.
  Where will death's gavel land?
  Inside a Savior's morning light.

We watched from a rooftop
across the great city
4 in the morning
lit up and pretty
a little drunk but
mostly just tired
dawn broke and
I was inspired
in central park
we made our bond
you said I love you
now and beyond
I said I love you
you answered ****
love floats in jetsam
drifts in bad luck.

We wired kids drank coffee
   in Kroger's and stoled fire
   and cigarettes. We were free
we were open to inspire.
   We kissed girls felt fears
   something like young desire,
   warmth we'd chase for years.

I was finally too old to see her arrive
at midnight the ***** drop in NYC .
I was dreaming of us way back when
we were both fit and fetching thin.

In summer's tall green grass
  we planned our picnic hidden
  from God's all seeing eye
  to hide our secret forbidden
  we gave our virginity away
  as one at the altar of blood
  radio troubadour serenaded
  our marriage baptized flood.

I was 10 running in a field to the pool
where Patty wore her 2 piece and owned
my boyish heart. She was 15 and I was
******* her alone in my bedroom at night.
Everyone I ever ****** was 2 piece Patty.
She was beat to death with a fence post.

Save the truth from extinction
write what bought cowards fear
don't sell your souls for silver
keep your loved ones near
eyes always on North Star.
Slay dragons with a poem.
Word warriors fight together
Never slay dragons alone.

Live today
tomorrow
shimmers
on horizons
never reached
mirages
broke vows
red rains

It was just another
  womb to betray
  just one more day
  just another mother
  9 long months sober
  last day of October
  in the witch's brew
  it's coming true
  Rosemary's baby due.
  devil's lover knew.

I was ****** and drunk at 3am.
My conscience called my phone.
We loved and never answered.
I crawled back to bed now alone
a little room at hell's midnight.
I woke in your fierce sunlight.

Taste me there
  you strike
  snake like
  poison again
  finish our sins
  never begin
  nobody loses
  nobody wins

Bewildering array of possibility
  you were born you and me born me
  God died in the Time's Headlines
  life is accidents of French Mimes.

Birth

Mom pushed hard to get me
into life I was stubborn and
liked where I was but she
persisted and evicted me.
Bright light and faceless
ghosts abducted me and
****** and wiped cleaned
me up and swaddled me
in a straight jacket ****
it I will never let it be.

Love is Lust caged
never jealous drunk
not a lover enraged
desire finally sunk
to bottoms of hearts
rusted ruins forgot
no place for starts
in currents I rot.

Women solder circuit boards for hours while
   a man tests their work with his instrument.
   King of the line. He struts like a rooster
   and has his pick among this house of hens.

   He bathes in cologne and goes commando to
   be ready at the drop of a hat for anything.
   He drives a van with a mattress in the back.
   He rocks it at lunch hour which is his limit.

   He thrives in this small world of desperate
   angels giving love but never knowing him.
   He kisses the girls then makes them cry.
   Love is fire until a factory whistle blows.

the *****'s strewn about the room
     like branches from a violent storm
     some ascending some descending
     some dying some better off dead

     you better watch your manners even
     in a crack house lust will bend even
     stubborn knees to adore coveted bones
     and defile you with stubborn needs

     a savior is born from these ashes
     hope delivered from a crack head
     rising above human frailty we
     will all crawl to a promised land

     the crack house is no place for
     punctuation or capital letters
     My arrogance is misplaced. We
     have needs that won't be silenced.

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

Poets are the liberating gods.
Closer to truth and lies and
every **** bent thought we
ever had that shames us until
it's in a poem to set us free to
break the chain we hold onto.

The clock on my wall
   ticks seconds of time
   loud but never gone.
   Wedding band removed
   easy no mark. Single
   on the prowl tonight
   vampire hunts lovers
   tender necks to ****.

My life is metaphor and simile
  between Shakespeare and Bukowski.
  Light like Nash, dark like Plath.
  Drunk like Thomas, deep like Yeats.
  I won't go gentle. An honest poet
  slouching to Bethlehem for fame.

We never knew we were at war with each other.
  I didn't even know it was a skirmish we were in.
  The battlefield was hidden without boundaries so
  I thought that we were always on the same side.

  I finally saw the barbed wire keeping us apart.
  Small sacrifices here and there add up to serious
  no man's land. Stubborn head strong; we both were
  as our love turned hard and angry without a truce.

  I had a cigarette and was third on a match; a shot
  hit my heart and did no harm. My heart is stone.
  Tomorrow I'll be war torn, never the same. You
  don't know me anymore. I'm a loveless stranger.

I believe my country has died.
Defeated Lady Liberty on her knees
with a Scimitar for her beheading.
Communists crawling into her guts
for the final feeding as we all hold
impotent guns without bullets.

You mean that much to me
   more than I could ever be
   even rhymes at odd times
   committed our tiny crimes
   books, food, truth's lies
   always holster my alibis.

Huge golden retriever runt of litter
chasing ***** just not his thing.
He chases squirrels they disappear
in terror of the conquering king.

When you stole my heart I was dancing.
  I was clumsy on my knees romancing.
  When I kissed splendid siren *******
  We slept and we ****** slow as beasts
  in morning and you wept. I wonder why
  the mirage gets closer **** it will die.

It almost drove me crazy
   that sound of a low thrum
   like electric through wires
   all who died sorrow's hum.
   She died in some drive by
   put to rest beat of a drum
   just push off don't come back
   go my way to a place I'm done.

an inch or a mile
   or a simple smile
   or Peter Rabbit
   or deadly habit
   pull the lever
   just be clever
   slit your wrist
   don't try to resist
   new world order
   with just one border
   without a fence
   or gaudy opulence
   just an open wound
   never healing
   a fierce desire
   without feeling
   are you black or brown
   or professor or clown?
   forget your history
   it all remains a mystery
   in this world with no past
   and an invisible cast.