Hard for me to get on the warpath
but I walk it when I am provoked.
I leave my manners at the table
like a Grizzly bear's been poked.
I'm Atomic bomb over my target
dropped before thinking it out
a million collateral victims are
melting debris and cannot shout.

It's always the same answer.
Whats wrong do you know?
Just rare expensive cancer.
Best chance killer chemo,
a snake charmer dancer
or a card from the Tarot.

Blood in the rain makes a watercolor,
   as does wine spilled on a letter from
   a lover.  "I'm leaving you" bleeds into
   an image of a heart that will become
   forgotten as it dries gone by morning's
   cold bath filled with your sacred blood.
   Family and friends warm tears mourning
   create the the drought after the flood.

Ginsberg's Howl is full of
   people and places, food, music,
   suicides, ***, madness, drugs
   and unusual language. Earth.
   He landed here from the moon
   and cracked the poet's world in 2

   I write of *** madness drugs
   and reluctant blessings from
   those doomed to love me always
   Let us dance on the head of a pin
   and vanish in a puff of smoke
   while they all lose their minds.

The kind morphine drip
   eases me into death's grip
   her dream's lovely trips
   life to death's curtain rips

It wasn't love. It was confusion.
Harvest moon's shadow all along
shifting in the midnight surf as
we walked to our forbidden bed.
Stain of ******'s surrender bled.

      there's hope in despair
      fear in bravery
      ignorance in certainty
      doubt in forgiveness
      love lost inside love.

Death is ill timed, never expected
  and awkward for those left behind.
  Funerals are Death's surreal plays.
  Tears won't always come on cue.

  It's bad luck to talk about death.
  We speak kind of the dead. We don't
  talk of their human frailties.
  We deny our own sins and theirs.

  We forgive the world for our sins.
  If we never lived in your creation
  with temptations forbidden we'd
  never suffer birth and death.

I was conceived in the wrong womb.
  That's my life in a nutshell.
  It was one I never wore well.
  Greenhills, OH. Suburbia writ large.
  Lovely family and all but Bumpkinville
  so boring I took up smoking 8th grade.
  A swimming pool but I craved an ocean.
  I wanted a boardwalk and carneys and girls
  bold enough to kiss me like I needed.
  I wanted canyons of skyscrapers to wander
  and junkies and perverts and hookers who
  knew the price of meat. I wanted a library
  with every book ever writ held out for me
  to devour and digest so I'd be smarter than
  my father and teachers and the *******
  Parish priests who loved their altar boys.

I drove me to the corner
with an oversized *****.
She's a camouflage lover.
I wear bullet proof rubber.
We pretend love in Motel 6.
I sleep. She goes for a fix.
I buy her eggs and a waffle.
Our love was really awful.

If I brought you the sun would you smother it.
  Would you deem a moon unworthy and turn it off?
  If you had redemption could you swallow pride?
  When I die will you forgive my refusal to love?

Cheap wine and cigarettes
    classical music on a tinny
    sounding radio in a garret
    writing poetry to other
    lost souls in Boston and
    Southie and Sommerville
    and anyone who ever lit
    a candle for lost souls.

    We poets die each night.
    Our poems are lost in waves
    of cheap wine as we surrender
    to night's promises of a better
    tomorrow. Another chance to grab
    the brass ring on wooden horses.

    We wake with scraps of paper
    bearing witness to last nights
    binge of accidental brilliance.
    We stitch them back together
    best we can and offer them as
  poetry to anyone who cares.

Marty's Mass

  He died sudden like with
  a blood infection that ******
  his heart valve up. He was
  cremated into basic atoms of
  ash reduced to a jar of himself.
  He was always bigger than life
  and the irony is blatant. Thursday
  is a mass for him and I'll be there
  somber faced and heart of tears
  to pay my respects. I want to laugh
  out loud at his stories and jokes
  he told. The man could sell you
  your own soul and you'd thank him
  for saving you! He was a Gentleman.
  That's the greatest compliment ever.

I'll flog you and tear nails out
laughing while you flail about.
Rent a bed for an hour or two
rent a lover to swallow you.
Live inside the human stew,
own nothing not color blue.

Now I see me.
Now I don't.
Trick mirror
steals my image
and makes it
disappear.
One more drink
I'm gone for good.

Christmas time
decorate pine
eggnog strong
Christmas song
It's a Wonderful Life
put away the knife
drink another scotch
goose Honey's crotch
she loves that
wear Santa hat
feed the fire
forget desire
kids are there
so unfair
lights blink
can't think
curse my *****
presents burn.
In hotel
Xmas hell.

I'll never meet expectations.
Disappointment is guaranteed.
The only thing that I promise
is your heart will go to seed.

Gateway to adult is 17.
Desired yet forbidden
flattered and unsure
keep them hidden.
Boys swim around you
smelling woman's blood
you blush each month
enduring the flood.

Man created God in his image
to explain how we landed here
on this perfect human stage
our sun will burn out some year.
Everyone has the perfect God
now only made by China's slave
labor keeps us safe in our cars
land of the free and the brave.

A mute mimicking a mime
   for a living set me on fire in
   ironies hot furnace and it melts
   my metal heart where it beats
   silent in death's fierce grip
   pried from God's fingers.

Touch my feelings
wet fingers with tears
weep as I weep old
near death's fears

I was a boy then
life was forever
before I found sin
my ****** lover

we rejected Eden
for Satan's fruit
out girl and boy
die in a black suit

poems scattered around the room
in my never ending fool's errand
as poet laureate of Watercolor's
perfect world of happy accidents.
We drool and weep out of context
but scratch a portrait of Sexton
dead in her car in the garage.
We copy Plath's ****** scene of
geese escaping winter to warmth.
We endure cures of our lobotomies.
Brilliant light was smothered.
Grey men 4 years old on knees.

I gave you my heart but
knew you couldn't keep it.
I'm still expecting you to
hold on to Love to a finish
line that doesn't even exist.
I set fire again and never look
back. I smell the burning
flesh. I hear familiar screams.
The burning flesh is mine alone.
The screams are in my head.

Time stands still. My movie
plays on in stalled flashes
I imagine us back in the day
relive mistakes left in ashes.
Clock hands frozen at 9:23 pm
tock is silent like French leave
I drink to forget and remember
like the God I want to believe.

Do I exist as I or us?
Can you be alone or
are you a part of me?
We must memorize
the truth as it is told
over the mind Net.
Our sky is yellow.
Our meat is farmed
inside a test tube.
We procreate alone,
hallucinate  together.
I don't feel pain or
loneliness. I never
cried but miss it.

I miss Aunt Elizabeth and
Aunt Blanche with the chickens
and Aunt Blanche with Mike
and the mansion in Glendale
with books changed my life
and piano I made noises
that stole my heart again
life running out of sand.

Love letters
lost in translation
are always buried treasure
hidden in plain sight.
Sleep in Absinthe
and dream reality.
Wake in his catbox.
Claws on your neck
accused of infidelity
embrace our pretend.

Misery of corpses living on the street
pushing baskets with their lives inside.
They see truths with their dead eyes
while yearning for a crust of bread
or kind word or smile or proper grave.
They too were children playing among
fields of gold with mothers tucking
them in at night singing lullabies.

Fill it with laughter
or tears or silver or
anger or lust or my
vows worth nothing
though we lived all
that in our lifetimes.

They're hills are huge,
defeat us in numbers
and never give up ever
and always remember.
Marx. Lenin. Stalin. Mao.
Senate and congress now
in broken USA anyway
middle class dead today.

Lover anticipation for a yes
on a knee anybody's guess.
We thank you for trying
you know you are dying
maybe the next poetry
will be of our quality.

What stool softener do you use?
Where's the cheapest Fixodent?
I was a ****** in my last life.
Old is a smell you never forget.

Lightning flashed that night
frequent like a strobe light
an old time silent movie
we loved quiet and free.

Who else could design
inner workings of such
precision so sublime
but a God's touch?
Gears and wheels
dance in rhythm
perfection always feels
greater than the sum.

I started it at birth
when evicted to light
tiny fists clenched
begging for a fight.
Angry always angry
Punch you in a bar
buy you a sorry drink
drive you in my car.
I'm the only war dead
buried in my sick head
I surrender to myself
I lie dead on a bar shelf.

The war was won the men came home
   broke but ready to fill the cradles
   and cry on the shoulders that matter
   and smell of the remembered perfume.
   They spent the venom into wombs to
   bring corpses back from ugly death.

I'm a fat old lonely toad
near the end of my road.
I have no helpful advice
except to just think twice,
throw birdseed not rice,
never naughty but nice.
Cruel kids **** me in fire.
I die within my desire.
Nothing's really left.
Life is a small theft.

The bottles in mirrors
in bar light infinity
Alchemy potions to
bring you serenity.
She looks at you, smiles,
spins straw into lead
I doubt all I once knew
realize I'm finally dead.

If I could play guitar
I'd write a song
instead of poetry
poems are deaf lyrics
heard only by poets
and you and me.

We parted ways after awhile. We had differences.
   I didn't hate or love you. We went our own ways.
   30 years later and you still haunt my dreams.
   Try as I will I can't forget how yours tastes.

They had to be walked.
The sky burst open in a shower
and angry lightening all about.
They had to be walked.
I had a drink for courage
and what the hell if I die
struck by a bolt of nature.
They had to be walked.
We went forth and waded
ankle deep in a flowing
creek in the hood and
I listened to the 1812 Overture
by Tchaikovsky.
I had to write this poem.
The music demanded it!

Catcher in the Rye
Men all learn to lie
Women learn to cry
shrinks learn why
soldiers learn to die
angels learn to fly
we all say goodbye
regret we never try

Lust is brutal and raw
   blood in a shark's jaw.
   Absolutely pure desire
   humans' procreation fire.
   We devoured us forever
   always find a new lover.

adrift in the sea that is humanity
    where we meet by chance in water's
    fickle movements. I want to hold you
    only for a clock tick to love you
    for a lifetime. we'll float apart in
    stormy seas and be with other debris
    clutching and touching and trusting
    in another lifetime in a second.
we believe in god and miracles
but we can't find our way home.

It waits around a corner.
She haunts your dreams.
Under your bed fluid beast
bleeds through your seams.
You wake in the sunlight.
Wonder at the blood
God's intervention
takes hold of the flood.

I drink myself as stupid as I can
each night at Happy Hour
but I can't ignore the plan
to harness all the power
into a pinpoint of light
one world order resets
Soros reigns in the night
Humanity sends regrets.

She comes and goes. My wife in
   an instant becomes a stranger
   a vacant stare. Holds her purse
   tighter to her fearing my danger
   There's a loose thread in her mind
   she keeps pulling until she holds
   the end and everything is gone but
   me. She sees it slip from my hand.

Who do
voodoo
you do
I do too.
We all do
the voodoo.

Thanks for birthing me!
   If not for you I'd be an ink spot.
   The only thing I ask is you
   reduce me to my essence.

   Rid me of ******* verbiage
   and self absorbing preening.
   We know you've suffered in
   ways known only to you.

   Show my unspoken words;
   The ugly truths of shame
   that will send me to hell.
   Expose the heinous me.

agent orange in the wind
kept our eyes burning
as the fortunes of the war
just kept on turning
now we're just gray and angry
for the friends long dead
without any proper goodbyes
words  from the heart unsaid

I love you beauties
   I fear your stings
   Scorpions in showers
   Snakes in G-Strings
   poison in my coffee
   Love always brings.