Can I spin gold from straw
or straw from gold
or good from bad or make
promises and break them?
I deal in snake oil and magic.
Never give me your heart.

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.

I'll dance with forbidden
and kiss girls forgiven
drink the devil's brew
as if we never knew
we'd turn a final scene
and both end up clean.

Quiet my baby screams
rub ***** on my gums
such tiny taste it seems
hand me loaded guns.

My life is imploding all
around me. Block by block
is demolished making room
for some brave new world
for versions of a new us
state control tech drones.

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.

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.

She told me about herself
her growing up and more.
I ordered shots. God help me.
To the head, out the front door
the French leave set me free
from the blind dating bore.
I saw her hail a cab to escape
her blind date, such a bore.

I will do this.
I will do that.
I'll even do that.
I will never do
that other thing!

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.

pretty lies and ugly truths
take your card from the deck
offers only sleight of hand
and a rope around your neck.

I was earthbound all my life,
  then I met you and we had wings
  to fly above the heavens where
  a God exists and an angel sings.
  We flew too close to the sun and
  fell into the gravity's rainbows.
  You see us crawling in blue skies
  loud cawing black ink stain crows.

Frail boy sings for his supper.
Fat lady sings loud and proud.
The doctor takes another upper
wraps lonely corpse in a shroud.
Children are objects of sick desires
nothing is off the table after all
nothing can extinguish the fires
innocent dead dance at their ball.

I'm barely awake from a dream. I
    need to call home. 6 Alcott Lane,
    Greenhills. Is my room still there?
    Is the Xavier pennant still nailed to
    the wall, and Christ on the cross?
    That room was my growing up womb.
    
    I found my *** in that room. I puked
    beer in that room. I played with my
    plastic super heroes in that room. I
    was sent to that room when I told my
    parents that I got Kathy pregnant.
    I know there's no going home again.

White widow dances free
Sapphic lover's get a key
*** toys no longer hidden
bigger is better for kitten.

With war painted eyes
weapons between thighs
in Boston's combat zone
tempting men all alone
smelling the pungent bait
pay a fee there is no wait
you always want it pure
no promise nothing sure
no heartache to endure
kiss a wife at the door.

If it stays empty I might find my way back
  to my job and family and a dog named Jack.
  I might become a poet printed in a magazine
  or put in the Anthology of Poets of 2016.
  I might be an astronaut and jump on the moon
  or despair and slit my wrist in the afternoon
  maybe cook elixir for a syringe in my spoon
  overdose during Jeopardy not dead too soon.

The thirst never leaves
feed me sate me please.
You brought temptation
a paper bag invitation.
My throat is dry dust
promises die in trust.

I'm a forgone conclusion
    and an empty promise.
    My words fail to inspire.
    My loves are always lost.
    Trouble always finds me.
    Read between the lines and
    find the real me with you
    in my heart on my sleeve.

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.

Dragging the strip long ago
  smooth thin fem boys glow.
  Made up as fairies grow
  into *******'s final blow.
  Poppers they take more
  inches, delightful score.
  Rod died from Aids.
  Memory never fades.

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

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.

We circle the sky above you
as you die in your own *****
numb with a needle in a vein.
We eat the dead leaving bones
for proper burial and salutes.
Flag buried was made in China.

Echoes rebound off the bedroom walls
   as she screams in pleasure to a deity
   that better hears whispered prayers.

   Violin Concerto in F Minor, Vivaldi
   is the soundtrack when seed and egg
   meet in her and make our child.

   Love bleeds all over feuding families
   as guns like thunder roar through the
   night delivering the required martyrs.

   The dead are mourned with a dirge of
   voices echoing off the hills and the
   building threat of vengeance. Storms.

   Anger thrums just out of hearing,
   just out of sight as our child is
   born into this unwelcome cauldron.

   This night defines me. Unbridled joy.
   Hope for our familial peace. Not to be.
   Our child loses her mother to violence.

   Echoes rebound off the bedroom walls
   as she screams in hunger to a mother
   who better hears whispered prayers.

Black water. Sunlight.
   How to drown at noontime.
   You'll end up caught on
   a log in shallows where
   you're found and catalogued.
   You ended more lives than
   your own. Family is dead
   emotionally and buried.

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.

Crazed warriors armless,
anything but harmless
kicking bombs into nets
quiet church no regrets.
Beckham did it best of all
master of the Soccer ball.

We bury a great Lady
who kept us safe since
1886. She was ***** and
pillaged from DC vipers
in thousand dollar suits
and 500 dollar haircuts
thousand dollar ******
and selling the country
piece by piece as jobs
disappeared and they
became billionaires and
we wept at our burials.

You carry your soul in a
brown paper bag
kept from sins of the flesh
you committed back then
and beauty's stains etched
in lost youth's wrinkles

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.

I recognize  the signs
of the bent fork tines
your desire forbidden
my broke heart hidden.
I ******* forever
pretend you're my lover.

I write this sonnet to you
purer than our midnight
full moon, *** act one, in
the dead bed in motel 6.

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.

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

Summers last forever at 9
building dams in creeks
swinging on vines free
in woods and crawdads
little monsters we love
as pets in mason jars
for a minute or two
then set them free.

He snores and farts in sleep.
Unabashed as we kids creep
looking at Grandpa's books
borrowing them like crooks.
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
My Endless Night's in the Bar
tanned in neon's sunlight
stumble home in moonlight.

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.

Cambodia
Prison camp S-21
Angkor kills but does not explain

your blood bleeds into my veins
so I can feel your pains
whatever god you pray to
beg for deliverance.
In the good old USA we are
unaware of unseen suffering.
Usually but not always.
we met at a wedding and
you shared your story
in broken English until
I understood that you
had been in the killing fields.

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.

God took an angel's voice then
mixed it with a fish wife's bark
and dragged it through a dive bar
with smoke and screaming ******
and put it in Toulouse-Lautrec
added 2 parts stage sweat and a
spasmodic rhythm movement and
gifted mankind with Joe Cocker.
He's a Mad Dog and Englishman.

We met drunk in our bar
midnight halos north star
Woke hungover in a bed
naked lovers instead
morning communion
consummated our union
love is a dying Unicorn
never should be born.

1968 Far Out

Wear Birkenstock's
ignore the clocks
grow your hair
forget underwear
be brave don't doubt
turn on and drop out
Naked on Alcott Lane
only myself to blame
I paint a full moon
inside our living room
sleep inside acid dreams
nothing is as it seems.

2021 Old Times

Obey the clocks take
your pills that make
you kind of normal
a bit less formal
*** will break you
I welcome my rue
I dream of our first
time to quench thirst
in tall grass Romeo
and Juliet long ago
so much life lived
so little still believed

Never live or die
just disappear fly
too fast to splatter
too small to matter.

Our lives grow up around us built
    from debris near at hand. Beer,
    laughs, anger, *****, *****, tears,
    shame, coffee, job, lust, ***, love,
    marriage, kids, dog, house, debt, day
    after day, separation just a prelude
    to divorce, child support, paycheck
    to paycheck, kids on odd days, odd
    lovers in weird spaces, gray hair,
    AA, church, bars, DUI, court, AA,
    kids on even days, ex moves on and
    marries, downsized, severance pay,
    coast for a few months, broke,
    evicted, rent an attic, read
    poems, write poems, smoke, drink,
    my life grows up around me.

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.

Gangs of doctors a
hundred patients deep,
cancer is the currency
dying in their sleep.
We don't make promises.
We ask your permission.
Sign the waiver. There's
no cure maybe remission?
Promise us that you'll
always take your pill.
Most importantly arrange for
loved ones to pay your final bill.

Don't ask questions.
   Don't rock the boat.
   Drink their beer as
   they steal your vote.
   Government never lies
   they work for us bosses.
   Budgets never balance
   just ignore the losses.

They want to be heard for their poems.
Money has no eye for  some Bukowski.
Dylan Thomas would have been ignored.
Genius has no formula to chalk on boards.
Poets want a public square to nail their
personal crucifixions and bleed out loud.

Our worlds are full of dark rooms
    with cobwebs in corners like tombs.
    We frail grey children still fear
    the wicked clowns getting too near
    to our bed to do what we most dread.
    Too late to climb in mommy's bed.