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.

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.

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

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.

There's an itch you can never reach.
   Each night is perfect. Each morning
   is a mix of shame, regret and amnesia.
   People you love warn you of danger.
   There's an itch you can never reach.
   You go on the water wagon for awhile
   but your dog dies and you need a hair
   of the dog and sit on your bar throne.
   There's an itch you can never reach.
   Lose a foot to ***** and swear it off.
   Clean and sober for a year or two but
   there's an itch you can never reach.
   Your liver is ****** as are you, so
   you keep on with your poison and Tab
   and suffer slings and arrows because
   there's an itch you can never reach.

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.

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

Winds of change
always blowing
breathing strange
never knowing
what tomorrow
will finally bring
joy or sorrow
songbirds sing!

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 ate the Covid
good Lord calling
like flies we die
belief is falling.
Death made in
US funded labs
fortunes mandated
vaccine poison jab.

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.

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

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.

We haven't spoken
since one of us died,
old bonds broken.
The other one cried.

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.

It's madness and beauty
hangs inside my heart
waiting for it's duty
to tear my mind apart.

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.

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.

Have you read a poem and been
profoundly touched? Your world
trembled for a moment you cried
for a leaf, a door, poems unread.

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.

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.

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

Before the storm all was right.
  It tore us to shreds and then left.
  Dorothy's tornado took us to Oz.
  We've never found our way back.

  I get the tin man with no heart.
  Courage is lacking in us all and
  brains are in short supply. So?
  Look for the yellow brick road.

I'm a quilt
sewn from
pieces of each
of you I've
touched  and
never forgot.

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.

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.

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.

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

My life is not a page
full of pretty poetry
more like fire of rage
atomic bomb imagery
melted hearts boiled tears
I brought flowers never
over 31 loveless years
death broke our fever
buried our precious fears

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

We've been beat near to death.
  Irish mules pull English plows
  rocks and clay our last breath.
  You steal our milk, eat our cows.

  Steal our island as you might.
  Ireland is Our emerald sacred
  We keep our dignity and fight.
  Pubs crawl with pure hatred.

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.

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.

A beard or discover
a truth in between
She/He a real lover
bulges seldom seen.

The hearts we set aflutter as we
     danced inside the canvas tents.
     Towns on the edge of the dust bowl who
     still had pennies and loved our scents.

     Times were hard and we moved to catch
     the next town with a sawbuck to steal
     with our games of chance and ladies
     teasing what we'd give after a deal.

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.

They haunt dreams and Oh!
how we cry! Aunt Blanche
drinks wine and smokes her
cigarettes and calls me Kid.
She loves me, doesn't judge me,
knows my horrible love better
than I ever could. It's in flak
that rips an airman from the
sky in wars that leave us to
bail out from burning love.

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

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.

I'm poor. All I have
is a bouquet of poems
I wrote for you that
won't die if neglected.

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.

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.