I wish you were alive
so I could apologize
for disappointing you.
You took my kids fishing
when I was drunk wishing
for miracles in Boston
the kids in an orphanage.
****** kept insanity at bay.
I never knew how to just say,
"Thank You and I love you, Dad."

Autumn turns nature more intense.
     Peasants harvest Burnt sienna and
     other shades of red while black crows
     crawl across the French blue sky.
     Leaves catch fire briefly before
     ending in winters Payne grey grave.
     I clutch hope in my lonely winter.
     Please visit soon, Lad. Love, Vincent.

Autumn turns nature more intense.
     Peasants harvest Burnt sienna and
     other shades of red while black crows
     crawl across the French blue sky.
     Leaves catch fire briefly falling
     into winters Payne's grey grave.
     I clutch hope in my lonely winter.
     Please visit soon, Lad. Love, Vincent.

He splashes light against the sky,
  broken heart that makes her cry
  remembering yesterday's goodbyes,
  begs her to explain. She just sighs.
  She was a ***** he loved, paste white.
  He splashes light against the night
  making stars that swirl like madness.
  He splatters yellow suns on his sadness
  with crows in skies warning us of doom.
  He cuts his ear off in her white room.
I scratch this poem upon the page
with his blood spilled in red rage.

What a splendid place you are,
spaces, smells and tastes galore.
I've been everywhere in my mind
I'm Helen Keller and I'm blind.
I see more than you might think.
Remember each time you blink.

Your name is so near
my old failing brain
I know we made love
naked in summer rain.
Betsy or Kathy or Jayne,
Georgine or Lorraine?
Soft golf course grass
13th hole water hazard
drunk love piece of ***.

Quit trying to
make me happy
just let me be
in my misery
drunk honesty.

I'm living
in a holding
pattern waiting
to be cleared
for my burial.

Death is black as ink
no light as you think
piece of the universe
forever nothing worse.

it makes us better
   love harder
   never quit trying.
   biting monkeys
   screeching madness
   always on our backs
   a time bomb to
   keep us guessing
   when when when
   the answer is
   too late to matter
   too late to change.

All my friends are gone.
Feelings are lost in ashes.
I am alone like in a womb.
Dark is come and go flashes.

I yearn but still say **** it all
reach out in darkness for touch
fingers have disappeared
death is nothing much.

Your machine is shutting down.
Finally an ending to the crown.
Forget broken promises and lies.
Coughing blood and tearful eyes.
Death bed confession heard
never forgot word for word.
You're loved and forgiven.
We hold prayer of contrition.

They had to have a live tree
instead of a fake ironically.
The thing ended up killing me.
It's not big enough can't you see?
It was monstrous as it could be
but kept them quiet and happy.
I tried to lift it, was on a knee.
Help! They ignored my plea.
Coroner delivered me for free.
Moving the tree cost a hefty fee.

I lost my wedding ring
it fell into the mud
with the other ones
our horror of blood.

The end wouldn't come.
***** to death by many
rag doll kissed by some
just a **** for a penny.

Monsters eat our pain
Hors oeuvre then home
dinner with the family
all will fall like Rome.

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.

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.

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.

Death is a rebirth back
into infinity's dark mystic
the vast door opens a crack
into time's lonely final tick.

Death is a rebirth back
into infinity's dark mystic
the vast door opens a crack
into time's lonely final tick.

I hope my afterlife
  is familiar dreams
  at dizzying heights
  just silent screams.
  No awaken my love
  with birthday ***.
  I now live above
  in a gypsy's hex.

We always die in first class.
Roomy, free drinks and ****.
Just the best, perfect teen ***,
seats perfect leather unworn.
Teenage lovers in tall grass
plant our seed to be reborn.

I'm 71 on my deathbed back
inside my mother's womb.
I wait to be born into another
world entered through a tomb.

You'll even miss your nightmares
    when they're gone. We exist on
    waves of time and build lives
    of small habits to hold our days
    together safe and sound. Change
    to routine is scary as hell and
    most unwelcome. I'll scurry like
    a mouse to your darkness. Trust
    you long enough to spend it all
    talking in a circle once again.
    We'll ride the wave again and
    wipe out over and over until
    the nightmare finally stops in
   a stone cold dead stillness.

I put lipstick on a pig and
    called her my love. She was
    a queen of Somerville. I love
    willing women of beauty.

    I knew it wasn't going to go
    the distance. It was shallow.
    Not love but a siren singing,
    tempting me to a rocky shore.

    There lies our relationship
    an empty lung or two, burst
    arteries, exploded heart and
    putrid once beautiful flesh.

I put lipstick on a pig and
    called her my love. She was
    queen of Somerville. I love
    willing women of beauty.

    I knew it wasn't going to go
    the distance. It was shallow.
    Not love but a siren singing,
    tempting me to a rocky shore.

    There lies our relationship
   decaying lung or two, burst
    arteries, empty heart and
    putrid once beautiful flesh.

Oklahoma dust drove us west to California
  where jobs and green fields promised Eden.
  We piled our lives on the Ford and headed
  to Paradise. We joined others on the way
  a caravan of proud Okies would do anything
  to survive. Some did the unspoken for food
  and shelter along the way. Eyes wide open
  we could smell the sweet winds of Paradise.

It's a beauty of a red rose.
  It's a watercolor on a bed sheet
  petals bloom from his wound.
  She'd had it and found a gun
  and courage and anger enough
  to put him out of her misery.

I'm almost finished serving time
   for a sentenced birth without
   a clue as to what I committed
   There's never enough time to fix
   whatever I did that needs it.
   I need the fatal shot for rebirth.

We live the lives we are assigned
  predestined inside God's giant book
  we walk our chapters weak and kind
  hoping to avoid death's horrid crook.
  The only ending is finally dying
  the body surrenders to God's demand
  never mind if only and but for trying
  sleep forever in the clay of our land.

Blood from a barely beating heart
drips down the neck to the fingers
in the dirt back to the finite start
dying sees life while it lingers
behind blind eyes as a spirit soars.
The living water graves with tears
not knowing God's sacred open doors
when their time is due in the years.

My black hole velocity
escapes cruel gravity
unchained again finally
death sets us all free.

My tears
   betray my
   laughter
   I'm naked
   in spotlights
   acting alive
   ashes in my
   tiny urn
   on a mantle
   forgotten
   each day.
   clocks tic
   clocks toc
   heart beats
   year at a time
   lost forever.

I wish I could silence Death's roar
constantly rumbling at my door
since the day I was born again
louder than ever my original sin.

Sunlight is cruel
   hangover mornings
   with a loaded chamber
   I might turn it off
   laughing at death as
   she seduces in dark.

I hope to die quickly
not weakly and sickly.
Spare me the chemo
living dead I know.
*** with a *****
closes life's door.
No waiting awhile
I die with a smile.

There's a rebel boat coming
  close enough to see hatred
  in blood red eyes. Ring the
  church bell to call to arms.
  Powder in cannons delivers
  our death's surrender now.

Truth reveals itself near midnight
when I swim in deep pools of wine.
I'm lost. My family died in my depths.
I need shallows to find redemption.
I need the goddess Tara my
North Star to Enlightenment.
I'll sail back home and find my
broken life and fix it best I can.

Truth reveals itself near midnight
when I swim in deep pools of wine.
I'm lost. My family died in my depths.
I need shallows to hide in.
I need a goddess named Georgine
to help me find my North Star.
I'll sail back home and find my
broken life and fix it best I can.

So quiet on the surface
   as it's eating you alive
   like a starving furnace
   you never quite survive.
   Morphine keeps it quiet
   tortured silent screams  
   while cancer cells riot
   heaven's delicate dreams

I broke my life into
  pieces of an unknown
  puzzle one afternoon's
  confession of my own.
  You took clothes and
  kids and left me alone
  to wallow in freedom
  Delilah in our home.
  Doomed from the start
  she sunk like a stone.
  I call forever hoping
  you'll answer the phone.

This must be what forgetting is.
   Erosion of memory year by year
   until the landscape is barren now.
   I remember your ******* but can't
   find my way home. I taste you still
   but forget my child's name. I still
   remember tall grass with virginity
   lost and we created what's her name?

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.

My life is fading away
day by day going astray
I can't place you I forget
I love you but I regret
I forgot your name again
I know where we've been
I remember cans on cars
cheers in so many bars
laughter and pleasure
beyond any measure.

First it steals small names
   then dreams of cunning lust.
   It smothers white hot desire
   then steals my flaccid trust.

   It hides joys I knew and my
   hate I once kept in my head
   steals lovers not forgotten.
   It buries me before I'm dead.

I'm in lost memories fear.
My already played out acts,
more pieces gone each year.
My old brain missing facts.

Find a word a guessing game
I've forgot everybody's' name.
Nothing ever seems the same.
Strangers in a picture frame.

I was conceived
  with demon seed
  in a devil's *****
  always wanting more
  settling for less
  love's such a mess
  am I boy or girl
  give both a whirl
  I'll lick and ****
  let's give a ****
  be my honored guest
  we'll decide the rest

Friends and lovers
   years ago in Boston
   I reach back in time
   call you on a loose
   wire and I hang up
   without a message
   I don't know what
   to say tonight
   maybe tomorrow
   sober and older
   wiser and denial
   always an option.

I'm on my worn out bar stool
drinking one Depth Charge
after another hoping to die
tonight. I can't stop waking
without remorse in sunlight.
My liver keeps betraying me.

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.

God's wrath struck the Joshua tree
   and reduced it to cremated ashes,
   let Rattlers unwind. Left it to be.
   We watched it in lightening flashes.
   We died in angry desert cactus scrub
   hidden branches of the poison creosote
   where the only touch is death's rub.
   We just grow colder without hope,
   join our bodies on this unmarked dune.
   The stars are your bright eyes above.
   I stare at your beauty in a full moon.
   Kiss is a final breath our dying love.

God's wrath struck the Joshua tree
   and burned it to its cremated ashes
   then let our world settle. Let it be.
   We watched it in lightening flashes.
   We live in angry desert cactus scrub
   hidden branches of the poison creosote
   where the only touch is death's rub.
   We have all but given up any hope.
   The stars are your eyes up above.
   The wind is my hands on our love.