She had a toddler. We hooked
up in a club and I met
her folks and workmates
a week later and her kid.
I had my 2 kids I neglected
****** kept my guilt at bay.
I knew hers was a desperate
failing impossible ghost love.

Each generation
moves the wheel
proud another turn.
It's all been done before.

Not an acre and a mule. Not a 57 Chevy.
  No how to build a house or change the oil.
  My father had things to give me but
  he never offered and I never asked.
  I inherited his anger and empathy and
  hold them both dear. These make me, Me.

Grampa Rosselot showed me how to live in
  bars and laugh 'til the devil had his fill.
Drink dept charges and hair of the dog
share lust with perfumed bar stool lovers
in the big back seat of a fancy Buick
and bring a bouquet home to the wife.

Seagulls crying over who knows what
   riding ocean breezes we'd all die for.
   We fight drunk in our room, a prelude
   ******* on the sheets with an anchor.
   I hear the 9th symphony when we ***.
   We are one hearing seagulls laughter.
   Wide awake at midnight smell our ***
  I finally fall asleep in the deep after.

Seagulls argue over who knows what
   riding ocean breezes we'd all die for.
   We fight drunk in our room, a prelude
   to ******* on the sheets with anchors.
   I hear the 9th symphony when we mend.
   We lie as one and hear the seagulls laugh.

God and Gods

  Read the holy book.
  Which one?
  One true God. True Gods.
  Whose? Crucified or battle
  deaths? Buried for 3 days?
  Celebrate in Odin's Valhalla?
  Resurrection to your heaven?
  Heroes and villains live on.

I'm god awful alone with friends.
Why? What piece of me is missing?
Is my world always just pretends?
Married again and again dismissing
cracks in my mind the shrinks deny
the quacks follow Freud 'til we die
over and over they ask only "Why?"
no answers to questions always lie.

I'm god awful alone with friends.
Why? What piece of me is missing?
Is my world always just pretends?
Married again and again dismissing
cracks in my mind the shrinks deny
the quacks follow Freud 'til we die
over and over they ask only "Why?"
no answers to question always I lie.

God, may I ask You why we're here?
Was this a drunken lark? Why did
you create this blue marble inside
a never ending universe that teases
us with life and pulls the carpet?
Are we flies inside a jar of cruelty?

He works in a toll booth taking cash
and lifts a gate to let you pass.
God's a librarian lending knowledge.
He's president of an Ivy League college.
He sells pieces of heaven on corners to smoke.
She rents herself out for a rub and a stroke.
He makes us in his image like a toy maker.
He wakes at 3am so he can be a bread baker.
God works nights hosing down a slaughter house.
Nobody believes in him. He's in our madhouse
cleaning toilets and mopping puke and ****.
He rolls heaven in a joint and takes a hit.

God created us. We created God in our image.
God made a Garden of Eden for us.
God created heaven and hell.
God made the 10 Commandments.
God made big and small sin.
God took fear and made guilt.
God created right and wrong.
We made a Bible about creation
and Angels cast from Heaven.
We made prisons for the sinners.
We made pulpits for false prophets.
God created man created God.

We come from hopeless histories
  to America with hope in pockets.
  We work like madmen tireless to
  earn our keep and feed we Irish.
  I feed coal to iron furnaces and
  load cargo in ship's hot holds.
  We won't starve to death here.
  Maybe I will be remembered.
  My great grandson scratches
  my story into his silly poems.

We come from hopeless histories
  to America with hope in pockets.
  We work like madmen tireless to
  earn our keep and feed we Irish.
  I feed coal to iron furnaces and
  load cargo in ship's hot holds.
  We won't starve to death here.
  Maybe I will be remembered.
  My great grandson scratches
  my story into his silly poems.

The doctors keep us meek
we know the pad they keep
just one more script  to sleep
drowning in the black deep.

It's all contained
inside My brain
cell by cell explained
like the cold fusion you
all desire but like two
monkeys trying to ****
a football not understood.
It's like planetary gears
sun in the center contained
within my brain your world
spins as it should and will
wear out in it's time and
the whole **** thing collides
into itself and fails again.

a **** joy
    a joyless boy
    a broken toy
    touched altar boy
    great depression
    wrong impression
    shrink session
    child's confession

The entity is broke
love is never easy.
Pretty but choke
on my ******.

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.

Outside my front door
the world dies in war.
It evaporated everyone
exfoliated life is done.
Blow my mind away, Son.
I know god is now gone.

God must be Irish.
He can't forget a slight.
He only sees darkness
never sees  the  light.

We nailed Jesus Christ
son of God to a cross.
Waiting for tribulation
for His heinous loss.

Eric Fromm said it in a book.
I see you in a bar and you steal
my breath I know God's not Love
you are Love and we create God's
tiny sparks of life in fierce beds.
first comes love then comes marriage

God is. God is dead. Both are true.
   Like a cat in a box magic trick.
   I'll be. I'll be dead. I'm no metaphor.
   My end is a black cat's tail swinging
   like a ticking clock back and forth
   uncertain which way to go to be.

The world lost its center and we lost sight of God.
We'll carry on like warriors fighting laughing ghosts.
It's almost like we can still breathe old air long ago.
Jazz ruled. Speakeasy was cool.  Bullets tore holes
in our little lives. Chicago was the kingdom then.
******. Drugs. Kings and Queens. Pleasures!

Do I bend my knee at your altar?
You are a God to print my poetry?
I stand in my familiar shadow and
let our alphabet fall where it will.

Like I care what
  other people think
  3 nooses awaiting
  justice to be served
  a tin star over where
  my thin heart should be
  deadly hardware on my hip
  full of dead men's kisses
  sleep with wicked women
  in worn beds up the stairs
  above the bar and poker on
  the edge of frontier life.

I'm too close to the sun.
My wings are melting.
I plummet to the Earth
and die from gravity's
ruthless pull and my
desire to be god like.

Chardonnay brings dreams to life
     until morning's brutal genocide.
     I untangle old lost memories,
     carry on throughout a busy day.

     Night always arrives while thirst
     demands attention. Dreams resurrected
     answering impossible questions.
     Morning kicks down the door again.

     Day follows day, feels like forever.
     I must have gone mad.  I stared into
     the sun then jumped to a final peace.
     Finally, I found my own great escape!

Chardonnay brings dreams to life
     until morning's brutal genocide.
     I untangle old lost memories,
     carry on throughout a busy day.

     Night always arrives while thirst
     demands attention. Dreams resurrected
     answering impossible questions.
     Morning kicks down the door again.

     Day follows day, feels like forever.
     I must have gone mad.  I stared into
     the sun then jumped to a final peace.
     Finally, I found my own great escape!

God is tripping on acid
    as my wine spills over
    my **** everywhere and
    I was silenced angry as
    my wife shushed quiet
    as I stumbled to bed.

I see him in my dreams.
He's not an old god on a throne.
He's an eye in my mind's eye.
I see him as he sees me and
His creation vast and alone
wanting to understand what's
behind the great curtain of OZ.
He died and we're his dreams.

I see him in my dreams.
He's not an old god on a throne.
He's an eye in my mind's eye.
I see him as he sees me and
His creation vast and alone
wanting to understand what's
behind the great curtain of OZ.
He died and we're his dreams.

My machine lost power
for a moment heart stopped
wet and **** perfect flower
hospital janitor mopped.
So many tests were run.
Nothing was really wrong.
Treatment was never begun.
Dead or living do I belong?
God's all seeing eye
midnight's full moon
angry sun stares at noon
watch us living as we die.

To yank a soul out
of nonexistence into
this meat and to force
a life into this thresher
my child died painless
still inside my innocence
she spared me the sin
of having been a father.

I'm looking for my rabbit hole to OZ.
    I want to meet God and see how He uses
    His levers and gears to control my life.
    I know He helped me get that job I so
    desperately needed. I know He put us in
    the same bar at the same time to marry
    and have our house and child and Rusty
    who taught me perseverance by chasing
    ***** right up 'til the day he died and
    taught me what true grief really is.

God's perfect creation
Adam and Eve conceived
in the Garden of Eden,
His paradise received.

Lust is humans' crack,
desire behind our back
Love's not worth its' own
weight, just light to black.

Put Love on a butcher's scale
beside a broke heavy heart
I watch my Valentines fail
forever from the start.

I am inebriated
I am liberated
from God's eye
judging til I die.
His eye is blinded
staring at my sun.
I am God's drunk
I am His only son.

When the Big Guy announced His
retirement we were all shocked!
How can God retire?
What takes His place?
Do you give a gold watch
to count seconds of His time?
We had drinks and a comic
who roasted God Almighty
who roasted the comic.
His successor is a Goddess.

The sea roars in rhythmic hymns
  God's power ends and then begins.
  We walk hand in hand in a full moon
  along the shore it's over too soon.
  Curling waves are death's beckoning.
  Black water is our final reckoning.

In the time it took me to leave you the
universe was born a billion years ago.
Heaven and hell woven by the very threads
of our existence. Complexity only God's
watchmaker could ever begin to envision.
In motion chaos has its way with order and
beauty is scarred and love is lost and you
and I drift apart in such ordinary ways.

If man is made
in the image of God.
What beast births
and buries us in sod?

I must be going blind
nothing of the kind
I see your shadow
where rivers flow
my favorite dreams
******* in streams.
I always see our end
time and space bend.

Hell, let's all go to church
    and throw a 20 in the basket
    to save us from Satan's heat
    and get us a ticket to heaven.
    Confess your secrets and say
    your penance and the soul is
    cleansed, the Golden Ticket.

We poets are mining our past
    for something of importance
    I tapped into a vein of youth
    and found a nugget of truth.
       From a Father to my Father
I saw a cruel king with eyes of hate
who threatened me with his love.
       From a Son to my Son
I saw a kind prince with eyes of gold
who kept me warm in years gone cold.

Pearl Harbor disturbed a hornets nest.
WW2 was won that day a giant awoke.
Sacrifices of million sons moms put a
gold star on a window so we all knew.
The holes in them were graves for the
boys who went to war and died men.

there was a time and place
   a sacred agonizing space
   hands feet nailed to wood
   betrayal always understood
   body blood host chalice
   remember without malice

I've been drinking
  since you died and
  left me talking to
  myself for comfort
  I just can't find here
  anymore with your
  shadows everywhere
  your touch is gone.

There was an easy way into your heart.
There's no easy way out. You thought it
was forever but there's no such thing.
You don't need to hear it or even fear it.
We ****** goodbye in your dorm room.
I went to Boston and was reborn again.

There was an easy way into your heart.
There's no easy way out. You thought it
was forever but there's no such thing.
You don't need to hear it or even fear it.
We ****** goodbye in your dorm room.
I went to Boston and was reborn again.

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

Poetry's glory days are gone.
We had our Frost and Auden
and Plath and Sexton and God
****** Bukowski. We still do
what poets always did. We do
everything in excess and say
outrageous **** and write
little truths hidden in tiny
locked drawers in psyches
we hope decompose silently.