We prepare ourselves
  for blood and screams
  and smoke machines
  old men chasing dreams
  live beyond our means
  bursting at the seams
  float our money schemes
  nothing as it seems.

On the beach in early fog
I love your saintly halo
watching the surf crawl
at your feet in afterglow.
We'll do it again tonight
light candles and ****
we might take flight
make a baby with luck.

I will follow you
to the peace tree
where you jeer
and hang me.
I dared to say
forbidden word
Capital N
and bigger.

Surrounded by familiar strangers
funny birthday hats bonfire cake
singing a song I almost remember.
Hug me. I hate liberties they take.
Presents I can't open without help.
I have a memory of a wedding night
first time for everything naked we
bleed and sweat call God in flight.
We birthed all you ***** and egg
it's why we're all here this night.

Birthday cake's on fire.
I'd **** for some desire.
Blue pill's too risky
for me to get frisky.
Take matters in hand
make a flaccid stand.
Play out jammed gun
to die without a ***.

Birthday cake's on fire.
I'd **** for some desire.
Blue pill's too risky
for me to get frisky.
Take matters in hand
make a flaccid stand.
Play out jammed gun
sleep without a ***.

We were always naked
proud of youth's biology
you turned 21 I sang a
happy birthday apology
my gift was the same
******* as always
coward's painful shame
never gone always stays.

The clock ticks
like a bomb as
I obey the march
of time to
another year
and candles on
another cake that
just makes me fatter
and mirrors that lie and
broke bathroom scales.

The broke heart heals
with laughter's peals
new love broken beds
always goes to heads
or tails depending
on a happy ending.

How many lashes of your belt are
enough to pay a debt for our birth?
How many broken bones and tears
will be enough to prove our worth?
5 diamonds and 3 bags of threats.
5 adoring girls and 3 scheming sons.
You were jealous of us young and strong.
We threatened the king's winter seasons.

I'm not crafty like a fox.
I'm just an idiotic drunk
surfing on a buzz of my
own creation. I have a
clever thought or two.
My chaotic life is gentle
at happy hour. I ignore
dripping faucets and
past due bills and time
chasing me to my eulogy.

I'm not crafty like a fox.
I'm just an idiotic drunk
floating on a buzz of my
own creation. I have a
clever thought or two.
My chaotic life is gentle
at happy hour. I ignore
dripping faucets and
past due bills and time
chasing me to my eulogy.

Harder  to live, just be brave.
Dollars now just worth dimes.
Nothing worth a **** to save.
These are known as harder times.
Eating cat food or moldy bread.
Forgive my crass expression
hunger has gone to my head.
Another greater depression.

My guilt overwhelmed me and I ran
  faster to the ***** and the pills.
  Drowning in stormy seas I reached
  desperately for a ticket to Boston.

  I was born again in Harvard Square.
  A stranger with a clean slate and a
  winning smile and a way with women.
  It shames me to the bottom of my soul.

  I broke hearts and promises back home.
  Wife and kids adrift their anchor lost.
  I couldn't find my magnetic north. Tara
  was my north star. I found my way home.

birth the earth allows
seeded after the plows
food for us to try again
another year in Eden
**** the clearance bin
we're flush Gatsby gin.

Trump voters are haters.
Who or what do they hate?
Minorities? LGBT? Women?
He wants peace? Orange man bad?
Trump derangement syndrome.
I am sad by the hate. My family
hates me for being a hater.
My siblings are gone and I pity
their ignorance and hope they
thrive in Socialism.
I love all of you. I fear for tomorrow.
I'll try to help you in the camps.

We're all terribly broken
but will never ask for help
until we swerve outside lanes
wake up to our ****** pains.
Jump into 12 step meetings
'til we can't stand pity again.
We are bones in a mirror with
our ghost a haunting savior.

I bring me here now to confess
my complete ignorance of this
thing we call life. I'm old and
I know better than to give advice.
Ask the cocky sharks in the Bowery
what to do for money and girls.
I won't overstay my welcome.
Have a drink on me when I die.

I was lost inside my speed
  drugged mind hoping for calm
  but all I got was lost in Oz,
  a shrink's chair with no exits.
  I jumped from mountains of lies
  and fell into the truth's grave.
  I settle for lesser compromise.
  I'm saved by a clock's loud tick
  death's second hand metronome
  keeping track of all our lives.

By the time we met June and December
     I made you laugh and remember me
     when I called you and set us both free
     we drink cheap and **** like monsters
     in the Motel 6 an old grey cowboy and
     another lover hoping in my despair.

Find your favorite toy
stash it in the toy box
*** drugs rock and roll
find your biggest *****.
Never tell the Vicar his toll
God forbid you speak truth, Boy!
The powers that be will destroy
your kind of queers
preying on your fears
washing souls clean in
your futile sweet tears
a baptism  original sin.

He didn't know I was a psychopath.
He never saw me angry out of reason.
It was dark as tar and I was silent when
he left the bar. He was almost to his car
when I spoke. You are ******.
He's been in traction for awhile.
She's moved on to a kind and
loving man, so far, we'll see.

I was ****** and drunk at 3am.
My conscience called my phone.
We ****** and never answered.
I crawled back to my quiet womb
with black light in a little room.
I woke in hell's sun naked tomb.

At 3am we were drunk and ******.
My conscience called my phone.
My conscience said leave me alone!
We crawled back to a quiet womb
with black light in a tiny tomb
born in fierce sunlight at noon.

I was ****** and drunk at 3am.
My conscience called my phone.
We loved and never answered.
I crawled back to bed now alone
a little room at hell's midnight.
I woke in your fierce sunlight.

I stole Hell's pain
fire and brimstone
mortal sin's stain
eternity all alone.
Born again in pain
once more to atone.

Lovers come and go.
Life's a relentless
ticking time bomb
our horrible mess
breaks of pleasure
we create and ****
under guilty pressure
with surgeon's skill.

Hello Poetry
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We've had our fun
with Yeats and pun
illicit lovers and
others at hand
I love you best
now time to rest
tomorrow night
resume our flight

We're drowning in lies
innuendo and suicides.
Lift us above the fatality
rearrange our dark reality.

We're 17. We're in Love.
Touch me. Show me the way.
I need like I never did before.
Help me fill your space with
my leaking puzzle piece of love.
Where do we go? What do we find?

To the ones who made us and suffered
  our puberty and disdain and arrogance.
  Here's a toast to those we can't love 'til
  death does us part. They suffer our pain.
  A toast to the liars who keep our lives
  on old tracks in disrepair safe on lies.

Here's to those you love.
  Vast the night is a starry dome
  out of reach yet inside us each
  Hell to the ones you might love.
  Here's to self righteous men and
  hell to the rest of us who love.
  Hell to all us liars. We know truth.
Here's to illicit lovers we love.
Here's to the honesty of passion.
Here's to the honesty of death.

The earth isn't flat.
God is not a puppeteer.
Earth shifts beneath us.
Life's not a dream of gods.
I'll nail my heart still beating
to anybody's church door.

You make her come screaming
every time her scent emits
as long as you get lost until she
needs relief and she permits.
You massage her every day
paint her toes and fingers
shave her legs and *****
your tongue always lingers.

I became my hero. Grampa Rosselot.
   He charmed the world but broke his
   family's heart. His only lover alcohol.  
   You gotta pay for what you break.
   Angry hangovers. Hair of the dog.
   Tonight I'll feed my hungry snake.

She was the most demanding.
  Claws always at my throat.
  She ****** me in real dreams
  I shivered in my overcoat.
  Mother's milk and final ****
  always the last shot for luck.

One more shot and I die in my own arms
  full of holes from demon teeth and heaven's
  need to drag my soul across the finish line.
  I filled the syringe to my lucky number 7's.

One more shot and I die in my own arms
  full of holes from demon teeth and heaven's
  need to drag my soul across the finish line
  I filled the syringe to my lucky number 7.

Hey die on the cross Jesus
did you think to please us?
Being nailed to heavy wood,
were you just misunderstood?
Bring us to the eternal light
of the darkness of our night.

The kindest man I've ever known,
  to a fault. Gave his everything
  freely for a perfumed kiss and
  ******* and wedding and divorce.
  He fixed our mistakes on night shift,
  broke window and snack machine.
  He couldn't fix his broke judgement
  why pick up your killer hitching?

Higher Power's
      Worthless Junkies

I don't believe in a higher power.
I believe in ******'s red flower.
Stick a thousand needles in my eye
until the one that helps me die.
They see worthless junkies' dreams
as dying in slow motion it seems.

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.

We'll drink wine for breakfast
and break a bed proving love
create our checkered past
kept sacred by the holy dove

eat Christ's body wafer thin
sticks to roof of my mouth
like a deadly mortal sin
the devil's wicked broth.

Things run hot and cold in my tiny life.
  Love rings true and I catch a wave and run
  for awhile hang five with good vibes and
  wipe out at high tide in love's **** house.

I'm a hillbilly ******,
on my back a monkey.
I'm not really addicted.
I medicate my afflicted.
I limp and moan and cry.
I hurt my back, no lie.
I kneel before the nurse,
pinky swear I'm worse.

I was a hippie in 1969.
A long haired barefoot
freak with yellow stains
on my white carpenter jeans.
I had a lover like no other.
She bumped around my brain
like a pinball machine in pain.
I wonder how she's doing now.

I'm trying to keep us alive
in this fascists world who
**** those who disagree,
Jews, Catholics, Negroes.

I'm a catcher in the rye.
I protect you from it all.
I need your purity to
ride wooden horses on
the carousel and reach
for the brass ring and
you might fall or not.
I fell into madness.
Wear my flannel cap. Don't
ever forget me, Phoebe.

Holden Morrisey Caulfield
     Phoebe Josephine Caulfield

I.
retching
stretching
kvetching
fetching
leching

II.­
I'm ready to die.
bullet in my eye.
just say goodbye.
angels learn to fly.
lovers learn to cry.

III.
sleep on empty skies
catch the catcher in the rye
make him tell us the why
we know he always lies
keeps Phoebe from cliffs