Alarms beep and buzz and click.
   Morphine. Blood Pressure. Heartbeat.
   We chant prayers and despairs.
   Sirens scream outside and choirs
   of saviors sing orders to ICU.
   A quiet hymn calls time of death.

Intervention

I've been in the deep end
too long to ever get back
to shallows and G&T's.
The only ending is black.
Carnival lights blind me
I'll drown in an overdose
last thoughts are of you
before you got too close.

You held my hand tight to never disappear
   below the white ocean falling from the sky
   full of white horses and ice castles and princes
   you'd dream of that night. I keep you safe now.
   I won't always be there. Spring comes. You grow.
   You meet your prince and white horses prance off
   with your coach to your castle and my ice gets so
   thin I fall into my own cold dream in your heart.

In the tock of the tick
we live our brief life
broken sacraments
vows die by a knife.
Run faster stay alive
another moment
long enough for
another torment.
I promise there
really is an end
time evades but
it refuses to bend.

I'll take you to my barber.
Introduce you at my club.
Meet my skinny lovers
living it up in my hot tub.

They came from London
armed bobby's to North
Ireland to subjugate us
steal our very worth

we fight tooth and nail
the ******* British
****** Sunday ******
us like a barrel of fish

we won't forget
we'll never forgive
bombs guns fires
this is how we live

They came from London
armed bobby's to North
Ireland to subjugate us
steal our very worth

we fight tooth and nail
the ******* British
****** Sunday ******
us like a barrel of fish

we won't forget
we'll never forgive
bombs guns fires
this is how we live.

They came from London
armed bobby's to North
Ireland to subjugate us
steal our very worth

we fight tooth and nail
the ******* British
****** Sunday ******
us like a barrel of fish

we won't forget
we'll never forgive
bombs guns fires
this is how we live.

I don't exist anymore.
Maybe I'm dead and gone.
I still shout out poetry
to dead ears who won
a contest I never got
rules I never read
front page space is bought
poor poets are just dead.

She's 6 and so serious when she invites me to
join her and her friends for tea. Be prompt.
I arrive at the appointed hour in suit and tie.
She and her stuffed friends are decked out and
wearing fancy hats. I'm introduced around the table
and we proceed to drink "tea" from tiny fancy cups.
I talk to her friends and learn my girl is Queen.
They assure me the King will come soon. I can wait.

Near my end I found a shoe box
    full to the brim with IOU's I'd
    written over my lifetime to those
    I loved most. They indulged all
    my erratic allegiance and suffered
    kindly my drunken promises to try
    harder tomorrow. If IOU let this
    last promise be a paid in full?
    After all each one of you made
    this beautiful madness possible.

    I stood on broad shouldered men
    who showed me how to live in bars
    and barmaids who showed me gentle
    love among neon and smoke stained
    rooms. We had hard scars and broke
    bones and blood in our hair but we
    showed them what the Irish can do.
    We rise from the dead each day with
    a song in our hearts and ready for
    a hard days work. We do it all again.

The loose ends of my youth
tangle me up and bring me down
sometimes. I didn't know it would
do that! I so want to tell so many
people that I'm sorry, but I'll never
reach them again and the regret will
stay stuck in my craw. Forgive me.
On the upside there have been many
of you that I've shared incredible
great times and unassuming love...
laughs never experienced since!
I raise my cup to you all.

A billion people died today when
an orange man said it didn't matter.
Every immigrant is separated from
children and thrown into cages.
All the white men are racist  and
sexist and xenophobic and we need
to be exterminated like Jews in death
camps. Then socialism will finally work.
Burn my white *** in effigy.
Hate me if you will.
I just quit believing *******
fed to the masses as truth.

A billion people died today when
an orange man said it didn't matter.
Every immigrant is separated from
children and thrown into cages.
All the white men are racist and
sexist and xenophobic and we need
to be exterminated like Jews in death
camps. Then socialism will finally work.

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

I know you poets
I read your pains
I read about lovers
I see blood stains
we bleed the same
You inspire rhyme
I'm nothing without
you every **** time.

The full moon fills my window.
  Worries bounce around my brain
  like pinball's on gravity flight.
  I wait for a sunrise judgement.
  Where will death's gavel land?
  Inside a Savior's morning light.

The full moon fills my window.
  I'll never get to sleep tonight.
  Worries bounce around my brain
  like pinball's on the mad machine.
  I wait for a sunrise judgement.
  Where will death's gavel land?

I remember endless summer days of youth.
running climbing laughing fishing sleeping
free of conscience or concerns. Forever young.
I remember endless nights of crazy *******.
touching kissing pillow talk in mad love I'll
never forget and will never love like it again.

Wish I could reach back through time
  and touch those gone still remembered.
  I'm pieces of them sewn into a quilt
  keeps me warm in my dreaming slumber.

I made you beg again
for my tiny treasure.
Gold by the ounce sin.
Never mind a measure.

I slip out your backdoor
like a drunk love ghost.
Irish leave hurts more
but I always need it most.
I hate forever goodbyes
filled with forever lies.

We've been beat near to death
  Irish mules to pull English
  plows through rocks and clay.
  Steal our country at your peril.
  We keep our dignity and fight.
  Our pubs crawl with hatred.

I said, I love you.
Your silence was deafening.
I kept saying shh, shh, shh.
You can't make this promise,
you can't betray your heart.
I die that night. Shh.

don't mention the war
   never mind the what for
   or the mad reasons why
   don't scream and don't cry
   you have a shrapnel limp
   forget the jeers of gimp
   you almost died in a trench
   mud stopped blood in a pinch
   now you're blind in one eye
   half the tears you must cry
   half the horrors you see
   now you can be half free

Born of a ******
so many of us are.
Why Christ a God son?
I want Tablets of God
in burning bushes
giving us more rain
demanding less pain
so much to explain.

I gave you my heart but
    knew you couldn't keep it.
    I'm still expecting you to
    hold on to Love to a finish
    line that doesn't even exist.
    I set fire again and never look
    back. I smell the burning
    flesh. I hear familiar screams.
    The burning flesh is mine alone.
    The screams are in my head.

I gave you my heart but
knew you couldn't keep it.
I'm still expecting you to
hold on to Love to a finish
line that doesn't even exist.
I set fire again and never look
back. I smell the burning
flesh. I hear familiar screams.
The burning flesh is mine alone.
The screams are in my head.

I gave you my heart but
    knew you couldn't keep it.
    I'm still expecting you to
    hold on to Love to a finish
    line that doesn't even exist.
    I set fire again and never look
    back. I smell the burning
    flesh. I hear familiar screams.
    The burning flesh is mine alone.
    The screams are in my head.

In the Mojave in a sandstorm
monsters are back in town
slow burn alcohol stove
keeps its water boiling
ready to blow this place
to hell any minute now.
I've been drinking
with kind strangers.
You're my mute ghost.
Please, answer me.
Who must we **** on
your cruel altar?

Jesus! Not the Christ
just the expletive.
I can't stay in my place
you want me. Gravity won't
rule me anymore. My atoms
rebelled and go their own ways
and I look Picasso like.
Like I wish I could forget you.

I steal your words
rearrange them
everything I write
becomes a Hymn.

55 years ago Mark shared
our secret desires fires
we ****** on back stairs
at Swallen's party pyres.

Borrowed a Fat guy bed
where we got his strife
Lust pretended Love.
Abandoned my life.

I stopped believing in
Santa and Tooth Fairy
Easter Bunny  and God
and the government.
All I believe in now
is Death's certainty.

I swim in my sea of doubt
caught in riptides I shout
ocean swallows me silent
nobody knows I was bent.

God will always love His Italy,
an endless stairway to Heaven.
Despite the tomb 3 days set free
God's Son forgives all us fallen.

I thought you loved me
the same way I loved you.
I was just a piece of ***
after a beer or maybe two.
Always a broken heart
right beneath the surface
falls through thin ice.
We always pay a price.

I threw my family away
beer cans along the way.
Ohio to Boston ******
saved me from asylum.

I never treated love with the respect it deserves.
  I always thought of it more as a fling, frivolity.
  It felt like a schoolboy crush and lasted just as long.
  I kept riding different horses on the carousel always
  hoping to grab the brass ring on a lucky spin, but
  each time I had it I never knew how precious it was.

I felt pain and cleansing rain.
I burned in summer sun shines.
Faced bullies on a playground
Fell in love forever many times.

Made some babies lost a few
Eden Park's greener grass
in the insane summer of love
much too much **** and ***.

I'm dead now I guess so
I miss laughs and crying.
It's painless and forever.
I want to fear my dying.

It's just me. I can't be you.
You are sunset. I'm morning dew.
I haunt you but you evict me.
You live in my bones for free.
Love is the harshest mistress
wearing the smallest dress.

I love you beauties
   I fear your stings
   Scorpions in showers
   Snakes in G-Strings
   poison in my coffee
   Love always brings.

I've always never care more than you
could ever know. My indifference was
hidden behind tears and laughter and
late nights in bed talking about it all.
When we made our baby it must have
been a fluke. I think I still care for you
but I don't know if that's true or not.
I've always never cared and always will.

I've Gone Missing

I don't know where I am anymore.
I don't remember my own name now.
You're a beauty vaguely familiar
ghosts dancing among sunflowers.

I walk the streets with a poet's heart
looking for laughter or desperation
I can scratch or type into poems
I choose to name my inspiration.
We crazy poets ride the night train
screaming lines of vague insanity
I break the wild words like horses
and put them on pages of my vanity.
I was born with a poet's heart.

drunk and ****
***** and egg
I was a tiny god
in my tiny womb
swoosh the sound
one night stand
name me Hank
Shea walk plank

As Cesar was assassinated.
Rome burned as Nero despaired.
A lyre string wept for his death.
Rome's bones weren't spared.
We remember crown of thorns,
Crucifixion, 40 lashes and denial.
Bury Assange before sundown.
Empires hate truth's bright light.

It hasn't happened for years.
I tell my wife it's dream tears.
Bought Adult Depends at last
try holding the currents fast.
Sadly there is no more dignity
when you lose control of ***.

Every part of me recycled
into flies, maggots and dirt.
Give back all that made me
from my fathers lust squirt.

Mom's heavy lifting pregnant.
Her piles, puke and constipated
the zygotes don't know or care.
One day they'll be cremated.

He makes her feel inadequate.
She never measure up so **** it.
Like a mother who hates how she
makes her bed and does it over
every time and she starts to see the
cracks in her shell and the madness
that finally brings her to her knees;
visits to a shrink to put her back how
she used to be but the puzzle is short
of pieces and nothing ever seems right.