I came of age on a cusp, staid or hippie.
I stood with a foot on each side as my
whole world cracked in 2 and I with it;
Down a rabbit hole, into a looking glass.
The world was at odds. Beer or ****? Acid?
Martini lunch? Suit or bell bottoms? Free
love? Married with kids? Free spirit?
Obligations? The hall of mirrors.
Head shrink. Find me in shattered glass.
Discover myself. Survive the in between.

Try again or slit your throat
the easy way out all she wrote.
Round here we just shake hands
enough to make promises stand.

I'm not a communist.
  I'm not a socialist.
  I'm not a sadist or a
  satanist. I'm not an
  anarchist. I'm not a
  bonafide capitalist.
  I'll steal food to eat.
  I'll lie to get a beer.
  I'll love you for a bed.
  I am an individualist.

Please don't slam the door in anger.
   Don't go punching holes into our wall.
   Tame your madness or stay with her
   and don't bother to come home at all.

   You talk for hours to useless shrinks
   who, Freud like, say it's all your mom.
   We just need the child support to eat.
   I need your warmth and beauty and calm.

I need you more
  than want you.
  You're ******
  a lovely shrew
  demanding flesh
  you say is due.
  A cuckoo nest
  I need rescue.

It waits around a corner.
She haunts your dreams.
Under your bed fluid beast
bleeds through your seams.
You wake in the sunlight.
Wonder at the blood
God's intervention
takes hold of the flood.

I'm born then die.
Life worth a try.
I disappoint and cry
I laugh and I fly
to a northern star
not really very far
it's my favorite bar
we **** in your car
on a carousel I spin
a lucky wheel of sin
cancer grows within
I lose myself thin
I leave a dark stain
always death's pain
funeral in the rain
infinity once again.

A drunk old man's explanation
  of the beginning of creation
  a thought became a universe
  beating with a single pulse
  we made a God who created us
  to help us explain this mess
  we made heaven and hell
  and sins to count as well
  we all transition to death
  rage against a final breath.

I love every little thing in my cups.
I breathe Swansea's air from the sea
where Dylan Thomas wrote drunk.
Genius happens in late nights when
you've tamed the doubts with wine.
Naked Caitlin beckons from shore.

She went to a school dance
against his wishes that night
for Stoney her brand new love.
They made out making promises
that were never meant to be.
Wehrung beat Rebholz to death with a
fence post because she wanted to
break up, didn't love him anymore.
He smelled her perfume and
pictured her naked in his arms.
Her body was found in a vacant lot
near his home broken alone.

Rebholz went to a school dance
against Wehrung's wishes that night
she wanted to end their relationship.
She sat in a car with her new lover
making promises that would never be.
Wehrung beat Rebholz to death with a
fence post because she wanted to
end their relationship.
He smelled her perfume
and pictured her naked in his arms.
Her body was found in a vacant lot
near Wehrung's home.

Flotsam and jetsam trapped
in errant brain cells electric
hits on every nerve tapped
face twitch gnarl hand sick.
Cells break up and divorce
cheat alone and together
by love or brute force
insane light as a feather.

I yelled at my fingers and they
refused to move. I knew they
understood my broken mind.
I muttered aloud in public like
a spittle screaming madman.
I beg strangers for kindness
who look away pretending I
don't exist. I begin to think I don't.
I beg my fingers to talk to me but
they're silent and I'm insane..

When I saw you in the bar
I knew your every secret
and desire and we were one
and we've been 50 years.

Notable characters I've known
touched raw nerves I exposed
vulnerable like being alone
forever in a Polaroid posed.

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.

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.
  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 tremble in wonder
born in Coney Island
tunnel of love thunder
in your ****** hand.
We soared heights
kissed coaster skies
******* in frights
I Love Your lies.

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.

Kids in the woods by the creek.
   I remember kissing Susan Tucker
   Cary Grant and the Blond Greek
   big screen no tongue no **** her.
  
   I'm 77 now broke my own heart
   too many times that I remember
   collateral damage from the start
   I face my final chapter December.

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.