Sometimes people
spend their adult hood
getting over their youth
children treated wood.

I saved a broken dog
took him to my broken home
to live with my broken family.
I tried to fix him with broken
training. I was too broke to get
it right. The more I yelled the more
broke he got. I had a drunken insight
one night walking him in a full moon
reminded me of me in my childhood.
I saw things through our broken eyes
held him close. I promised I'd fix us.
I saved ourselves  from a **** shelter.

Rook and pawn and knight
play their role as they must.
Bishop and queen hold the line.
King dies with sword's ******.

Empty page will never do.
Is the world deaf and mute?
Wars will always be played
the generals so astute.
Men are just checkers
moved on battlefields
red and black the flags
keep score 'til one yields.

They taught me it's all sin
  if you are too fat too thin
  kept outside or kept within
  wrong to lose wrong to win
  too ****** rich or too poor
  too afraid to open any door
  can't find work since the war
  can never unsee the horror
  never catch another breath
  see bodies explode in death
  taste your brothers' flesh
  Purple Heart then homeless
  stranger now in my hometown
  burned freak a ****** clown
  wears a medal on his crown
  final shot keeps him down.

I will feel your lips
send me on my way
beyond life's blips
and the day to day.

A box of 200 cost me a dime
best friend to arsonist crime
I will burn you back to birth
what's meant by scorched earth
in the ashes is your cremation
I loved you more than creation
like a spark strikes to a life
**** you with white hot knife.

A knock on my attic walk up,
no good reason for my fear,
I'm a starving poet birthing
a poem to our new frontier.
Different like Bukowski and
cummings,  Dylan and Frost.
They had tears in their eyes for
every poet's fierce lonely cost.

I was desperately drunk and desperately in love.
    I made promises I couldn't keep. She invited me
    into her garden. I ate forbidden fruit. Nirvana!
    Pains, doubts, anxieties, fears gone instantly.

    The morning after had a sour taste.
    God and priest and nun and catholic world
    collided with our promised land of love.
    We stayed drugged with flesh and defiance.

    Pregnant, we were married in the Church.
    We had our daughter and a son soon after.
    I wish lust didn't fade with time.
    I wandered and became a cliche.

Red and blue and purple
and green for the IRA.
we all take the flack
there is no going back
to water or lemonade
We drink the kool-aid.

I wear my daddy's sweater
   grind my teeth play a song
   for your attention, applause
   slit my wrist if I am wrong.
   I mistake you for my lover
   blond curse, my fragile heart
   you smell of many lovers but
   promise you're my new start.
Turbulent waters we wed
made our baby girl
shotgun barrel suicide
left my smoked curl.

Santa Ana winds
angry fire maker
arsonist unbends
pizza oven baker.

My shrink introduced us.
You came with me everywhere.
You made the world a ghost I
never had to fear. Lady ******.
We slept together. We dreamed.
We were married for 15 years.
The happiest I can't remember.
I need you. I had to **** you.

My shrink introduced us.
She came with me everywhere.
She made the world a ghost I
never had to fear. Lady ******.
We slept together. We dreamed together.
We were married for 15 years.
The happiest years I can't remember.
I still love her. I had to **** her.

She came with me everywhere.
She made the world a ghost I
never had to fear. Lady ******.
We slept together. We dreamed together.
We were married for 15 years.
I still love her. I had to **** her.

Pull me out of deep water
avoid the lung's slaughter
I love you all it is true
help me as I turn blue
save me from the grave.
I will die land of brave.

I met a man named Larry
78 years old courting a 28
year old not in an asylum
just young in his mind and
optimistic on a wood horse
reaching for a brass ring.

appetites are brakeless
    incessant sinners faceless
    ghosts hang everywhere
    whisper inside our lair
    we call it our dreams
    fearful what it means
    stare at the sun we see
    what will set us free
finally
gently
over edge of earth
back into universe...

I heard about this all my life.
It existed like Easter Bunny
or winning the lottery
or time versus infinity.
I knew it would come
as night meets the sun.

I'm very profound at last call.
I stagger home to spill my poem
upon a ****** page for drunk poets
to bless my selfish stains as love.

Give me your last dance
   on your card. Take a chance.
   You might find some romance
   rock to the music in a trance.
   In France I'll buy you a beret
   you can wear every single day.

there's a lonely beach
I'm sitting in the hot sun
I wish you were here
to lend me your shadow
and oil my back and kiss
me one last time again.

Judas wakes and takes his bag of silver
  after betrayal with his kiss like I've
  done a thousand times before. Great White
  Whale Moby **** ripped off dark Ahab's leg
  black hates white hates yellow hates brown
  hates rich hates poor hates young hates old
  hates drunk Irish and drunk French and fat
  Germans like little ******. Almost a disease
  write your soul down word for word see who
  is your friend and who is unkind. Almost like
  being free. Take yourself out to the curb sit
  and wait for a life I'm no longer hungry for.

He was hanging on a cross
a ****** crown of thorns
on my bedroom wall
I was 5 afraid of storms
He listened to my prayers
dried my fragile tears
I stopped believing
on a bar stool of beers
with a party girl waiting
in the wings for a dance
jukebox plays our song
slight smell of romance.

Judas wakes and takes his bag of silver
  after betrayal with his kiss like I've
  done a thousand times before. Great White
  Whale Moby **** ripped off dark Ahab's leg
  black hates white hates yellow hates brown
  hates rich hates poor hates young hates old
  hates drunk Irish and drunk French and fat
  Germans like little ******. Almost a disease
  write your soul down word for word see who
  is your friend and who is unkind. Almost like
  being free. Take yourself out to the curb sit
  and wait for a life we no longer hunger for.

We'll bury our hearts
in their aching parts
later when blood dries
we understand whys.
We love certain things
hate no wedding rings.

I'm a drunken man
  with a fragile heart
  could be an ending
  could be a start
  I'm fun full of laughs
  but too many years
  I have drowned
  beneath my tears.

I'm a drunken man
  with a fragile heart
  could be an ending
  could be a start
  I'm fun full of laughs
 beneath all the years. 
  I might have drowned 
in too many tears.

November 22, 1963, 12:30 p.m. (CST)

The Patsy pulled aside the curtain
the Deep State Wizards showed
us they owned us and the rest
of the USA and they will bury
us like Khrushchev promised
we balance on the edge of
the precipice one last chance
JFK died on the final hill.

an inch or a mile
   or a simple smile
   or Peter Rabbit
   or deadly habit
   pull the lever
   just be clever
   slit your wrist
   don't try to resist
   new world order
   with just one border
   without a fence
   or gaudy opulence
   just an open wound
   never healing
   a fierce desire
   without feeling
   are you black or brown
   or professor or clown?
   forget your history
   it all remains a mystery
   in this world with no past
   and an invisible cast.

God always delivers justice.
We might not believe in it.
Fear it as you feared the
whippings of your youth
or wronged lovers later
never happy with it all.
Truth is absolute and
time gets away from us.

I'm not sure what to say
are you in a bad day?
Do you need space?
Am I leaving this place?
Is your garden forbidden?
Is your true heart hidden?
Just questions, no answers
always unknown cancers.

What kind of dust
will my remains be?
What worms taste
in my funeral waste.
Humorous and kind
angry and cruel blind.
Hedonist pleasure
my ultimate treasure.

The air was thick with temptation
  perfume on her fingers and mouth
  irresistible her ****** invitation
  my tongue moving to her wet south.
  I taste Eve's nectar,  smell my own
  spilling over the ****'s soft walls.
  It feels wonderful not to be alone
  without a need for a pair of *****.

The air was thick with temptation
  perfume on her fingers and mouth
  irresistible her ****** invitation
  my tongue moving to her wet south.
  I taste Eve's nectar,  smell my own
  spilling over the ****'s soft walls.
  It feels wonderful not to be alone
  without a need for a pair of *****.

Finally Jayne
No excuses
I abandoned
my children
like orphans
to crow nuns
without wings
to fly back again
always in love
I ran away to
another cave
called Betsey
named Karen
then Georgina
then Terry Morse
then Lynette
Finally Jayne.

I'm still as a corpse
cold beside you now
an old dead horse
or a lazy crazy cow.
We **** we scream
pleasure's intense now.

I'll write and you read.
You write and I read.
I comment and then
you comment on me?

Poets are the liberating gods.
Closer to truth and lies and
every **** bent thought we
ever had that shames us until
it's in a poem to set us free to
break the chain we hold onto.

Life

birth and death
first and last breath
time's chaos between
a pauper or a queen
all is only a whisper
a one eyed cat's purr
broke 5 year old leg
my ***** and her egg
start it one more time
is it reason or rhyme?
repentance or a crime?
wretched or sublime?

Life

  You're my religion, my church, my prayers
  and the jury on the day of my judgement.
  You're air I breathe and warmth of sunshine,
  spectacular leaves in autumn and fresh snow.

  You're every thought I ever had good and bad.
  You're every ****** I've ever known and every
  tear spent mourning the deaths of relationships
  and friends and family and the dearest of pets,
  every tender moment in each other's arms and
  every drunken fight we had and cruel words we
  threw at one another and holes punched in walls.
  Exhausted we surrendered and made ****** peace.

  Asking if it's all worth it is useless. You just are.
  You're each moment and thought and success and failure
  I've ever known. Birth and death and in between is you.
  I don't love or hate you. I don't really know you. I just was.

Makeup can be warpaint
   just 2 young dumb kids
   in West Side Story minds
   playing in a mine field
   the whole thing explodes
   in the third act and I
   exit Cincinnati to Boston
   a blinded horse in Equus.

I cross the threshold
  living in a definition
  I don't want to suicide
  an act of desperation
  let no one leave alive
  life comes home to die.

Diminished
near finished
seek a grave
soul to save
betrayed again
the mortal sin
**** the rules
all of us fools
never really die
as hard as we try
I watch your ****
for the hell of it
life for the brave
dead dreams we save.

Birth to Death is life.
On a pinball machine
bounces off bumpers
into brand new clean

gone a new you
no stretch marks
summer of love
**** in Eden parks.

I did French leave
I abandoned you
I went to Boston
built a life new.

You have limited weeks
that are still available
small vacation peeks
your time unassailable.

Leave it clean so new
guests thoroughly enjoy
their pristine view
of this brand new toy.

Life is Blink of an Eye

       I was born through time and space
       landed in this crazy bright place
       furious at light and white beasts
       with no faces but ******* and feces.
      
       I lived parts dealt me rich or poor.
       Bully or bullied Methadone *****.
       AA and AlAnon LGBTQ and straight.
       I always struggled most with weight.

       I had visions through time and space
       in Hospice in Morphine dreams place
       light's candle abandoned the living
       accepting a blink of eye forgiving.

Life is tedious and dull
as a tale told too often.
I drink wine to make
it seem magical and keep
the razor from my throat
and despair for breakfast.

Life's a puff of smoke and chaos
    and a breeze that makes it clear,
    an endless walk towards endless.
    We fall in step then we disappear
    
     in a lost rhythm sometime after.
    Memory is fallen wires snaking
    in the rain, deadly in its clarity.
    We start it through fear shaking

    and end it down a rabbit hole that
    takes us through a looking space.
    Hungry man snake pulses inside
    the waiting Snowdrop ****** vase.