I have a shiver climbing up my spine.
      The air is alive with static and sparks.
      The sun is burning out and the oxygen
      is gone. Our time is coming to an end.

      This comes on the heels of my dead friend.
      She's all that was good in our fragile world.
      Together we brought scary to Halloween.
      She started it and I helped her to the end.

My brother who let me climb
upon his back to save myself.
It's a debt I can never repay.
If you needed a liver I'd give
you mine but you'd not want it
knowing I needed yours anyway.

You saved me from my despair.
I had nowhere to go, Kevin.
Boston was world's end. You
offered sanctuary and I jumped
from impossible heights.
You saved me from myself.

sun soaked and salted drunken poet
eyes bleached blind looking at her
beauty framed naked in bright halo
gulls ride winds kite like a blur

I'm in love with a perfect stranger
Everybody gathers at dusk the beach
we hold hands in just pretend
to watch the sun lose its reach.

sun soaked and salted drunken poet
eyes bleached blind looking at her
beauty framed naked in bright halo
gulls ride winds kite like a blur

I'm in love with a perfect stranger
Everybody gathers at dusk the beach
we hold hands in just pretend
to watch the sun lose its reach

Cambodia
Prison camp S-21
Angkor kills but does not explain

your blood bleeds into my veins
so I can feel your pains
whatever god you pray to
beg for deliverance.
In the good old USA we are
unaware of unseen suffering.
Usually but not always.
we met at a wedding and
you shared your story
in broken English until
I understood that you
had been in the killing fields.

I move my rook to Queen
a bold move never seen
in the 60's summer of love.
Pieces go down and go above.
Waifs put in an orphanage
Queen turns an ugly page,
Catholic guilt on the stage
I burn my religion in rage.

I stood aside
let you ride
life's terrors
fix the errors.

Every day's the same.
Life's passed me by and I'm
just an old man killing time.
I stab it hourly. I'd **** for
a lover to give me life again.
I can't afford the hourly rate.

Every day's the same.
Life's passed me by and I'm
just an old man killing time.
I stab it hourly. I'd **** for
a lover to give me life again.
I can't afford the hourly rate.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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
 beneath all the years. 
  I might have drowned 
in too many tears.

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.

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.