I live in the promised land. America.
   We have everything we could ever want
   but never enough to stop wanting more.
   We laugh loud and conquer the world an
   inch at a time as body bags stack higher.
   Soldiers moved from live column to dead.

Some jumpy junkies around here
    the next few weeks as politicians
    make examples of them and bust the
    dealers until the election is fixed.

They killed the Kennedy's
and MLK and Malcolm X
and Lenny Bruce and Marilyn.
They stole our truths and made
us ignorant. They gave us the
best politicians money could buy.
They live inside the DC Beltway
and grow fat on our silver. We grow
tired of bread and circus and fixed
elections and peaceful protests
burning buildings and cars and cops.
We want our country back in one piece.
If I pour gas on me and light a match
will it convince you of my disgust?
Will you **** on my ashes and dine
in opulence? You sold our jobs to
the highest bidder. You were supposed
to represent us. You bought anarchy and
unleashed it upon us to silence the unrest
but our revolt will **** you elites again!

DC is their fatality
their greedy totality
of their sterility
of their banality
total moral finality
it buries my reality.

My love is not a page
full of pretty poetry
more like fires of rage
atomic bomb imagery
melted hearts boiled tears
I gave you charred flowers
once in many loveless years
a Pompeii Bouquet of hours.

I'm frozen in my own time
in my own Pompeii at 72.
Every day is a play with
the same cast and acts.
It's been lived to death but
still plays to smaller crowds
who leave at intermission.
It's the freakiest show on earth
ready for the road shows in
small burgs with the hicks.

When did our lust volcano
cool leaving just Pompeii's
scorched memories whole?
Summer now Winter days.

A little acne and insecure
tell me I'm better than before
am I funny and smart and strong?
or abandoned and always wrong?
Leave me in a box with a note
apologizing for thread bare coat.
We live in a brand new big city
in the projects filled with pity
free everything without a dime
a poorhouse prison without time.

You burned me up
  in your bonfire of
  the white hot fury
  of gasoline love.
  Real love is lost
  when lust is queen
  man or beast anything
  with a hole in between.
  With internet **** I howl
  alone at the full moon
  spill my seed in tissue wait
  for another shot at noon.

I see your portrait
painted in your poem
such a serious soul
wanderlust must roam

looking for soul mates
perfect love will do only
finish lover's sentences
'til death never lonely.

Paint me in watercolor.
  Bring me back to life.
  Hues of laughter and desire,
  light inside brilliant light
  husky brawling of youth
  half naked, sweating, proud.

Paint me in watercolor.
  Bring me back to life.
  Hues of laughter and desire,
  light inside brilliant light
  husky brawling of youth
  half naked, sweating, proud.

Payne's gray guilt  and ugly failures.
Broken vows are midnight black
our children watered down unseen.
It's cancer as only betrayal can be.
Take me to a barn dance and hold
me close as I saturate your soul.

Just dying to be grown up
forget my father I'm a man
I shave, drink beers in a cup
war is my first time woman
taste of Eve and ammunition
boys line up on walls to die
murmured Act of Contrition
chewed up in jaws of a lie.

stealing your prescription
keeps me composed.
born into a cauldron of
witch's brew angst and anger!

none come home complete.
each tries for normal lives.
madmen lob angst and anger
into the dinner party!

anxiety and hate haunt
the best of men now lost,
families can't cope.
they drift away in fear.

war has done it again.
good people; good intent;
make monsters of good
men and their sons.

what raw nerve is left exposed
forever hidden in nightmares
father and son and holy ghost
searching for a peaceful grave.

All that you adore
is all that I abhor.
Except our only child
born inside the wild.

Our Father who gave us life
and takes it away, why bother?
We invented absurd stories and
built religions with our clenched
angry fists shaking to the heavens
cursing you for cruelty. You kick
puppys and drown kittens and make
us to amuse you gods as we die in
your cancer and weak hearts and car
wrecks and broken heart suicides and
despair in war's gas showers and
no man's land waiting to be shot.
Aids, Covid, influenza, plague or
just old age thins the ****** herd.
  AMEN

Too young for bars, but thirsty.
  Uncle Reggie owned a beer joint so
  we went in and had beers carte blanche.
  He was upstairs dying of cancer.

  We went up for an impromptu visit.
  He and his woman in a small room.
  He was in bed weak with sickness.
  We made small talk then escaped.  

  We went downstairs. One for the road.
  Everything I drank after tasted bitter.
  One day we'll all be in that bed upstairs.
  May God rest all of our souls.  Amen

Too young for bars, but thirsty.
  Uncle Reggie owned a beer joint so
  we went in and had beers carte blanche.
  He was upstairs dying of cancer.

  We went up for an impromptu visit.
  He and his woman in a small room.
  He was in bed weak with sickness.
  We made small talk then escaped.  

  We went downstairs, one for the road.
  Everything I drank then tasted bitter.
  One day we'll all be in that bed upstairs.
  May God rest all of our souls.  Amen

We're born with our story
      etched on crumbled graves
      maybe shame maybe glory
      maybe Jesus Christ saves
      no real reason to worry
      one way or another slaves
      serve a master in a hurry
      cruelty comes in waves.

Welcome to the miracle of birth,
all the bloat none of the mirth.
You had your ****** ******* fun
now your misery has just begun.
Weight gain and no more *****
never win you will only lose.
Morning sickness you have to ***
husband works late sets him free
to celebrate his super *****
drink Tequila eat the worm
get a ******* from a friend
doesn't even matter in the end.

The pills keep me sublime
living life in perfect time
Ambien close to midnight
or before an ocean flight
morning coffee with ******
keeps anxiety at a minimum.
****** with martinis
breaks our bed with ease.
Pop a pill one more go
amazed we watch it grow!

Let us pretend that all is well and
life isn't drowning in a sea of wine.
Our passion is alive and hungry.
Years ago it never died on the vine.
We live in separate hearts.
We live in separate rooms.
We crave other spaces.
We crave other tombs.
If only we could fall in love
again like we did together.
We could forget the winter
and devour each other.

I don't want to meet the parents
when I'm buzzed and slurring
so we'll meet for brunch or lunch
before my vision starts blurring.
I'll make small talk and smile
I'll pretend to love you only
even if we **** once in awhile
and we kind of live lives lonely.

A beard or discover
a truth in between
She/He a real lover
bulges seldom seen.

Flies red eye tonight asleep
for love's sad lost kingdom.
******* flaccid long ago
Libido victim of boredom.
Christ we sleep sexless
pretend love more or less.

Shot down in a bar and again
a cab ride to bed with my wife.
I'm lost in drink ignoring time.
I'll wake and wonder where my
outrage went and hope all is well
in this easy prison of my design.

Romance is born of pretty lies
   and poor judgement and alcohol
   and low bar light and juke box
   siren song swaying our hips in
   surrender as we dance to a cab
   and feed our weakness at 3 am
   in a bed of grand hotel roses.
   We wake up at noon in thorns.

Romance is born of pretty lies
   and poor judgement and alcohol
   and low bar light and juke box
   siren song swaying our hips in
   surrender as we dance to a cab
   and feed our weakness at 3 am
   in a bed of grand hotel roses.
   We wake up at noon in thorns.

Romance is born of pretty lies
   and poor judgement and alcohol
   and low bar light and juke box
   siren song swaying our hips in
   surrender as we dance to a cab
   and feed our weakness at 3 am
   in a bed of grand hotel roses.
   We wake up at noon in thorns.

Nothing is free. There's a price.
    Servitude or *** or court jester.
    There's a price of compromise. Give
    and take a kidney or heart or soul.
    Let them weigh it on their scales
    with thumbs on the ****** things.

You counsel me to choke on the
**** he stuffs in my throat and
be the wife a husband needs.
I'm in a night sea in a fragile boat
rowing to a god I hope listens
but I take on water and drown.

Have you read a poem and been
profoundly touched? Your world
trembled for a moment you cried
for a leaf, a door, poems unread.

I'll never meet expectations.
Disappointment is guaranteed.
The only thing that I promise
is your heart will go to seed.

I'm a quilt sewn from small pieces of myself
   that each of you has touched in ways unknown.
   We live in a crowd, a mass exodus without escape.
   See me in broken mirrors in lost store windows,
   on the train and at your table and in church.
   See me at AA on my last leg but angry enough
   to drag me above the flames and find an
   exodus from drink to this promised land.

Swim against the current and
promise me to never die.
Riptides and sharks and cramps
we die alone but angry.

Communism
Socialism
Karl Marx
Eat your own
let the world burn
even the worms turn.
Catholic Catechism
Baptism, Confessional
gun fights, last rights.
Incense and Myrrh.

When I first saw you
I'd loved you forever.
We danced in Pompeii
died welded together
under blankets of ash
statues of our history
witness carnal cash,
*******'s mystery.

They can be anyone or anything you want.
  They walk the streets igniting fantasy.
  They beckon us with every trick they know
  we hunger for. Set our world on fire again.

I'm in pain
  inside your
  ****** dancing
  in winter rain
  in your freezing
  bed our breathing
  like dragon smoke
  forever pleasing.

I'm in pain
  inside your
  ****** dancing
  in summer rain
  in your freezing
  bed our breathing
  like dragon smoke
  we find Nirvana.

I first saw you in a treatment chair.
   Forgive my honest catatonic stare
   and my ****** up childhood prayer.
   Am I dead? Why do I see you there?
   Dead on a cross in your underwear
   strapped down I can't kneel I swear.

I can't help killing things.
I run to a confessional and
tell my sins to a priest and
am forgiven ****** and
******* and lying and
stealing *** magazines. Amen.

There's anger
in the chamber
no love lost
with a stranger
remind me to keep
track of every sin

I'm trying
I'm lying
I'm crying
I'm spying
I'm flying off
the handle again.

I deny. I lie. I try. I cry.
Always anger in the chamber
shakey finger on the trigger
I fly off the handle again.
I sow fear among loved ones
beg forgiveness and do it again.
One night drunk I held my 45
against my ear and saved us.

Thunder storm
or war torn?
There's anger
in the chamber
no love lost
with a stranger
remind me to keep
track of every sin:
I'm trying
I'm lying
I'm crying
I'm spying
I'm flying off
the handle again.

I'm too tired to put my ******
in your starving lips. Keep trying
baby and we'll live or die in time
there's really no use in crying.
I want to dance with a lover.
My milk's purple and of no use.
Daddy still needs amphetamine,
there's no such thing as abuse,
broke what was left of my heart.
You're my hero's first time son.
We're all here thank our God
and atomic bombs that we won.

There's anger
in the chamber
no love lost
with a stranger
remind me to keep
track of every sin:
I'm trying
I'm lying
I'm crying
I'm spying
I'm flying off
the handle again.

If we could sit and visit
for a pleasant afternoon
you told me of heartaches
then I told you of my own
could we hold each other
cry spilling tears in beers
understand each other's fears
ever again share a foxhole?