Every great poem begins with a great line
but not this poem, this poem of mine
it has its flaws and it ends with rhyme
like every poem I write, every time
But every poet can be great, I heard it said
if you write a poem, not to be scared
to be judged, or write to be read
keep it real, raw and great in your head

It's funny to see you in business
Arming them to ****
Frowning, but sending them bills
Putting money bags in your account
Collecting wealth on shared misery
The very heart of this new age tragedy
It's always the same,
Building skyscrapers and bridges
With their ghostly blood on every brick
We know your bluff, your stanze
Looking down and away,
One more terrain in disarray
Your eyes on the next target
Starting fire on next oil.

Promises of respite
from sallowed ashes,

adorned with feathers
from a thousand culled doves.

Haplessly wishing that freedom
comes soon.

A hope ensnared
in the clench
of crimson-stained gloves.

~
Time is a dark feeling
—the spell of a vanishing loveliness;
in the present mist
the imperatives in the wind
move less and less.

Haul away the anchor,
this is not a safe place.

Between insufficient coasts
—a land of look behind—
science is dead,
pessimism in the remaining oar,
and flies in the eyes of the Queen.
Their graves decorate the spine
on the east bank
they call Euthanasia,
each crucifix made of plasticine.

There's a discursive quality to the sea,
I can see the pearl fishermen,
the empty dancehall,
victims of latitude and eclipse.

I can see the tattered sleeves
of Edmund Fitzgerald and the pockets
of emptiness inside,
hoping to quell the hunger
of the cruelest month.

I can see an underwater country,
colonized by the unborn children
of pregnant African women
thrown off of slave ships
during the Middle Passage.

I can see myself sinking;
farewell my sorrow,
keeping precarious time
against a backdrop
of silence less and less;
its final sound being
that of seagulls
flying away into the distance
—a force of nature that’s
both solemn and inspirational
in equal parts.
~

you, yes, you
I need you to feel
more alive
and that's the end
the beginning of
any metaphor

I care not about the words
spoken
Nor the one's laid down on page
I long ago got over myself
and the antics of my rage
They seem to be valueless
in the scrapped scope of paradise
I will take the offer given
and let the advice suffice
Poets don't live in mansions
Nor on rheams , nor texts or screens
They occupy the inner works of imaginations and all that it will bring
People don't pay for poets
nor feed their desperate ego
They just steal a line or perhaps a quote just to prove that they must know
At least songs have a memory with words dripping in notes for coats
So much easier to swallow
Not like the paper that chokes
So next time you say heh listen
I'll turn my head and flee
For it must be another attack of killer poetry

some people are already dead
and don't feel the magic
of moonlight and a car and a 6 pack
music on the radio
and an arm around someone
you think you love
and sometimes when the moon is full
I can hear your footsteps
coming down the back porch steps
of your house
and the memories of you
come running to that moment
when our hearts were young
and if I am attentive
to these echoes from my heart
I can hold you in my arms
for the briefest of moments

I woke up at angles with you
---a parallelogram, opposite but equal,
my thoughts in constant rotating view
---a diagram, showing us where
our homes are laid to rest,
where streets became dead spiders
caught in their own webs.

If we are in transit via tunnel,
aqueduct, or escalator,
it might be cinema.

If we lose atlas in the worship of light,
it might be cinema.

But I can't find you here;
here, where they used to build ships
from sand and steam
and science fiction;
where they used to design
buildings so as to create
a dissonant and mournful
whistling sound when wind
blew through them
---ostentatious things;
dead people’s things.

Through walls and underneath concrete, dug so deeply
into the wide plains
and withered, gnarled tree roots
of an agonizer's conurbation,
is a space halfway to the zenith,
charting the prescribed power
of in-betweenness.

Never again will we draw meaning from
our proximity to one another.

The long draw of contemplation
The slow sweep of realization
The full bodied exhaultation
of life as it is

Oh sweep me away beyond
the fettered ways attached to the feathers of escape

Let free the chords of dissapation that baffle the binds of imagination

Come the vibrations that penetrate the soul of the eternal ear creating cravings that are simply insatiable

Cello !

your touch a bet with intensity
unfathomable
my eyes turned into seeds like
energy turns into matter
the pain and pleasure of words
who cares who is one with whom