Counting the holes in the wall  
until we start spinning
    
  Nothing can save you at all
Not with that face

This will only hurt
  if you want it too
some people here
                seem to like the pain

I have no answer for that
  because I’m one of you
A man on a cross
Not named Jesus Christ

I tasted temptation
I’ve eaten my fill

I’ve tasted temptation
I’m hungry still

Take me to church
Pin me up to the wall
Promise me salvation
With your loving tongue

We’re all gonna die
No one gets out alive
Throw me onto the floor
Make me beg for a sign

Slow smooth beats
easy as a wave coming to shore
on a trip around the world
a genesis of a whisper
a tea kettle song
I hum along
engaging at mach speed
the sky swallows me whole
and whisks away my joker's heart

I stand in a limitless ocean
dreaming of drinking the sky
if I could only live
as large as my soul
and fly

This soap box
becomes a boat without a paddle
and I row where the tides flow easiest
waving to the smiling faces and
the emptiness all the same

We have a good laugh,
the dice comes up snake eyes
and I tell the dealer
I'm the richest man in Babylon
although my pockets are empty
my smile remains,
that crooked deal
always at the last will make you shudder and groan
wondering why another hand
Aces come up straight sometimes
and your game
riding high for another mile long fall

The air rushes by
but I don't blush
Tell me again you don't love me,
you, you
misunderstand me
my friend
I'm the beggar on the street singin' broken tune
with a full cup and no change
slack eyed and the blues
my cradle to grave lullaby
mixed with the ecstatic wails of a lunatic
swimming in a puddle of God
the fever touched my bones
I am blameless
my throat and heart see the truth
and speak in convulsions
of misshapen glory
the bed was soaked in sweat,
can't you remember?

Repent,
with my lips
I don't know how,
and could never,
I'll eat every sin
and spit out bones of gold
I'll drink every misery
and cry tears of wild joy
I'll stand at the shores end
and dance to the crowning sunset
leaping from the last battered watchtower
drown, drown
in blue neon
psychedelic bioluminescence

Sinking further into the mix of clay
every gamble lost and won in the same throw
I can't fulfill any other destiny
a blind man walking without a stick
I just call to the birds and the bees
bring me sweet honey ambrosia
and they usually come

There's no escape
the long cold night comes too
and my body lays into another bed
with without a warm body to hold
a stream of lovers touching my hands
but we slip any grip
that tries to hold
a human master
but the end
******* ayahuasca
master blaster

Spitting blood into the sink
   from infected gums
who gives a **** anyway
  about hopeless romantic  love

Life is Happy, Life is Sad
  a poem for any occasion
She abandoned desire way downtown
  although the clock said she was aging

They had plans to leave Bangkok by train,
   two seats they didn't fill
A wayfaring stranger without a name
  prayed they never will

The music rang out like a shotgun blast
  and stung like a scorpion's tail
There was nothing left to comprehend
  just two diverging trails,
  
from me to you

I know the food is poison
For the jungle taught me so
Hungry, I swallow the bitter pill
Alongside my pride
As my elders stand rapt
Mesmerized by glowing picture screens
The shadows of men we cannot see
Holding the strings
Engulfing us all
In penury

I walked into the garden and gave Themis my flower.
She said, “now you know they’ll lock up men of any age in my name, thirsty as they are”
I said, “what am I to do, to hold back the flood tide?
Scratching out a living with steel wool cyanide, the champion of beggars and thieves, scoundrels and knaves”
She smiled and said, “you’ve got to find your way home”
I took her by my side, held her in my arms, looking deep into her dark eyes, “I’m lost", I said, “and you know what I’m dreaming"
"I’m empty and aching, and I don’t know where to go.”
She looked on me in silence, ragged tears forming in the corners of our eyes. Emotion swelling in our heart spring, somehow, I knew, I must take upon the open road.
We parted at the gate separating my father’s mansion from the path to the wood.
She was imprinted upon my soul.
The flower wilted, petals one by one, falling to the floor.

This depravity has got me frothing at the mouth,
like a rabid animal, I'm losing control
likely to commit a spree of societal carnage,
you'll see me on the ten o'clock news,
local man arrested engaged in frenzied ****,
a pornographic festival for the bacchanalian priesthood

There's nothing for it anymore, no books, no baths, no music,
I am filled with a pure and terrible lust
with no lover to bear this world shattering Eros,
I fear for the next woman who beds me,
I am now made beast, and will tear her limits for pleasure to shreds
like a hungry jackal leaving a panting shivering mass in my wake,
animal I become,
I will howl and growl and take all that I want,
a fountain of insane carnality,
pumping hot blood coursing through flesh on fire,
like the seasoned farmer,
I long to bury my seed deep into the ground.

I refuse my own release, edging myself closer to violent madness,
a constant stick banging on the bars of the lions cage,
stoking quiet battle rage, pacing to and fro,
biding my time to pounce and taste blood,
now I am beyond romance, my aims are sinister,
and all who look into my flashing eyes will know carnal desire,
it will be my van guard,
a thunderous March of pounding feet
kicking up rolling plains of dust seen far off in the distance
like a flaming pyre, heralding my coming on the horizon,
it will emanate from me like shimmering waves of heat
rising from the summer asphalt,
and all who feel it should tremble
like the trails of shaken walls and broken beds soon left behind,

I am something beyond lust,

I am depraved.

Silence now, but oh that the sound would surely shake the earth
And bring maiden knees to tremble
My death song could crumble the mighty walls of Troy
And throw brave Achilles down to dust
Running mad at night through the empty city streets,
Though none would see my nakedness in the black wet reflection of the lights
the twinkle of buried moonlit diamonds scattered on perfect snow
Can only match my brilliant solitude
The bathroom mirror reflects my fevered emptied eyes
Not one cares to see into these red-rimmed holes
destined to stare and burn as forgotten candles
I cannot blink,
a sweaty man with slick black hair sits alone
hunched over a piano
the keys dance pianissimo, evoking slow seductive suicide
a morphine dose in a rainy manhattan subway,
looking out from a window onto the frozen darkening ice,
slumped in a wooden bench seat, overnight
I want to scribble on every abandoned wall, in ******* letters,
Tomorrow I shall die

Alas, it does not matter
For what am I?