I've forgotten how to live
like a man on death row
accustomed to four walls
and the monotony of routine
waiting for the inevitable

yet still I hold out for the miracle
some dna evidence that this is all a mistake
that there is something waiting for me
and that this death will give way
to pastures full of sheep
waiting for the shepherd to return

I'm an apostle of broken things
of bitter blows and sacred stings
the night turns weary inside the dark
the taste of death come morning

I wake inside this unholy night
broken against a fearsome light
blinded by music too much too soon
the ache of love gone missing

I have a first cousin
whose son is sick with leukemia
not responding to treatment
her Dad died earlier this year
and she had a brother
killed in a wreck at twenty-two
I wonder if she is the one
who is inheriting all the family tragedies

our love was a war against the wrong time and the wrong place
our love was a war with what should have been and what never would be
our love was a war between what we believed and what we felt
our love was a war between saving others and destroying ourselves
our love left our bodies on the battlefield waiting for vultures to strip the bones and now I've got a thousand pieces of I love you stuck like shrapnel behind my ribs

I write with
the dull thud of fingers tapping
against my twin children
the fear of failure and
the fear of rejection
always learning not to care for anything
except for the sliding roll of words
against my tongue
so here I am
hello poetry dot com
I write this as an act of passionate indifference

I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say
we are all literally made of stardust
and the next time I saw her I realized
her eyes were galaxies
and she was spitting suns
from her mouth
science has its own poetry
if you know where to look

Lets lay
On a blanket
In the park
After dark
Watching stars shimmer
In the sky
And kiss a while
In the park
After dark

I walk by night against the throbbing sea
And strain to hear the subtle shift of sound
As waves requite the shore of what will be
Now wash from deep all lost and much unfound
Thus pounding life this wave again she comes
And lifts her voice against the growing strain
She lifts and falls with ever rising strums
Stopping only to start all over again
But can it last this ever growing tide?
For floods the shore amid the heat of night
'Til all be washed in the moonlit ride
And now withdraws the weeping heart away
With feeling tides gone now into the day

Bukowski's later years weren't so bad
he lived in a nice house
with a swimming pool in the back yard
drove a BMW
didn't drink so much
enjoyed the success of discovery
sold books and movies
and never gave in again

If you knew me
All of me
Inside and out
Would you love me more or less
If I let you see every thought
And turned it over to show its ***
Would you perhaps reel in horror
At the way the aching sacred
And the ******* profane
Live inside me like good and bad twins

kiss my neck
with your warm
voluptuous breath
bury me
inside your wet
emollient death
until darkness
descends
like gravity
and light
bursts
from inside
of me

I've got my fingernails dug into sadness
a death grip around the throat of an unfaithful lover
I will not let go until there is no breath
this is a war and I am foxhole deep
my melancholy prayer to an unknown God
as though there were still someone waiting to hear
as though the end were near
but I'll hang on for all I'm worth
until there is nothing left
but desert blue skies and bleached bones

I sat alone in the middle of a bench in a full waiting room waiting to get blood drawn and he sat next to me so I moved over to the end of the bench and he gruffed
"I'm not going to bite you
You didn't have to move over so far."
He took it personal and I felt bad because he was the kind who needed a friend but what he didn't know is that I would have rather been anywhere than in a crowded anything room

you're the lost and I'm the sin
you're gonna do me again and again
like a long, dark night I'll slowly descend
I am your death I am your end

When I go to the beach I remember the first poem I ever wrote for you. It was the first real poem I ever wrote infused with something I'd never known before wave upon wave crashing in with love's desire like a never ending fire.

When I go to the beach I remember the first time I came inside you, the storm howling its voice harder than the headboard against the wall so no one could hear your muffled screams. Quietness ensued, our breathing as deep and easy as our hearts and then you said, "that was my first time...ever." "To come?" "Yes." "Ever?" "Yes."

When I go to the beach I remember the picture you gave me when you walked away, the one that sits on my desk now, the one with with the sea oats and the rising thunderhead and the horizon the same blue as your eyes, the one with the shells you picked up and attached to the simple frame.

Today, I went to the beach.

baptize me in words full of grace
words like I love you
accept you
believe in you
even when you're ****** up
there's no judgement here
you are washed clean
as far as the eye can see

flying apart I stitch
words to hold it together
barbed wire pulled through
bleeding organs
wrapped around shredded skin
wondering about the end
while shattered shanks
hold precariously in place

believe me, I would fix me if I could
I would use all the right words
repent of all the right sins
do all the right things
make amends again and again
I have walked that road too many times
and I am weary of fixing me
I'd rather live and see what happens
even if it ends up a pile of broken bones

I don't have any excuses for my ****-stained existence
I never doubted my Father's love
My Mother practices gentle sainthood without a hint of judgement
The children are top shelf human blessings to humanity
I am told I am loved and sometimes I almost believe it

The best I can come up with is that we all keep secrets from one another
Which is another way of saying we don't know one another at all
Maybe all of us are living in so much pain the only thing we know is to build walls around our selves to keep some semblance of sanity
I make no excuses I can't bring myself to say a ******* thing

we take one step forward three steps back
and all the while we are looking for ourselves
not wanting to walk as the living dead
like hearts chained to a desk
like those we **** or want to ****
and we wonder why we are the way we are
wanting more than sometimes seems possible
our desperate yawp that we will not settle
for this living death
you will make your way out of the morass soon enough
and all of this will be a distant memory
a mostly pleasant diversion
from the prison of living

I tried to fit in
I tried to be responsible
I tried to do what had to be done to make a living
And all the trying brings me to a phone call asking
to let me walk out the most painless way possible
I tried too ******* hard

after my Father died my Mother began writing poems spelling out her pain one letter at a time making the earth move beneath her feet so she could breath again

I never wrote a poem until I fell into love and all of a sudden the shoreline was mad for the ocean and the waves kept pounding mindlessly wanting to release life into her

all the years of pain and love and destruction stored up inside words written in ancient, exotic languages waiting to be translated and released a strange bile of life waiting to love and be loved again