A crushed, half smoked pack of cigarettes
Three to four empty coffee cups converted to ash trays,
My grandmother's Bible, seams torn by the Great Depression and the backs of children's hands,
And maybe thirty dollars, some change,
All I have to my name,
I am 15 and I am setting fires, busting out the windows in abandoned houses with my skateboard, spray painting anarchy signs everywhere I think will send a message, growing my hair out, reading Ginsberg and Karl Marx in detention every afternoon, I am angry and I have fights to pick and a system to overthrow,
I am 16 and I am driving fast late nights down backroads with the headlights off, I believe I do not fear death, I believe I welcome oblivion, I believe every word in every song I howl the words to, I believe I will die a martyr and they will hold parades in my honor, I believe we are fighting a holy war, I believe that we can and we will overcome, I believe that I believe in nothing but my leather jacket and the switchblade in my pocket and whatever punk song is on the radio,
I am 17 and I am speeding out of my mind off razor blade lines on end tables, my bones ache to destroy, my veins pump gasoline to a nicotine heart, I shoot guns all night pretending each bottle is a cop and each round hits a politician right between the eyes, pretending that if I can do enough damage I can free us all from our chains,
I am 18 and I am voting as far to the left as I can and I am still bitter because it is nowhere near close enough, I am singing dying songs for friends and pouring my heart out to strangers, dancing around fires, making blood oaths to never surrender, telling fortunes for beer and dreaming of open warfare,
I am 19 and I am getting ****** in parking lots, tattoing my heroes visions into my arms, trying to save my city by shouting at it until it wakes up and takes to the streets, burning my home to the ground in hopes of a glorious revival, passing out before I can convince anybody of my beliefs, cursing my enemies from the porch and seeing how many puffs of smoke I can get out of a night before I become just as greedy as the rest of the *******,
I am 20 and I am drinking alone
I am tired and I have lost my voice,
The prophet of my folk punk day dreams slipped away, into the night with no explanation and no destination
Erik, I will honor your memory the best I can,
I will carry you into battle everyday until I can no longer clench a fist,
I will scream your words until there are holes in my throat,
I will build you a funeral pyre of my love and rage,
And from the ashes, I will rise again, and so will you

I suppose now would be too little too late.
It was Monday you passed, you made it through the whole week.
And if you could only know the compliments your bouquet has been given, the words sound the same
when they hit my ears and I'm sorry, my apologies.
Angie will miss you.
I suppose that's why she let go feeling
Oh so sentimental but never shallow. I can't bear to think about her much, because she loved you more than I knew love had the power too.
What is left of what that dinner table once was?
Vern has gone, you have gone. Willard abandoned the lot of you, and I'm just not sure I ever want to make it as long as you folks.
Take me out early, so my friends don't die before me.

Wow, what even is this?
Terrible, terrible.
Why do you even bother, it’s no good
Thanks, now get out.
I admit I’m not the next Frost
I may not even be the next anyone.
So, without further ado, I’m sorry.
I apologize.
I’m sorry Blake, Burns, Wordsworth.
I’m sorry Poe, Frost, Ginsburg.
I’m sorry Plath, Petersen, Bremer.
I’m sorry Church, Winter, Dychkowski.
I don’t measure up, I don’t even rhyme
Selfishness is my reason for this
Feelings on paper and thoughts in obscurity
All written without form, no scheme
Is it real if it doesn’t make sense?
I’m not stopping, no, I’ll persevere
But I offer up these apologies to those who are poets
Somehow I got labeled with you
Somehow I ended up here.
Poetry. My one stay. An escape I can always turn to.
I’m sorry.
My apologies.
Forgive my excuse.

Dear Friend,
Today I turned.
I turned off the wake up crow of the radio announcer.
I turned pale at the arrival of the day.
I turned over and tried to go back to sleep.
I turned green at the hopes of those half my age.
I turned red with anger - or frustration - at the
               Seas still to cross,
               Mountains still to climb,
               Ideas still to pursue.
I turned and looked at my children - and was proud.
I turned back the sheets.
I turned out of bed.
I turned into an elephant carried three bundles of giggles out the door.
I turned into the kitchen and a bundle fell off - still giggling.
I turned into someone's father, but only for a moment, then we were friends again.
I turned up the heat in the griller and the toast darkened and dried out more quickly.
I turned for the milk and there was none left.
I turned into a street I'd never travelled before.
I turned off when I heard it was Joh Bjelke-Petersen's birthday.
I returned.
I turned into someone's friend and was still her father.
I turned thirty.

Petersen House, Washington, D.C.

I admit to own a passion
for the Civil War in general,
and the life and death of
the sixteenth president in particular
between a hard spot of whiskey
and draughts of arrack;
nonetheless (without doubt), this Yankee
would be fain to travel back
to Antebellum America
amidst the urban din and clack

where smelting earsplitting,
choking industrialization
a deaf fin hit drawback,
and where dark shadows cast an eternal
edge of night twilight zone pallor
tubby somewhat exact
from mighty robber barons,
who tolerated no flack
(nope not even Roberta)
despite the bleeding nose against grindstone
inhumanity bearing down hard
with very little giveback
viz zit head as greenback

yes...no matter the noxious
crash course urbanization
(and attendant ghettoization)
breeding a lung wrenching tuberculosis hack,
this twenty first century middle aged
married man (an average Monterey Jack
***), whose sought after
claim to fame penchant
modestly admits to **** knack

crafting literary concoctions with no lack
of ideas, where one arose
strong as an oncoming mack
truck (this vibrant fascination
with the American Civil War
(even before Ken Burns popularized
calamitous event) in non black
and white (digitally remastered technicolor)
exemplified, enumerated, and emphasized
how a minor dispute got way off,track
whereat stately commander in chief did pack
a punch analogous sans, barreling forth
like unstoppable quarterback
despite his six foot four inch
gangly physique cull rack
tried his darnedest,
(or substitute unprintable epithet)
yet a coterie of anti war subjects
figuratively and literally up in arms

wanted nothing less to sack
the sixteenth president,
whose aged fifty seven year old countenance
one month after
Ides of March death didst dance
during the low key celebration sans,
internecine bloodbath Grants'
and Lees' armistice
one hundred and fifty seven years ago;

the peace treaty signed
(April 9th, 1865) at Appomattox,
an irrevocable agony did blow
when that fateful, mournful,
somber night at Ford's Theater
the grim reaper didst appear
(like Jim) crow king
ably linkedin with Reconstruction
after one shot rang out blasting,
where crimson tide didst flow
drowning American history
at that juncture grow

wing no less painless today, which hoo
veer ring agony didst smite
incomprehensible cleft mow
wing down unfinished ambition, which no
one other than Abraham Lincoln could sow
the racial rift, that slavery trucked in tow
generations shackled with compounded woe

that fateful April 15, 1865
at approximately 10:20 p.m
one hundred plus fifty seven years; it's been
long since deceased taking deadly
gunshot punctuated deadly din,
whence fifteen plus decades passed sans
conspirator tried to get even
at Ford’s theater – forever
eviscerating thin lipped grin
of the sixteenth president - still
his unrealized promising dreams with in

Reconstruction paradigm presses
historians to speculate what kin
ship his unrealized post-bellum blueprint
while he sat in his booth,
attended a performance of the comedy
Our American Cousin that night
when a bullet entered below
the president's left ear,
bored diagonally through his brain
and stopped behind his right …

wrought him slumped over,
now tis 7 score + 17 years witnessed
assassination of Abraham Lincoln
team of rivals mastermind, re: the
American Civil War wreck con struck shin
yet…his positive affects find him
honored with outsize depictions and a con tin
hue wing legacy sustained, whereby
hearts and minds he posthumously did win.

Said enigmatic man shrouded and idolized
with beatific, democratic essence
fantastic, honorific, pacific aura, dogma,
and persona with meager off fence
to generations of United States citizens –
enthralled ladies and gents
whose reverberations and ramifications

of humane karma lives on – hence
begotten progeny enjoying freedoms
perchance ensconced with rapt innocence
or those inured with sensibility and sense
can bequeath pride without prejudice
whether living in splendour or in tents
toward Illinois railroad log splitter,
whose humble roots forged steely covenants.

The debate


Jordan Petersen the famous Canadian Professor debates
Slavoj Zizek, the equally famous philosopher, is facing off.
The Canadian is dressed in a blue three-piece suit that is too tight
he wears expensive leather boots, looks calm, but his voice crackles.
He thinks capitalism is for good, and I think of Ayn Rand,
he is a formidable debater but has inner anger of something
unsolved on his mind.
Slavoj looks like someone homeless, T-shirt and tennis shoes
He doesn´t belong to any group but thinks Hegel is excellent and often
refer to his saying; Slavoj´s mind is sharp and he jumps from subject
with the greatest of ease.
Jordan is very much a junior in this debate that is about Marx and
the nature of love.
Jordan gives his opinion of Marx but is constrained by his thesis
of capitalism, Slavoj picks his opinion apart; there is a tremble
in Jordan’s voice when he disagrees.
When debating the nature of love, he vax lyrical, Slavoj does not believe
in this at all, he compares lovers’ *** as mutual *******, (often it is)
but sees no wrong in this. Jordan is a one-dimensional professor, while
Slavoj has a world view that encompasses everything  
the world has to offer, he is, in my opinion, a generous genius with
a sense of rude jokes and laughter.