it was a dry winter
he sang "*** and candy" as i braided my hair
we'd never dwelt so far apart
oceans between us while sharing a bed

he bought me rain-boots for christmas
desert dwellers have little use for rain-boots at the end of december
but i smiled because it didn't matter

he could never see me
only aknowledged the static space i inhabit
his empty eyes sang symphonies in the silence

we were young
and the world refused to cease it's spinning
despite our sea-sick cries while faking love

even the rustiest carousels chase their tails long after the waiting line is rendered empty after dusk

the secret to life inside our discarded cigarette cartons
the history at the bottom of the beer pitcher

it was our hell
our own private galaxy doing pirouettes on the sidelines of time
we aged like newspapers hidden in the hedges

but we meant it
or at least we thought we did
whatever it was
we meant it

the way that one means it when they say they wished they'd died the morning after dollar beer night

it felt right
no matter how bad it always hurt

you found the rustiest steak knife in the silverware drawer and gashed it through my heart

short is the most delicious look
silence is the loudest book
with lips the hungriest food
and night the darkest wildest mood
breathing is the deepest ****
giving in the hottest ****
love is a bittersweet borrowed lie
time is a slowly emptied sigh
deception is the sharpest yet rustiest lance
and rage the slowest, saddest dance
while truth's just polished-up confusion
with words - the slipperiest illusion








- - - - -

I am no judge of good character
(think I am the greatest poet-***-bf ever)

I used to be a sharp dresser,
(then to the time twisted testing,
t'is of tiny import sense succumbed)

I used to love woman by the score
(Ha! fooled ya, still do, will dying do so,
but caught in a single spider's heartweb,
I read, and I love, and cheat only nowadays
with weak eyes and strong words)

I used to be young in heart,
(self impressed at my talented prose,
but then my eyes grew keener,
the more I read, the older I got,
the more others led me faster,
sweeter to the promised land)

so I trip 'n skip in the waterfall pool,
that forms where the poems cascading
are laid down to peaceful repose to keep,
and too oft, sad uneyed loneliness

yet, I see a graffiti on the clear bottom,
white paint upon an earthen rock,
wipe away the eddys, put aside the ego,
lift it, lift me up, that stone,
with caressing care to read:

So Jo Was Here

oh indeed indeed in deed another poet,
who blues my heart with words modest,
in combinations that say to me
you knew that, but not till now!

how did she know that

words and words and -
ironies usurp courage
adventure scowls unsated
Times New Roman ****
pixels unconsummated
similes sin-taxed for hits
stale nefarious negging
all heros on the page
reality waits begging

I read and I think
did I not write these words?

love is a bittersweet borrowed lie
time is a slowly emptied sigh
deception is the sharpest yet rustiest lance
and rage the slowest, saddest dance
while truth's just polished-up confusion
with words - the slipperiest illusion

But I did not!
nope but I read them cause

So Jo Was Here

stoked and croaking,
addicted, I read on
only to find my mirror image
once again, one mo' time crime

But I was held unknotted only,
oblivion teetering on the pinch
of a thumb and forefinger.

Until slowly but cynically,
gasp by gasp,
all was forced out, and when
the moment came to go,
there was nothing left to go on

so it is written, so it will be read

then you can say too,
as I did, as I here confess,
in my recesses unexplored,
trembled to find,
overjoyed to be
me revealed
cause:

*So Jo Was Here

Waves crashing and smashing into the rickety boat
Hardly staying afloat it cracks and snaps under the pressure that wraps around it
Spinning swirling and twirling the water fills every crevice and nook
From the most overt cabinet down to the rustiest hook
The stormy outlook brings dread
And in his head he thinks of the waves that could leave him dead
Losing all control he can’t grab a hold of the wheel or the rope that could keep him remotely safe or help him cope with the lack of balance
It’s all done
As the sea swallows him like it does the morning sun

To us as gifts were
given 12 metal keys
the rustiest
is forgiveness
it's grace got blessed
by the giver of life.

Scars Are Beauty Marks
By Steven L Herring

Hush and be still
It's a quiet fight
On a cloudy day
or in the dark of night

Dust from a moon boot
Cunningly clean
close up
to a motor boat
or bleeding bright red blood
from a fresh cut throat

Roses

Bunched on a bed
with sanded sheets
hand in hand
on a distant beach
I tasted the salt on her lips
contemplating the possibility
of my fingertips
discreetly brushing her hips

Ever so lightly
Slightly sliding through belt loops
Never let me go

I let her go
She told me to go
she
told
me
to
go

I cut the deepest
with the rustiest
of razors
She put the brakes on
with the freshest
of erasers
and when I think of her
she's faceless
But the saltiness is all gone
and I'm tasteless
but my scars aren't
baseless

Bandaged up
Boots on
Get back in the game
We got guys on bases
and you're up to bat son

the beat of my heart
is the deed that i did
those sins that i made
is underneath my skins
the air spilled in my lungs
is the filthiest in riches
the iron smell run my blood
is the rustiest in bleached
the ideas that i have
is the brain that i latched

Stuck living my life with the liars and the snakes.
I’d slit your ******* throats with the rustiest blade.
Yes I want your blood.
But it doesn’t matter because it’s all of you and I’m only one.
Nailing your eyeballs into their sockets would never suffice.
For all of this conniving *******, just to take any every single part of my life.
Well I’d tie you to a post, sawter your arms to see what hurts the most.
Only after skinning you alive, I’d get the gasoline and torch you to death for pre determining my existence only to lead me to my demise.
So does anyone deserve a life of torment?
Maybe it’s like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if your the ones who play god or karma or whatever the **** it is.
You people should live like the people you keep in remiss.
But no one wants to cut your ties, because it’s always your word against anyone else whose trying to change the tides.
So go ahead and keep people suffering.
It’s only a matter of time until there’s nothing left but everyone’s demise.

Whilst Gandhi homosexed his homosexy **** across India's frontier
white captors shook under the Raj's prohibition of Leffe Blond beer
& proctologic probes, ****** lubes & other buggery-facilitating gear
that made it thrillin' to hang backside-up like a royal navy brigadier
whose furloughs were porked by a toothless, salt-gatherin' mutineer
reliant on the sedition of a Hindu ½-caste, 5th column pamphleteer
with the power to render a beggar from a Bihar Province financiere
in the wink of a pink eye dies a marginal, market-manglin' profiteer
castigated, beleaguered & burked afore burial in Earth's lithosphere
that tricks atop, beneath, under & underneath Indira's sloppy veneer
At a glance the dance pants of Vivian Vance were enhanced by ants
so as to put in a stance of advanced trance manse plants that prance
by ****** chance rants that lance the nuts of *****, slopes & slants
My *** belongs, along with my dead heart, to Anchorage, Nebraska
which is readily contused with the bloodily-bruised Omaha, Alaska
that's praised like Jesus God by tenants, overnight renters & leasers
& Texican-Haitian-barrio rats that spooks derogatorily call greasers
in Aussie hinterlands where flocks of sheep breed with gay fleecers
who flame out at 60 like Liberty Avenue's sick sock-cucking teasers
while they're sockdologizing a crooked clientele of ½-spent geezers
iced plenty for vicious crammin' into Maytag-coffin-model freezers
with a fiercely-frozen frigidity to flummox farting, chronic sneezers
tweezed out hollow sinus-cavity-wise by the rustiest of ol' tweezers
to the degree of dealin' coronaries to ***** Canary Island wheezers
unfit to dredge ditches, sew kites, buy radial tires, dig palm trees or
****** Miss America till she acquiesces without having to seize her