songs of evening begot began like
a sleepy dream  of a couplet rhyming
along the river banks on a night such
as this, once in a misty moonlit time
her white dress on, him a lowly servant
the ball so gallant when he asked her did
she want a  truffle or a kiss and she
blushed magnificently in the sight of
all the wealthy visitors courtesans
in the court that night whose words were lonesome
and forced, they said their taught entreaties but,
she fancied the waiter and his black tight words
the way he winked when he said truffle or
a kiss

dance alive
honey, I want my whole sway
to be with you
the  dip the step on a toe the parlay
my nose tucked so close to your ear
just both of us so lost in the rhythm
no one else there
on that dance floor
one more time
sweets lets grab ***
take one more shot of Cuervo
let's bring home the
band with us

let us ratchet up some rhetoric
silver tongued hup two three
as our freshman president seems to tweet

come on be all for him his
loose tongue his hiding something
his branding of himself

as power potency effectiveness
hold on
catch your breath

I am anything but for him
I think he is an American
version of the crazy North Korean

ruler **** sum ill
or whatever his name is
I will take in abeyance

the last judgment
of Donald Jong-un Strump
and be all for his impeachment

or tar and feathering
or selling him and all of his
ilk to Russia for two  

tickets to tonights
opera or ballet,
just Hope Putin

keeps his ****** shirt on!

when it all
breaks from the pack and goes running off
she and were wolves and  squirrels
possums
armored ******
I got this pine tree
I go to sit next to and shake my head
it's next to a happy river
next to a train trestle I have
imagined jumping the tracks over and going farther
in a box car on top the diesel engine
pretending
I am the engineer
   or the fireman
     or a baseball star

just saw again a vision of karma
happened like the time I was broke penniless
and found forty dollars on the ground
today It happened around a tee-shirt
I decided to wear
had the image of a dude I used to hang around with
who died like three years ago
given to me at his memorial
and I had not worn it
then I hired this guy about twenty-eight
and he happened to be this guy on my
tee-shirts son and he worked hard looked interested
took initiative
never commented about my shirt
that **** fairy crackmother that has gotten me this far sure
is an enigma
at times

those whose sparkle shine
like  diamonds on a
silver lake in the middle
of a forest
acres of nothing but trees surround

those whose breath
like mine is
met with frosty shivers
on a cold or warm morn'

where the atmosphere
is nothing
ghostly images on vistages of vanities
breath rising clouds in the air
to a mountain

somewhere a vantage like a scenic cliff
in some such mystic place
the place you saw last night in that
dream

where breath meets the clouds and the air so crisp clean
washes your insides

I am almost rigidly opposed
to
almost nothing in the morning
caffeine I think is the drug of opening
eyes it seems

now when night arises her dark eyes sultry
to
at most cool the sun baked fields softening
the horizons

hasten a day into dreams soft and curling
up
as a soft kitten purrs on your feet
I get cautious

so much so I envy the
broad
appeal of those dark eyes on my
last zeal

I claim all of her dark
night
take her as my bride
so all

of you hands off the
dark
she is mine and will be
I close

my eyes
finally

incense wine and a clouded vision
a smoky room upstairs
filled with musty scented flora
the iguana looking wasted
in the aquarium
sticking her his tongue out
flicking imaginary flies
like me in the bean bag chair the bongos
squarely between my highs
my thighs I meant
looking gods and goddesses  
right between the passages
of musics
trying to keep pace with all the drummers in Santana
as the beat ravages the sheetrock
uninsulated
spaces in my teen space
hideaway from the drudgery
of High School
and I  never got a haircut
all down to my ***
I twist and
throw it
banging them ****
bongos
How cool was I
trying to learn the
harmonica

I sit
still
it's after four in the afternoon
of course, I do

like the sun do
in the after noon still just hovers
barely movable
a big hot orb tired

in the sky, on a stoop
like me, the sun is
tired of

all this every day
work this sunshiny ****
this glow forever

stuff I just want to look into
the sun's face and say
and have her

burn a smile my way,
I know dearest
shine as

long as forever
in my mind
you will

imagine how the rich elite feel
when their pools are spilled
by a wanton elephant
let loose in the backyard
that promised
health care reform and  a
huge big wall
to be built post haste that
might have kept the
mastodon
from
falling into the
cement pond
in the first place
hilarity
did you vote for
Hillary??

I can't be without two Aleve
before the alcohol
and the poetry

just need a certain relief
that ibuprofen
has worn off

and the aspirin that's like
candy
I would need to take ten

to listen to my head
and all these visions
words and spinning

rounds
the aching dreams the unsatisfied
sounds

of the best music the
wounded calls
of all of society

that drowns me
nightly

my heart so enclosed
it seems in one of those
blister pack things that are
bulletproof
so hard to open you cut the hell out your fingers
or hand trying
to get into

so what hides this night from the daily rhetoric or charges up the stars
like fireflies on LSD
and I must ask what difference of any lasting way
can my full hearted
brevity  or words saluting the sky make
but in all, I must make them
I feel it as a duty,
a charging Knight on a pen steed
with blank paper white
as my date
on a full dark deep
star studded anniversary of
the first time I wrote
back in third grade
a girl a note
and gave it to my friend to
give Joanne
my upper lip sweated for two days until I received a note back from her
that said walk me home please
with the most touching little heart
and xoxoxo  
as her signature

first time I am laughing at myself

August tans on the strong armed roofers
the black concrete dudes
even in this day seem to  
tan
now with the sun hotter
than ever
constructing hovels and trying to pay bills
we may not  
seem poetic but we were
we helped build this country
piece by piece
and I salute me I salute the people who sweated out the sun in
blue jeans and overalls
carried your shingles up to the roof
two squares at the time real men
not those naughty little
pencil pushers
that lift weights after a nine to five day
in a suit
or accountants in a cubicle that get
carpal tunnel syndromes and act like they
are dying
come work for a day with real men
those of us who sweat in the sun glisten
we make women ***

I have to get to nowhere
I am in the now
here

ever have you sat in a hot attic and looked at all the history
of the nails  the wood how it was cut and the effort
to get it here so true
and the men that day they erected it
did they have kids
were they drunks or
christians
good family men
or jacklegs trying to get
enough money for their next fix
and how it doesn't let any water in or memories out
and how it just seems old and historic
complete protection of this structure and the stucco downstairs and grandmas
cedar chest and all those old pictures
I don't look at those I look at the beams the nails showing through and think of
the energy
the thought behind
the roof
overhead
overheard

I sit around
watch the sun come up
go down
nothing to push me off the edge of the porch
or make me seek other things
like familiarity with
the crazy neighbor woman
unless I run out of cigarettes
dog and cat treats
and my vitamin beer things
like two drifters where one got lost
I sit
just knowing
time doesn't come around again
you better take it by the hand
like that love long gone down the river
and the sand in that thing
what is it?
oh yeah
life

ok even ****** watercolors
and over drawn charcoals
oil colors that blend blue and yellow skies
making Martian like clouds
and rainbows and butterfly poems and all that rhyming *****
do do do
make me all grab my nuts and hold  on delirious
wanting to spank the world's *** again
gets me livened up
thinking god is not dead
yet

on the stairs in front of the old row house
two doors on the front between two Azaleas beautifully
displaying their grandeur
I sit non-competitive with a thing in this world
the paint flaking under my *** on the worn out tongue and groove floor
and a tilted brick post supports the roof
and I am concretely not caring
about peeling paint or the leaky roof
or the neighbor's complaining constantly how my
Gardenia bushes by the property line so full so gorgeous
voluptuously block their view
little things don't matter I sweat them off
because I got some heavy duty
anti-perspirant I cook up myself
don't tell the DEA

too quiet here
I need all the amps and energies
the barefooted hippies again
the buses painted in peace signs
and all those flowers
man
how I miss the angels
standing in front of the National Guard
planting daisies in their m-16s
those cotton dresses sans underwear
flowers in their hair
their wild eyes lit with
hope
the lucky red-eyed long haired dudes
strung out from the rallies
getting the benefits of free-love  philosophies
I wonder
can I remake Woodstock in a town so void of feel
or an America so greedy now??

just a tad befused conwildered

stupified
I obfuscate well

to y
to z
to that fetish I have for the alphabet
and letters
words and pronunciations

hop and spark among along the mountains the borrowed sailboat
walking edges and playing sailor again like we did in
September at the Yacht club
yo my first mate
or the day we trekked
all clad in hiking boots out to the ledge of that rock and sun saw  all our edges or camped at silver lake put our naked feet in the crystalline water pure
for that week
rode the canoe all night trying to drown
that little man
in the bushes on the sand on the edge of the pond
the fish jumping in rhythm to our love making
and the frogs serenading and the moon blushing and the stars glowed
all along your curves along my hard edges
and the tent was havoc all full of sorts of
living things
winged and we didn't give one ****
just swatted each other's *****
and brushed crickets off each other's
cheeks and laughed and the hamburgers
on the fire
tasted like steak and the cold beer we floated
in the lake like champagne and
every day like a year and every night like
a celebration
and we were young
drifted away after that
but if you are like me
you never forget

oh god the depressing silken undertones
of her bra and *******, I have like buried
treasures hidden in my bottom drawer
that haunt me with the night
the memories
good yet sort of malevolent and sick and worried
I am becoming obsessed
with something so far out of reach instead of
thanking her and cupid for that one
special night
I try to keep that bottom drawer locked from
Her, my new live  in, I think I saw marks  on the
latch like someone was trying to get in
so now I am keeping the bra and ******* in my back pocket
and my co-workers are beginning
to whisper behind my back,
I have got to get a storage unit
and pay twenty dollars a week to
store these things,
or am I just losing it?

what the **** is Mondays where I am invisible??

you absolutely melted me
in blackberry fields wild
Barefoot dancing in hayfields
Rolled up ...

Warmth inside rising
igniting a fire
for southern Baptist tithing ...

Melons ripe
chasing lightening bugs
laughter delights...

Mosquitoes bite
dinner bell rings
Harvest veggies bring
drooling sights...

As full tummies
return under quilts
from past Grammys

       ... end with sounds

           ..... of goodnight rounds

❤️❤️❤️

spot of fall
the last pure sun
full on burns your naked skin

the leaves just beginning to singe
to turn to coil up a bit
the wind picks up

from the northern side
as the turn from
green to orange

makes its way down the sun's
traverse
along the trees

unto the corn standing in the field
the
peanut's about to be tilled

all the turnips peas the black eyes
the purple hulls
pulled and put up

in mason jars weeks ago
cotton bolls
erupting virulently

on the long horizon from here to
eternity it seems
the birds visiting

soon it will bring the dove's to the slaughter
with all the life left lying
still

in the field
and the pleasant sounds
of growth recede

into purest  harvest
the wreck of fields
the reek of peanuts death

turned up drying in the fields
make tears and noses sniff
and the harvesters shall shake

the snow from the bush and spread it
around the land the roads
like Jack Frost

in 85 degrees
360 degrees
and it portends

the change from bright long days
to a more reasoned rush on a porch
the end of another year

shorter days less
hurry a still kind of rush

a looking back
and another looking
towards next spring

I take to the dwindling
amount of eras of time itself
like a willing victim
I am impressed how the rose bloomed then flushed her
beauty
like **** down on to the ground
all wilted
with neither a care
nor a thought
and went on to create a new one
and how day by day the sun is birthed
to get replaced
by an equally beautiful moon
and  the cycled rhythm
is like a poem
written by a god or goddess
in the sky and clouds
fly and birds are fleeting
like my words so
versed
all of it
death and nature's
tense and seeming indifference
is all so genuine
so normal
so great

best to write what you know to say
what is felt portray a
simple day rather
then a Greek Tragedy
or try to make rhymes
when all you hear are echoes
amidst the baying wolves
talk about city lights and low brow bars
if that is where you get energy
or tall pines and lush green fields
if that's where you go
to meditate
talk about *** when you don't get enough
or trees when you haven't touched one in
decades or the shadows cast by
skyscrapers when you live in a corn field
say what you know
I miss the touch of a woman I knew ten years ago
I love how the TV tells me all the news
I like four legged creatures they
give me love
I like beer
and a joint sometimes
more
tell me what you really do
talk to me like another human
yack at me tell me how you don't bathe for a day or two
or how like me the dishes stack up in the sink for weeks
or the neighbor's wife is so fine and how she once smiled
your way or how you sat
on the balcony and were so content
watching the sunset
or went and saw your child's first soccer game or a play and held
your child's hand when they were scared to go to bed last night
or got bad and met a new love and decided
to take them to bed the first night and how
that made you feel in the morning
or how you make the very first pancake turn out perfect
or drew a smile on a note and left it on your lover's pillow
this is poetry  
this is life

finite are the days left to open up
to shed some light on the darker things
be honest

like how the old woman said
two months before she died she was
worried about me

she had seen her end
and I remember crying so hard
and long that night with her

but I couldn't see as she
did or
prophesy

as well
or look hopeless
amidst her agony

I didn't want to see:
now,
when it comes

time for me to look destiny
straight in his dark eye
I see her

reflection and it eases my
mind
kind of puts things

right into perspective
tends to make sense how time
eases the end

and I foresee when his death claw comes
reaching my throat
and the end

approaches
if someone I love says
as I did

don't give up, fight
for all you are
I may say

as she so softly said
to me, that night when she
passed

I am just so tired
and I will give up
and it will

be ok
and the world
will keep on spinning

is
I come home from a hard day of manual labor
pop a top
go through the notifications
and see
real people somewhere out there
in the stream
just as ****** up as I am
and they
plussed me
took the time to comment
they wrote some great poetry
I go to do what I can
to let them
know that someone just like them
****** up alone worried
but awesome
saw their works their
heart strings and visions
their open wounds their hurts
their
words telling me
I am not the only one
out there in the stream all ****** over alone worried
angst word filled touched
by their words their cries their tears;
in the end we all drown;
for now we paddle
keep our heads up

one of my dark secrets
I have this fascination with
the dark poets of rock the dead ones
the ones who blew their minds out
Peter Green
the crazy diamond the
Pearl
Jim Morrison
of course Jimi
I feel connected to van Gogh who died never
selling a painting
an angst a dark sided dream I
wake up to
with visions at times and words caught around my ears
with painted landscapes, I can't touch
so baby
I just wanted to say I am
touched

then ever comes sudden
you were never expecting
had not a premonition or
second
to prepare study, just like freshman
year of college
when that quiz was sprung on you in
Economics 101
and that party was what you studied last night
and her or his physiology
along with a bit of chemistry
along with humanities
greek things finally
gave a bit of a sigh
when that geek professor
you hated announced
with his bow tie and striped shirt
I have a surprise for all of you
in a sly sort of nasty way
with that way that ate at you
his hand flailing the air like a kite
his breath minty and gay from way up
in the back row of the class, you could smell
of course, you got an E on it but you glared
oh how
you did leaving the classroom that day

out discovering
just lost in a guitar string about pulled to her maximum
as if Peter Green was sane
or Santana had tamed those salty blues
supernatural
I feel
I have a good mind to go crazy
too
said that was all I knew when you met me
and we
decided
I'd be better off dead
when I hear a guitar call for
****** and get
butterflies instead
to all the aliens listening in
don't listen to me
listen instead
to a guitar
made righteous
love to

if I could figure out what simple was
when faced with a lifetime's complexities
or lounge like my cat's
knowing the bowl is going to be full
or have an albatross  
of original ideas
and a publisher fawning all  very professional
or at least my license
to at least be legal
for the first time in a quarter
century
I might have more respect for
the IRS
in the meantime I am
gonna play all
stooooopid
my ssn#  I ain't got one those

I first said hi
to her in the hallway, shy like,
not realizing she had also
been sweet on me

just passing by,
and so soon we were
timing our coffee
breaks to coincide,

meeting in the parking lot
when we left work
always coming closer
to colliding,

we spent two months
being coy and innocent
when I saw her sitting alone
in the lunch room,

took a big breath and sat my
tray down and asked
"Mind if I sit here"
and she smiled like

the Mona Lisa
I swear
she beamed like two months
worth of

hallelujah's
hail Mary's
and Hannukah
candles all lit up

to say we had fireworks is
understated  nonsense
cause we ignited a fire
in there

****** near burned down the lunchroom
the parking lot the exit door
taking the rest

of the day off

only 1:02 feels like 3:33
the only light this computer screen anybody saw my baby?
seen my girl?

Anybody, now it's 1:03
seen my sanity
my last thought of reality?

Anyone know
like I do how long
Can a minute be?

all life's too supple
born then nursed kindly
at the breast

and sometimes
taken away
like ripples

down the stream

so I may not have time
enough to make a living
before I die

I am gonna do like
wild animals do
and try

to suckle on the
wild roses
the best memories

one at the time
and try to
impress them

there in the dim lights of the moon half-covered in dark clouds
on the banks of the Pea river about where it meets with the
Choctawhatchee in the down south eastern parts
of 'Bama around a turn into the sandy banks
we stood
glowing
it was half past four
in the morn'
my truck was stuck in the mud

and we tried to figure how we'd explain to your
ex-football linebacker dad
runner-up to the Heisman
before he tore his Achille's tendon
why we had not made your curfew
and I was thinking I'd just kiss you
then move hastily off to Mississippi
when you
said hey
I love you

and it all changed I became
Superman
revved that Chevy
like it was a four-wheel drive and we spun
out of the soup
mud flying everywhere and
when I got you home


your dad saw all the muck and thought
we had been lying
out playing all night and beat me like
a red headed step-child
and you were trying
to hold him back and I was reeling
innocently

when he believed me a year later and invited me
to a game of football on the lawn
I just had to pretend
my Achilles
tendon was broke

when we made love finally two years later
I didn't need any tendons

once bitter I found sweets
hidden
in my own cookie jar

had to take the vinegar out
first, pour it in the
yard

as the wise palm reader
had proposed
and lend my

soul to the unforgiven
had to make a balm of
wild toad legs

and bat wings and geese eggs and
mayonnaise and vinegar...
**** I already poured it

out in the yard, so
a little red dirt and vinegar
and it seemed to work

quite nice, I had no more bitter
thoughts
just gagged

when I tried to drink it
I pretended  to swallow
and it ran down

my cheeks
haha memories there
*******

but things seemed
to lighten up
and the sun

seemed brighter and the
night
not as dark

and I went to the palm reader
again
the next week

she didn't remember me
said when she looked
at my palm

you need
to
get laid, dude

your palm
is raw

she meant all to

used to be

in the heart that beats

now I am

just a fond memory

in that

cold hearted

#$^(&

I religion in the forest
I worship what I see
the majesty of mountains
the purity of the sea

I am the deity
along with four legged creatures
and night owls
the serpentine slither

I claim no following
for all is known is
my memory

my sight my empathy my love my being
and I sit on a log
and worship this orb

like a true believer
that I am the creation
the superstar the reason
the prejudice

the forbearing

all I see all I hear is inside
so inside must be god
the visions
are but tricks

and I sit on that log and watch
the river flow and the storms grow
and sunrises

and get it
I am the screen
to a movie

and what I make of it
is all

let me... think a minute
that's it
that is what drives me
I could never be a success
I think...

because I need to sit
on the porch and watch the sunsets and digest
****
I don't digest things on the run
it gives me mental diarrhea

One day full I have to sit half on another thinking
or I get all ****** over and Pepto Bismol
has been no help
I like to just sit
and think....

...
...
...


...
still thinking

cats don't like lettuce
nor rabbits beef
ants can tote like five
five times their weight
I can't

She was a fast machine
She kept her motor clean
She was the best **** woman I had ever seen
She had the sightless eyes
Telling me no lies
Knockin' me out with those American thighs
Taking more than her share
Had me fighting for air
She told me to come but I was already there
'Cause the walls start shaking
The earth was quaking
My mind was aching
And we were making it and you

Shook me all night long
Yeah you shook me all night long

Working double time
On the seduction line
She was one of a kind, she's just mine all mine
Wanted no applause
Just another course
Made a meal out of me and came back for more
Had to cool me down
To take another round
Now I'm back in the ring to take another swing
'Cause the walls were shaking
The earth was quaking
My mind was aching
And we were making it and you

Shook me all night long
Yeah you shook me all night long

And knocked me out and then you
Shook me all night long
You had me shakin' and you
Shook me all night long
Yeah you shook me
Well you took me

You really took me and you
Shook me all night long
Ooooh you
Shook me all night long
Yeah, yeah, you
Shook me all night long
You really took me and you
Yeah you shook me, yeah you shook me
All night long

visions are in what happens to be there
she was at the Seven-Eleven
just sitting on the curb

her head on her palm
her palm on her wrist
her wrist on her forearm

resting against
her thigh
wrapped in jeans so tight

she never looked up
or out
seemed to be in deep thought

flicked her cigarette ****
as I walked by
**** near hit my boot

I walked into the store
the big muscled
cashier behind the counter

said hello fairly nice
got my mud a big plastic cup
and my pecan spins

the only Little Debbies
known to not
cause diabetes

and a banana almost
green still
I gotta have some form of

fruits or vegetable
and walked outside
the waif

she was gone
and I thought
was she still deep

in thought
just imagining her
all cleaned up

fed bathed how might
we have gotten along
drove off

I am desperate
I guess
it took two hours

to get her out of
my head

in the awe of words how
one says holding a heart
like that is possible
and we suspend reality
for a while

the frailty
of that simple stem arising
with all the glory beauty

with such a fragile base
out of the bare earth
holding high to the light

her own telling her rendition
of simple splendor
on a thin stem

chancellor say  it to her
romance her
make her melt
take a chance I bet
when you use those practiced words
and spell correctly her name
use it in a sentence
take a bit of sky day or night
like sun or moon or stars
and wrap it around her chilled shoulder
take her hand in yours
lead her into that garden under the balcony next to  
the veranda
where you pre arranged the violinist
and the stars magnificence
dude, you gonna get laid