Beholding the Game

I wake up to behold
Yet losing a game
Intensifies the desire to win.
I am like the first battle
Of winter
Against the warmth seeking
Love and flower-cracks
In the soul.
I wear an artistic coat
And give away
The lonely notes
Of stone hearted
Richness.
My soul is my sun
I am its bearer.
When the dew kissed your lips
I was the spring rain.
A flower blooms
In my soul,
I am a painting
That steals every busy glance
From the streets of luxury.
I am an art,
Life is priceless
Until death is our poem
Of loss.
Read a poem
At my grave. 

Heartfelt Offer 

 
The day they drag you across 
the room by your hair, lean  
you up slumped over on a chair  
and thrust a bayonet through  
your broken hand into the  
wooden table in front of you  
before then taking hat pins and 
slowly forcing them under your 
fingernails, one at a time over 
and over relentlessly, is what  
I wake to - every fucking day. 

This is the most basic of 
the tortures available 
and 
I’ve got plenty more  
nightmares you can  
borrow any time 
you want. 

  
---------------------------------------

Nightfalling 

 
She moaned, my face between her thighs.  
Outside, the sun grew dark, children left their  
playgrounds to go inside to bed, calico cats prowled 
alleyways, priests thought briefly of abusing the weak,  
drinks were drowned in bars and parlors, wagers were  
placed, nightmare screams were had, a tiny girl cried  
out for her mother, police cars roamed and pounced,  
hookers stood forlorn, junkies sold themselves for just  
one fix, televisions sputtered, kittens jumped the dog,  
old flames wondered and regretted without ceasing,  
smart phones begat Terminators, laughter brought  
peace to distant regions, honeybees cast about for  
stems, spouses huddled together in their unmade  
beds, sounds emerged, of smoldering liquid panting  
grunt sighs in delighted silence, unrestrained.  
She moaned, my face between her thighs. 

 

 

The End of My Jazz Era

 
In high school 
I would be alone 

in our dark garage 
at night 

practicing
my saxophone

when I’d notice 
police sirens.

Neighbors didn’t 
want to hear 

my honking scales 
and arpeggios

any more than 
my family did.

It’s a miracle 
I stayed off 

drugs and out 
of jail somehow. 

Worst of all,
I might’ve been 

famous by now.

of tomorrow and forever


the bitter cold of
pending death

the uncertainty of
what is to come

that fine fucking
line of tomorrow
and forever

broken souls know
only the pain

not everyone gets
to be loved

to be cherished

to be blessed

to be lifted up on high
and experience the joys
of what the other side
gets to call life

been over forty years
since your grandmother
told you to go pick the
switch you were going
to be beaten with

they never knew a
young child knew
the chaos of a butchers
knife and being pushed
to the absolute end

fine lines indeed

Stooping for Love

I forgot how
Love is pronounced
And now a lake
Has found its way
To drown me.
I look up to the world
And steal a shawl.
I lift
A shy cup
Of forgiveness
And remember that
One cannot
Seek forgiveness
Until it is willed.
Have I reached
Somewhere high above
To the world of love
Or has the world
Stooped for love? 

BILLY THE KID

 
Out here,
In this western ghost town,
The young girls are empty
Bottles, that reflect the mountains,
They wear me like clouds on their thighs.

A New Metaphor for Sex

I will chop down your weeds
and dig out your rocks and
stumps. I will replant your
fields and be your scarecrow.
I will drive your red tractor
as the manufacturer warns
it should “NEVER” be driven.
I will fill your hayloft but tip
over your cows. I will spread
ash on your kitchen garden.
I will plunder your pantry and
taste your preserves. We will
swim in God’s own swim hole.

 

 

A Hungry Poem

A poem for my dinner table
Is hungry.
I like to summarize my day
At the family gathering
Around the dinner table.
I swear my love
Hangs like the blue sky,
I wake up under it
And my hunger is for a companion.
Sometimes I am right,
Sometimes I am wrong,
A mystic love
Would soothe my wide open eyelids.
In memory the heartache fades.
I am obliged by the hunger
To love.
I desire more love
The water pitcher
Doesn't erase my thirst.
The dinner table
Is a resting ground.
I dance on it,
And miss you
Under the shredded sky. 

Over-Ambitious Phallic Metaphor

While this dandelion presses upward
to proclaim a rapturous leonine pose
I would like to believe that like the dandelion,
my shoulders thrust to the Sun
and my shadow drives back competitors,

that like the dandelion, even if
a violent death scythes my deepest arteries
and I am mown by fate into pieces of wilting debris

I will have gulped enough of the milk of life,
so much like the dandelion’s sap that inches up its cut stem
even as rot creeps up from its bottom;
so that bodiless, withered, even still

the roaring yellow turns to hopeful white
and startles the gardens with
life’s defiant power.

The Fine Lines of Madness 

 
The axiom holds firm:  
Look crazy now,  
So, you can appear normal later.  
I’ve gone out of my mind  
To appear this fine.