Category: Poetry

I was there…Where were you?
As the clock ticked its rhythmic tune,
As I–stood with only hope before a road so new…
I was there…Where were you?

As I – tirelessly struggled,
In my–acrobatic juggle of…
Everything that the world threw…
I was there…Where were you?

When I–entered our bed, my only pleasure was to please,
As the artist that is me with the greatest of ease,
Began to sculpt you a statue of everlasting truth,
I was there…Where were you?

When the children came,
When they cried at night,
When they looked to us for a guiding light,
When they longed for peace and needed us to come through,
I was there…Where were you?

When the battles raged, and I fought my way to the top,
With the world in my hand to hold or to drop,
When it all became too much,
When I was scared and confused,
I was there…Where were you?

When it all came crashing down…
When I fell from the top and I smashed to the ground,
When I picked myself up…broken and bruised,
I was there…Where were you?

Well there’s one thing I know to be absolutely true…
And it’s the Devil’s gonna come to collect his due,
And you’ll look to find comfort in these eyes of blue….
But… I won’t be there for you.
 

Vomiting ghosts, you are in deep.

You only (save) the money that
      created
you.
Never do you save the drowning. You are blind, to their call;

deaf to our wave.

Palatable proposals plaster you;
yet,
when eaten, they resemble apples.

Snakes bleed from your veins

when you are pricked with truth.

A shard of genuineness would be but a thimble upon your grave.
1.27.09

6.10pm

He creeps along the floor without a sound
A master of deception never to be found
A warrior found only in the darkest night
One that is always out of sight
His footsteps are careful and delicate at best
Always moving, never stopping not even to rest
He slips from the streets and into a home
Sneaking into their humble dome
He arrives upon the one to kill
A task he was chosen to fulfill
And draws a blade and raises it high
And cuts the throat to silence his cry
And just like that his task is done
Now the time to escape has come!
His hand drops a single powder of flash
And into the night he makes his dash!
He scales the rooftops with greatest ease
Leaving the guard with nothing to seize
Just like that he’s gone, out of sight!
The rogue vanishes into the night.

Things seem simpler then. 
      Oh sure there were those nights of
                    passionate   young
      rage.
      Lust.
      Backstabbing.
Too many whiskeys-
        not enough pot.
      Never enough pot. 
      We partied 
      until our bodies  heaved onto mattresses.
       Voluntarily?   Involuntarily?
 Of whom?            Our own?     Yours?
       Some poor lad falling in
       love with the   unattainable? 
    Some creep who fed us drinks
        all night and offered
        rides home?
      No thanks,     we’ll walk. 
 
    I had you. 
                                       And you had me.
                 And we had each other.
      Sweat-drenched,
dirt-covered.                Bleeding lungs.
      Ridiculous
      kissing games with rockstars
      we’ve danced to for years behind closed doors.
A bottle   of champagne
  and it aint no thing.
 
In the morning there’d be
coffee and cigarettes and
never more satiable conversation.
Never feeling more complete.

In it from overspending
for the most fabulous gift,
and seeing it after
a fight with his boyfriend–
on Valentine’s Day,
he takes off down the road
in the brand-new Mustang
gleaming with the flashiest
shade of it.
Revving the engine well past
its caution marks on the gauges,
and then missing the signals
flashing it in warning,
he plows into a wall of it,
painted like a barn with it,
but speeding down
parallel rails.
On force of impact,
it gushes like a geyser
from his punctured heart,
and the siren-lights
of the medics
swirl it too late.
After his family has chosen
a coffin silk-lined with it,
six men carry him down
a carpeted aisle of it.
At the wake, their eyes
streaked with it,
friends drink glass
after glass of it,
toasting the memory
of the flaming young radical
whose real name they had
replaced with it.

Bright daylight sometimes makes 
paradise too real to love, 
glinting off traffic snarling 
through high-rise hell, 
flashing lime-green tourists 
dodging the defeated, drunken homeless 
to admire motor launches always docked 
and little terriers in fancy-dress. 
 
But tonight a fairy-mist of fog 
dances with surf along seawalls, 
encircling the gilded faux-Venetian domes, 
making faint the bridge’s curve, 
softening the cruel edges 
of a soaring condo block 
that, like the masts of sailing-ships, 
now reaches into Neverland: 
 
The barks of dogs revert to primal howls, 
the vestigial memory of oceanic chaos 
whirlpools into present time. 
With its mysteries re-forbidden, 
paradise, for an hour or two, 
returns.

Some days she got so lonely she went outside
dreamed of the days to come when
she could be intoxicated
with his love.
The waiting left so much time
for lust, for longing and aching for
his perfect body, sculpted and beautiful.
She ached to be in his
strong arms where she felt
cherished and owned. He
possessed her and
captivated her with every
movement, every
word spoken with sweet passion, every
smile – that gleam in his eyes. 
Those days she was in agony
in want of him. He was
forbidden, so she had to wait
in anguish for the moment when they could be
Free! 
Free!
Free to be invigorated and
enraptured by each other’s love. 
Until then, she would
go outside
and dream.

The old oaks moan in ashen night
to a choral, rattling breeze,
as the moon slips again from sight
into the cloudy seas.
Dim skeletons dance to each gust,
bodies scratching along the earth,
staggering to their pace of lust,
and to their place of birth.
In growing light the chill departs
and at long last the day may start. 
And I reply to the words on the wind
An unsettling phrase, “Please forgive my sins.”

Ingredients:
1 father
1 son
alcohol
cigarettes
cancer 1
cancer 2
pain
football
movies
tv
coffin

Directions:
Mix father and son, add a dash of movies and tv, and a cup of football. Include a modicum of cigarettes and alcohol. Let sit for fifteen years. Add a mountain of cigarettes and a lake of alcohol, mix with a tablespoon of pain and cancer 1. Let marinate for two years. Finally, add cancer 2, and drown all other ingredients in an ocean of pain. Serve in a coffin.