Cracked transparent, close to death
Overpriced, overused
rose fading too soon
I just want my music
Damn you.
Twisting the gold jack
There’s some static then
I hit the sweet spot between hearing
And listening
i.
Peltdraped and poppymilk forsaken,
I’ve clung like ivy to saltombed years.
Hanging sword in lonely palace,
Followed like personal stormcloud.
ii.
Holyheaded, rabid and rapid,
I’m bursting forth with spiders, like I always will.
I am to remain a king among carrion, chasing ravens,
Until my corvidplucked eyes return,
Stainedglass, to my steel plate and honeygold skull.
iii.
I’ve made a new home in this place;
This, the house of the tiger,
Built on bloodbricks and lovesongs,
Cradles us like a pearl in God’s mouth.
The severity of a bite
is not solely determined by
sharpness of the teeth
but also
softness of the flesh.
Press your lips and each thumb into the page
This is confession, after all;
it requires relinquishment, and you can’t
turn from your wrongs until you face them.
Loose the binds by naming their knots:
pride squarely at the forefront
of guilt’s figure 8, acquitting then constricting you
to the half-hitch of responsibility.
This may be your litany or not – to each
their own vice, thus their own liberation.
Yes – it will take spit and sweat.
“Ease” is only in the spelling; release
demands discomfort.
There she laid,
Empty gaze at the eternal abyss.
Her beauty broken,
Two holes in her chest,
One in his head.
His valentine forsaken
By the hand sworn to protection,
To have and hold,
To death they did part.
Another EMS from a few years ago call thats hard to forget.
Attended a class the other day
Just the most boring
Oh do let me say…
The man couldn’t teach
Just hemmed and hawed
And wandered around
I sure wasn’t awed
But so successful
In things that he does
That’s what was told me
That was the buzz
What a waste of my time
And the room was so cold
I sat feigning interest
Slowly growing green mold
I sat till the end
Wasn’t raised in a shack
Two hours of my life
That I’ll never get back
I’m sure he was nice
I mean, he wasn’t an ass
But it sure wold behoove him
To take a speech class
humans…
are a cruel species
to animals
to the earth
to children
to each other
thanks to the miracle of technology
we are overwhelmingly inundated
with the images and sounds
of the very worst of what is
all over the world
if we turn off our connections
are we turning our backs?
in the face of such enormous atrocity
my voice feels so insignificant
The Bottle
After Father’s Day,
as I always do,
I take a bottle
of Maker’s Mark
Whiskey
Handmade,
its trademark signature
red wax flowing down the neck
of that bottle,
every bottle distilled
at Loretta, Ky. USA,
its fully matured contents,
light amber, carmel
from charred oak barrel,
my father’s medicine for PTSD
contracted in WWII,
machine gunner
for Patton’s Headquarter Company
in the Battle of the Belgium Bulge,
when he was blown out of his foxhole
by an exploding tank.
I place the bottle on his tombstone.
I have no way of knowing
who will drink it this year.
