I've loved the wrong people
But I've loved them right
I've learned how to love
The people I shouldn't have
I've given up my heart
I've shown up my art
Expected what they couldn't give
But I've done it right
I've loved purely and bravely
But the direction was misguided
But I can't help to fanthom
That maybe one day
The right person will show
And I won't love him right.

Can I learn to forget
someone I love,
someone who hurt me
not necessarily intentionally,
but enough that it would be
insanity to try and remain?

What a dashing figure,
shirt unbuttoned halfway
as he delivered
his lines with grace.
However, this is not a gay man’s appraisal
of another man’s handsome face,
but a straight and secure observation,
a poet’s reflection
informed by the actor’s
performance.

Let the world rot
Let it sink in decay
because I got no faith
in this human race.

What a folly
I live at a fools address,
try not to deceive myself
but give so much
to touch and support
the one I love
with no reciprocation.
I live in the wasteland
of alienation
leaving with the taste
of nothingness on my tongue

I drive.
Each night passes by
cold shadows
tell no lies,
by flicker strangely
like specters
dying before me.

The road is mine
and I am its,
possessed by quiet reflections.
Daylight finds
hills that ride
and roll
up and down
all around me.

Stimulants,
set to see me
safely home,
little nicotine sticks,
not actual cigarette
of vapes
but gas station
electronic
devices,
stacked with
lots of caffeine.

Music and podcasts,
audio books
play by to fast,
they never seem to last,
because the drive never ends.

Hotels,
hot showers,
more caffeine
then overtime hours.

Until,
they settle me down
to one worksite
and that rogue
road work life
fades fast behind me.

Part of me misses
the unpredictable madness.
Part of me is grateful
for the stability.
Its healthy
cause I get better sleep.
Now I drive the same route
every **** day,
but I miss the strangeness
of the different roads
I used to take.

Do you know how to love shadows
sit in a sick stew of solitary confinement
for a crime you did not commit?

Do you know the feel of someone else’s violence
the stinging lashes, reddening
rage distorting
fury unleashed
by someone who seems
to hate you
as much as they
hate themselves?

Do you know the flinches,
the constant guarding,
the tears cried
only when no one else
is in sight
cause why
give those ******* the satisfaction?

Do you know the self-deprecation
self-debasing
pretending that your pain
is so freaking hilarious?

Do you know the loneliness
of the vacuum
cause you distrust
any stranger
who might touch
you?

Do you know the shame
and pain
when people push
and claim
that you should let
the perpetrator
back in to your life again?
Do you know
how it feels
to press down
on the skin that swells
while tears and snot
stifle your breathing
after a beating,
how the physical pain  
of the abuse
seems to weaken
but the other stuff
leaves you wishing
you were never born?

There’s blood in the sky
fits the tears I cry.
I walk the streets
each and every night.

There’s strangers here
but they don’t’ have to be.
I could fully engage
our shared humanity.

A smile to go,
in a big mac bag,
I’m working on
my mcdonald heart attack.
Its just that
the big breakfast
is the one thing
I look forward to.

Its an empty life
It’s a lonely place
but I never let them see
the ****** tears on my face.

Its three to eleven
or eleven to seven.
It’s a gym membership
that gets me fit.

It’s a caffeine addiction
with a video game problem,
But all I work for
it isn’t love
its just enough money
to get me by.

He is not here
and there is
a clear fear
that my dear
brother
will die
in some other country.

Perhaps, a plane will crash
split and bend
while it spins
spiraling
like a wild football,
and fire will rain,
and there will be pain,
and I will not see him again.

Perhaps, some religious sect
will find and collect
my brother and his new bride
to collect a ransom check
or **** him for his religious views.

Other deaths come in to my head.
Unbidden nightmares
that wake me.
Then I daydream
that he returns to me.
A small red breasted robin
singing joyfully,
a reincarnated being.

Sadly, I do not believe such things.
So, I still dread the day
someone comes and says
your brother is dead.

To see you smile again
to play a game of
Chinese checkers
and then dominoes
watch wheel of fortune
to see who knows
the answer faster
then those *******
on the show.

To see your
scraggly face
half-grown beard
silent strong type
who smoked a pipe
who worked the campground
near the end of his life
just to make a little more money
and have something extra
to do at night

To go back to when
we three were traveling
together to New Salem
me the small skinny
child with tubes in his ears
and you two old farts
who took me there

Now I only see you two
in dreams.

The fields of dust
become dry death
as the surviving few
choke on the stew
of putrid fumes,

slippery viscera,
a dismembered
remembrance,
the living entranced
by the ultimate
state of existence.

Null,
zero gains
nothing comes
back here again.