***** from the bottle,
Warm.
Hot dogs from the package,
When your down and *****
The grotesque becomes magic.
Pawning a guitar for a pellet gun,
To procure breakfast.
Squirrel stew in the back of a scamper camper.
Spotlighting bullfrogs,
And mopping floors for a hot meal,
And a cold beer,
And a sympathetic ear.
Nights when the blacktop turned into void,
And the painted lines became a tightrope to nowhere.
Full circle,
Bangor to Frisco,
Any woman who was willing to sleep in the bed of a truck
Was a queen for as long as she stayed,
Always had **** concealed on me,
The copper piece of road currency,
To the gold and silver, of *** and gas.
The exchange rates would change overnight,
But syphon some gas at a truck stop
And it all will be alright.
Misspent youth, following bands
And getting lost along the way.
***** from the bottle,
And hot dogs from the package.

Good old Hawk. He was quite a guy. The truth of the matter was that Hawk was a needle freak. He was hooked on morphine. He had hepatitis. There was a whole in Hawk's arm where all the money went. Sad but true. Except for enough money for two beers for the Hawk and me.
Who has to hear it. No one, everyone. Needles can be useful for medicine: they can also be a curse. You pierce the skin and feel the ruch and the juices flow unil you get your fill. But there never is a fill until it's over. Don't kid yourself. It will be over because it's a dead end trip.
You'll crash at the end of your last trip. And the trip you have on earth will be on of misery and despair. Nirvana doesn't come cheap. Hundred dollars a day habit could lead to desperate measures. A life of crime, scamming, pawning, betting, borrowing, and stealing. I'm glad to say Hawk held himself above all this. It could not have been an easy road out to travel.

He overdosed three years before the end.
Hawk actually died and was revived by some kind of good fortune, or was it good fortune? Hawk after this had no memory or regular thought process. Hawk wasn't the same man after that. It was not a pretty sight. He was a hollow man, a mere shadow of his former self.

I grew tired of telling Hawk the same thing over and over again. He lived with us for a few years. He moved out into a group home which he didn't like -- too much macaroni. About six months later Hawk was found on the floor of the group home bedroom. This time he was really dead. I don't know if needles were involved. I never heard the details. I like to think needles were not involved for the last three years of Hawk's life. I know he was clean for all the time he stayed with us. However, a great deal of damage had already occurred when Hawk came to live with us.
Hawk was a night person. He would lie there on the couch watching TV all night long with our dog Ming faithfully by his side. They loved one another those two. They were soul mates. Hawk gave Ming her favorite toy -  a little blue ball.
Hawk never gave up. His sister would come with raspberry pie and Hawk would glow for a few days.
Anyway, I gave Hawks eulogy. The song for the eulogy, "The needle and the damage done" by Neil Young.
To soar like a Hawk. To crash into the ground.
I'd like to think his spirit soars like a hawk. Maybe now Hawk has found the peace he never found in this life.

A governess, a guardian of the young, so known and dear as to be called “Mother” and a noblewoman, just barely 12 by age, named Portia, sit talking as the sun sets the stage for a cool, cloudless night.

“Mother, who invented candlelight and the slow, delicate brush of lips?”
“Some rakish boy, pawning his experience for present pleasure, no doubt.”
“Say true, Mother. If you were a man, would you find this common body worthy of love?”
“You show no blemish child, and display a certain bony voluptuousness - I should think.”
The governess begins to comb and braid Portia’s hair for sleep.
“I saw Portincio this morning, in the courtyard.”
“The boy from Padua?”
“He’s a man Mother, and his cast portents a passion so sweet - it shakes my very frame.”
Mother chuckles, “Even hopeless birds sing in cages.”
“I am not hopeless!” Portia writhes angrily, like a snake about to strike but mother calms her.
“Shoo, shoo, now,” Mother purrs, brushing all the more gently, “I meant nothing of it.” After a moment, she continues, “Love is more than coquetry, little one, and it soon passes - like a parade, or a rash. For now, be happy, you are like the chaste stars - unreachable.”

A full moon illuminates our oblivious escape.
The incandescent devil ignites our narrow path  and pilots our parcel's placement terrorizing earth's landscape.

"I'll give you $180 for your wrist watch."

"You animal, this was my grandfather's Timex, I'll take $360 and a barter."

"$240, take it or leave it!"

The moon meanders for a moment, to contemplate whether to turn a full or half cycle. She settles on a little more than half a turn.

"Fine, I'll take $240, but you're gonna lose a few months."

"Deal! Tell January, November and December to *******."

"Sold! Haha, you sucker, those cubes have been melting for decades anyways."

In a blanket of breath now pleasantly swathed
Our bodies made broken; prostrate in the fog
Exhumed from the boughs of tree-tops so balmy
On alabaster bones that tremble quite calmly
With thoughts of tomorrow, our miasmic today
That in wistful contemplation is thoroughly dismayed
Like the sullen, windy chimes of a church bell that rings
In the hardened heart of winter, on frost-bitten strings
Which frail, arboreal appendages, with nimble purposes pluck
To indulge the dulcet beds, in which our thoughts are tucked
In a licentious yawn that drifts, from scentless, sleepy shrouds
Like azure ships now sailing, through lofty, lilting clouds
Our pendulous hands still pawning these passionate decrees
With fervent fears to consummate your swiftly slumbered vestige
Atop my flesh, all slick with sweat, and in shadows sorely rapt
The mellifluous hum of reverent sight, through keyholes quickened pass
My heart is estranged from the banal constraint of this stagnant mortal coil
Held aloft in the piercing plea of love’s unbidden toil
All visions captive to the subtle sway of your chest now undulating
Like waves that crash, in rhythms vast; my thoughts, they are invading
Urgency deemed, from unconscious form, in sharp pangs of desire
The crease between your lips, the hand heavy on my hip: the nuances in which I am mired
The idiosyncrasies of you like a poem that is repeatedly folded
And jettisoned into my open mind, where these precious admissions molded
Taking form in tangible caress, to envelop with silken shivers
On the sill of windows wide where lonesome flowers withered
Thus proffered throat, in porcelain quiver, where stilted lungs concealed
In tear-wrought arrows, tempered and true, fly with errant zeal
To pin my ruminant heart upon this ragged, beggar’s sleeve
And chain my weightless body, from where it floats among the eaves

Do you remember our bulletproof afternoons?
The ones downtown wandering the pawn shops, looking for nothing.

Remember the antique Coca-Cola bottles you loved?
Remember the good deals on the old Nintendos?
Remember kisses you gave me in the back of the store?
Remember pretending the cameras couldn't see me touch you?

Remember holding my hand outside?
Remember your hand on my waist?
Remember the rain on the sidewalk?
Remember me laughing?

Remember the old books on the shelves?
Remember me stroking their spines?
Remember me writing my own stories about how they got there?
Remember watching me and loving that?

Remember the jewelery?
Remember the bracelets and necklaces?  The trinkets of broken loves?
Remember the rings?
Remember watching me sooth the lonely rings through the glass?
Remember what I said?
Remember how it broke our hearts, to see them broken beneath the glass?
Remember how the engravings broke our hearts?
Remember how you held my hand and kissed my shoulder?
Remember how you told me not to worry?

Do you remember pawning my ring?
Remember pocketing the cash?
Remember watching the pawn man place it beneath the glass?
Remember the couple holding hands, hearts breaking over my ring?

Do you remember breaking their hearts?

It's the centenary of the proclamation – we shall lift our glasses,
not to Guinness or to Arthur Diageo's dream of the Emerald Isle,
distracted, appeased, quelled an' ****** on the tainted black stuff,  
designed to keep us inferior, pig-carriers - at arms with ourselves,
but of Irish craft, guile an' the rising of Irish spirits, the creation,
of a dream long suffered for, long wished for, celebrated in private
for shame of the austere reflection of a country and its people lost,
We shall lift our glasses to the beginning of todays sour ending,
A'sure twas' a good Easter that year.

Hand shakes warm, clean an' orchestrated with restrained sincerity,
A Kingdom reborn, a Republic divided by the maths of peace-makers,
The brave sacrificed for the sneering survival of these eels of politics,
Landowners who owned more than just land - the people's will,
Testament to this abortion of values, morals, history and desire,
is the wholesale pawning of the Irish coast – to support our captors,
the constant glance over our shoulders with panic in our quiet eyes,
as the money men, smug with irresponsibility laugh safely inside,
A'sure twas' a good Take that year.

Better to be dead
Than live in your head
All the lies and discontent
Are better left
In the cleft
Of cleverness
You slice
While i sever it
Never hit
The hard six
Without two clips
Backing my ****
I submit
To nothing
But
The sultry shade
Of my suffering
While still loving
Every minute
Of the absolute
Truths
Starting coups
With youth
In suits
Made of bombs
Watering roots
To grow on
Lacing boots
For strong arms
Staying calm
In the calamity
Detonating
The anxiety
Inside of me
Pawning the notoriety
For a long gone society
In the brawn
Of a family
Burning in the tragedy
Magically
Melting
The dynasties
Of rotting cities
Raising from the grave
With rave reviews
From slaves in suits
Who missed the news
To the dark pursuits
Of suicidal fools
Abiding by the rules
Of lawless crooks
Flawless cooks
Of crutches
For assumptions
In thunderous
Concoctions
Altering the functions
Of the faction-less
Getting traction
With the hack and slash
Mashing the happenstance
Of meaning
Seeding into rants
I am the giant
I am the defiance
In an alliance
Of one
Got all the ammo
But no gun