Sometimes I stay up too late
and I start to think
and then I think too much.

And when I think too much
I start to remember,
And then I remember too much.

And when I remember too much,
I start to drink
and then I drink too much.

And then I go to bed
and stare at the ceiling
and I stare and think too much.

And when I go to sleep
I dream of losing you
and then I dream too much.

And then I wake up
from my dream of losing you.
And then I scream too much.

They were kindred spirits,
so very much alike.
One man leads a company.
Writes business plans.

The other man writes poetry.

The one, what I pretend to be.
The other, me.

At the corner of
Justice Way and MLK Drive
he set up a booth
under a light
and a sign that read
Right of Way

He put up a banner
over his booth –
Media Must Always
Tell The Truth.

The press rallied ‘round
and tore the booth down
and shot out the light –
no one could tell them
the Way of Right.

I think you are
my in-between love.
The one between
my last heartbreak
and my next one
with you.

Forget me –
my smile
laugh
tears
and anger

Forget me –
my touch
caress
hugs
my ***.

Forget me –
holding you,
wanting you,
loving you.
Leaving you.

Forget me –
I am gone.
I am no longer.

Sometimes I feel the pieces of me
are no more than
socks and underwear,
randomly stuffed in a drawer,
symbols of the pieces of a man
stuffed not so neatly in a mind.

Today I’ll put on yellow socks,
blue pants and green striped shirt,
red baseball cap with
Batman tennis shoes,
and other random choices.

And everyone who sees me knows
my brain works randomly like my clothes.

The shell of the gun
left the shell of a man.
Twice.
The one shot and killed and
the one who shot and killed.

I have this tool –
I don’t know what it is.
My dad gave it to me,
and his dad gave it to him.

8” long and 3/4 “thick,
3” across the head,
made of solid steel
weighs about a pound

I’ve used it as a hammer
And used it as a punch.
It works well as a lever
and also as a wedge.

One day I’ll give it to my son.
And like my dad did to me,
I’ll let him forever wonder
just what the hell it is.

Sometimes I feel the pieces of me
are no more than
socks and underwear,
randomly stuffed in a drawer,
symbols of the pieces of a man
stuffed not so neatly in a mind.

Today I’ll put on yellow socks,
blue pants and green strip shirt,
red baseball cap with
Batman tennis shoes,
and other random choices.

And everyone who sees me knows
my brain is working like my clothes.

Love is like a sail boat.
Hope is the wind and
dreams are the sails,
carrying you through
life’s rough seas,
always to home

My sails are
torn and tattered.
My hull is leaking
lying battered,
on the rocks of
Isle Alone.

Once upon a time
I used to be me.  
I knew what I could do,
and what I wanted to be.

No one asked if I had dreams
so I began to think I shouldn’t,
and the life I wanted to have
began to look like one I couldn’t.

So I began that grow-up trip,
cutting away pieces of me,
a little at a time, so slowly
I never even noticed.

Every day, another piece
discarded in the far-back mind,
replaced with the new pieces
everyone said I had to find

And then one day, suddenly
I’ve passed through the grow-up route
and now I am this collection of pieces.
I don’t give a **** about.

But I can still remember,
once upon a time,
when I used to be me.

I strongly dislike
People who hate.  
Because of color
or where they lived
or who they love
or even their favorite team.

I strongly dislike
People who judge.
As if they know “right”
better than you.
I leave all that
For God to do.

There is only
Hello
    then
In Between
    and then
Goodbye

Everyone gets a box
of marbles in their life.
Shooters by the score.

And every day we pull one out
And shoot it at the world.

Sometimes you move the world;
sometimes it swallows you up.

But tomorrow you always get
another marble.

I could give you words
and things
and thoughts
and moments in the sun

and promise you
no promises to break
if you’d just let me
love you for a while

She was just the one you call
for a last-minute date for the ball.
For a quick fun trip to the beach,
or a painful trip to the mall.

She was just the one you call
late at night, just to talk,
or early in the morning
just to go for a walk.

She was just the one you call
who made anything fun.
How did you not see
she was just The One, after all?

Sometimes someone passes
through your life, and
years later you cross paths
again, and that’s when
you realize you didn’t know
what you had back then

And then you realize
how lucky you were
you didn’t know.
Because you might not have
what you finally have now.

Women are the #1
cause of drinking.

When you find the right one
and times are fun,
you drink to celebrate.

When the right one
becomes the wrong one,
you drink to forget

And when there isn’t one,
and you are hoping for one,
you drink to pass the time.

I believe
in Santa Claus
Peter Pan
the Easter Bunny
and Love.
Although sometimes
I am not so sure
about the latter.

Marshmallows
are just clouds
you can eat
or squish
between your fingers.

Clouds
are just marshmallows
all grown up.

Been holding on, doing ok
Kinda, some days.
Not really though
Just what I say

I keep moving on,
Running through the night
Down this nowhere road
With no guiding light

Tired of feeling
like just getting by
and losing hope
at the speed of life.

Tell me what you’re feeling.
I know that’s not an easy thing.
Tell me if your leaving.
My heart can take the pain

Tell me what you’re thinking –
do we still have a chance?
Tell me what you’re hoping,
or is this our last dance?

Even if this is goodbye –
(that IS my greatest fear)
tell me what you want to say,
not what I want to hear.

Poets are hoarders,
collecting every memory
and emotion
and random thought,
and putting them
on a scrap of paper
or in a notebook
or a file somewhere
until the notebooks
and files and piles
of scraps of paper
become an infinite
collection of the mind’s
random capacity.

There was a young lady back then
Who started the music again
With poetry flowing
And emotions growing.
But she left and the words just quit rhyming

Today
Was a lot like yesterday.
It rained, I sat
in a room alone
thinking of you
and what almost was
and now is not.

Tomorrow
I will sit in a room alone
thinking of you.
It could have been – but isn’t.
It might have been – but wasn’t.

Someday
I will get up
and leave this room
where I sit alone
and think of you.
I will forget Almost and Maybe.
But not today.

We always talked about forever.
Now, as I walk down the hall
the last time
turn and look in your eyes
the last time,
walk out and close the door
the last time
I realize –
Gone is forever too.

My doctor says I drink too much.
Coffee, that is.
What does he know about true love and such?

So I cut back, from six to five.
Pots, that is.
It's hard, but I am still alive.

But what I really fear
is what he makes me do next year.

The silence is louder
than any cannon
in the moment
before battle begins.

I crouch, waiting,
scared, angry,
ready to ****
the man across the field
who is my enemy.

And in the moment
before battle begins,
I realize
that I am also
the man across the field.

I am millions
of men across the fields
in thousands of battles
through thousands of years,
waiting
in the moment
before battle begins.

For the first time ever, I understand
how hard it is to be a man.

You’re smarter than the other guy
but only half the time.

And smarter than the women –
NEVER

Thank you for dropping in -
I know your time is short
And mine is passing quickly.
So quickly you will

Learn to tie a bow,
count to 10, and
catch a ball

Make you own ponytail,
drive a car.
Flirt.

Find a guy
Say good bye.

What will we remember
in the coming years,
if all this ends in tears?

If passion become patience
and dancing becomes TV
and I love you
becomes good-night?

What will we remember?
Good times or just good byes?

I am not sure how it happened
I am not sure why
I thought she was saying good night
But she was saying good bye.

Lying here, in the sand,
under unseen stars
blanked by rain clouds,
amidst seaweed and sand *****,
and broken shells.

I am a piece of driftwood
tossed on the shore
by waves of a world
that cares not where I land,
or whether or not
I float back out to sea.

After she left
I thought a lot
about why she was gone.
I racked my brain
for all the things
I didn’t say
and didn’t do.
Until I finally understood -

Sometimes,
good things just die
A tree grows old.
Your dog grows old.
And sometimes,
even love grows old.

Before you,
all my yesterdays
were hopeless hours
of grey skies and
starless nights.

You came
and changed
everything.

Now you are gone and
yesterdays are here again.

Sometimes I need to be alone,
to close out the world
and just be alone.
I don’t want you to be
a helping hand – I want you to be
a friend that leaves me alone, and
let’s me get through whatever on my own.

Sometimes, really, I just need to be alone.

The path through the woods
Seems to entice the eye
The solitude is clamoring
Calling, screaming, that I
should follow it
to that quiet place
where I can dream
in solitary space

I have a friend,
named Pen Dulum,
a handsome man
who loves the pretty ladies.

And sometimes
my friend Pen
also loves the
big, stout lads.

So I guess it’s true,
what everyone says.
My friend Pen
swings both ways.

I am the Raucous Liberal.
It is my right to protest.
Ardently and violently.
Not only for my beliefs
but also against yours.

Freedom of Speech
is mine, and only mine.
If you want to voice
an opinion that differs
I WILL shout you down,
shame you to silence,
boycott your business
and call you racist or
any other derogatory
name I choose.

I will hide behind
worthwhile causes
to create disruption
and destruction.

Freedom of speech
is mine - and only mine.
You have no right
to disagree with me.
So shut the hell up.

Man is basically just
heart and soul and mind..

Some lose heart
and become the cruel,
who care only for themselves
and no others.

Some lose soul
and become the evil,
who care nothing about
damaging the world.

Some lose mind
and become the crazy,
who care little about
reality and truth.

Some lose all three,
and become politicians

We’d been at church all Friday night,
drinking the holy water.
And on the way to somewhere else
We stopped to buy more blessed stuff

A case of beer, I said,
and I will ride my bike
from here to there
across the railing of this bridge.

A dark steel flowing arch,
at least 10 inches wide
would take me on my midnight ride
over the river to the other side.

My headlight pierced the moonless night
As up the rail I rode.  I yell
You will all owe me –
And then -- OH HELL!

On the down side of that steel belt
The light shone out into only darkness,
And not onto my narrow path.
The tire slipped off the edge – and FELL

Hanging on the bridge, I watched
that 40 foot slow motion trip
and cried out #&%!#@&%$
when I heard it hit.

My bike in pieces
on the rocks below,
the remains a remainder
of a drunken ego.

I fear losing you
because I fear
not trying hard enough
or doing enough
or being man enough
to make you stay.

I’ve had so many
cuts and stabs and
holes punched in me
by the women who
passed through my life,
that when a new one
comes along and
we drink a toast to us
I leak all over
everything we try to be.

I rarely ever think of you,
and soft kisses,
gentle touches,
laughing eyes,
and furtive glances.

Except when I
sit in a bar with friends,
or sit home alone.
Go to church.
Go to work.
Go to sleep.
Wake up.
Other than that, I rarely ever
think of you at all.

She stabbed me in the heart, and
walked away without looking back.

The pain is slowly killing me –
someone please, pull out the knife.
Hold me, kiss me, give me life.

Sometimes,
in the dead of night
I remember us.
Not how we started
or even how we ended.
Just the goodness
of being us

Poetry is that secret panacea
meant to be shared
by those who pain so badly
that only literary
band-aids help.

Love is an hourglass,
the slow trickle
of a relationship
building like flowing sand.

A couple grains of smile,
a few more grains of kiss,
a lot of grains of laugh,
some grains of holding hands.

Each grain of sand,
memories of another
“moments like this”
grain of together

The flowing pile grows
‘til one says I love you.
And one answers back
I love you too.

A day or so of yesterday
I walked this land in joy.

Why am I so lonely now?
Why am I still here?
Waiting, always waiting.
Longing – where is she?
There is no end, I fear.
I will not be free.

Looking back to gentler days
and forward not at all
I find myself
Just wishing
that my life
would
simply
stop.

Do not say I’m handsome –
I know too well I’m not,
with tracks of time to mark
the memories I’ve got.

Say instead you’ll stay a while
And let me share your touch.
There’ve been too many through the years
that would not give that much.