At 6 feet apart
mask no kisses
love has no heart
only near misses.

He shouted in a whisper
my name in his phlegm.
I miss you at the end
can we just start again?

I'm 75 years old. I'm 17 again.
Old memories playing on a screen
in silent black and white, piano
music, time sees where I've been.
Happy Birthday. Blow years away
the candles set the years on fire
burn the bridges and words we say
regret the lost fierce brief desire.

We were baptized in wars violence.
Friends blown up bless us in blood.
Flak blows dear friends to death as
we watch. We're angry and terrified.
We're at bat and bases are loaded.
We roll dice. We **** and **** us
fingers crossed will death get our
next door foxhole and we live on?

the time it is a coming
the end is getting near
guitar strings strumming
the sorry sound of fear
I die without last breath
nobody notices or cares
body burned in an oven
cremains in a cheap jar
destined for our Heaven.

You'll promise love.
You'll stay strong.
Almost like being free.
You broke my neck to ****
the pain and I hid my heart
from love's terrible lies.

We Lived Happily During the War
BY ILYA KAMINSKY



And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.

You got fired today.
   The money always gone
   again. I'm sorry.
   Ain't we got fun?
   Camping out on Main St.
   Puking over the bridge
   into the river's waters
   Ain't we got fun?
   I'm just a tattered *****
   beauty worn thin by time
   Ain't we got fun.
   anything for a dime.

My poetry starts with nicotine.
     After awhile I mixed in alcohol.
     Catholicism is a main ingredient.
     Puberty is a wicked mix of Absinthe.
     Next I add a father broken from war.
     My mom could be friend or betrayer.
     I had to maintain a delicate balance
     between being real or just amusing.
     Amusing is easy. Real is impossible
     yet here I am confessing once again.

Can we pour tears on the page?
  Paint war's horrors in poetry?
  Draw portraits with words?
  Make you feel love? First kiss?
  Broken heart? Pet's death?
  Parent's divorce split in two?
  Anguish of love in back seats?
  Can we poets make you feel it?
Life's butchers pacing beats
always end up eating ****.

You are too perfect.
Your skin makes me cry.
******* are always *****.
We **** and we will fly
too close to my past sun.
Trapped in a shrink's room
****** babble for ******.
Russian roulette my *****.
We drink to all and naught.
Dead cremains hit the floor
while we screamed and fought
explodes into our Nevermore.

There's a Yankee ship coming down
our river. We surrendered but blood
is still wet and bad. We keep our rebel
flag flying. I'm 15 and hold my dead dad's
rifle proud with unsure courage today.
I saw the cannon smoke before the sound.
and it sent me to the promised land my
head was vaporized and then my body fell.

I think I understand our subtle hatred
  for each the other. How long can we live
  in each other's shadow before we disappear?
  I had your children bloated while you took
  a lover. I ached for suicide but went nuthouse.
  Shrinks and pills and shocks convinced me
  to put my head in our oven and let it go.
  I thought of our children at the very end.

I was hatched into this life.
Egg and ***** agreed to
share a place together.
Happy father and mother.
Parenting is hit and miss
Carousel brass ring
another broken thing.
What else can I bring?

In 2 days I turn 73. Tonight I watched West Side Story 2.0.
Kathy was Maria to my Tony back when I was 18 and she 17.
We were in Love with love and nothing could deny it. We made our
baby girl in defiance and cracked our world in pieces. I cried at the
drive in movie on our wedding night and entered strange reality and
a new world in 1969 summer of love and walked a tightrope over
friends straight and bent ones in psychedelic colors and free love
that ended up costing us everything we ever really cared about.

Tiny dress and **** me shoes
       bring me back from the dead.
       I was sleeping in a graveyard
       inside the cavern of my head.
       You made my heart beat again.
       It throbs wild like a beast
       hungry for the promised sin
       starving for a siren's feast.

I told my cat to live forever.
   I gave my baby girl away.
   I listen to a song that breaks my heart
   I can't shed a tear or I turn to dust.
   I can't accept my tail end life
   just pick up dog **** and sleep alone.
My life becomes a catalogue of six
things to never do again.

You burned me up
  in your bonfire of
  the white hot fury
  of gasoline love.
  Real love is lost
  when lust is queen
  man or beast anything
  with a hole in between.
  With internet **** I howl
  alone at the full moon
  spill my seed in tissue wait
  for another shot at noon.

I lost faith in my religion and wander.
      Who can forgive my sins? Who can cast my
      demons from me? Who can bless me at death?
      Can I never be buried in sacred ground?

      Now my faith is in pills and ***** and soft
      places with perfume and happy endings.
      My church is a bar with a pastor named Tia.
      She speaks in tongues with a snake that bites.

      Her venom is the sweetest thing I've tasted.
      She brings me to my knees and I bow to her.
      I drink her blood and eat her in communion.
      I wake calm with my savior. I found my faith.

I'm a cowboy who's run out of time.
  My world is almost all fenced in.
  I'll be a wild west show pretty soon.
  Towns will be cities and trains will
  **** cowboys and Indians and Bison.
  Bury our hearts at wounded knee.

I'm not equipped to be an easy love.
I don't know why. Women can be the
nectar I need and ease my aching heart.
Desire is always offered with an
enormous cost that I'm unable to pay.
I try to make a silk purse from a pig's ear.
I give her pearls and lipstick.
Party girls don't want to meet the parents.

I'll write of our pact as novice lovers.
We made our baby to show them our
fierce vows to our communion as one.
Love always lasts forever we believed.
We were West Side Story in suburbs.
If only I could have died like Tony.

Do you think
I don't know
I left you to sink
in the undertow?

I know I broke
all that mattered
we never spoke.
I died splattered.

I am inebriated
I am liberated
from God's eye
judging til I die.
His eye is blinded
staring at my sun.
I am God's drunk
I am His only son.

We bury a great Lady
who kept us safe since
1776. She was ***** and
pillaged by the DC vipers
in expensive shark skin suits
and 500 dollar haircuts
thousand dollar ******
and selling the country
piece by piece as jobs
disappeared and they
became billionaires and
we wept at our burials.

We are never prepared
  shock of wrinkled grey
  House of mirrors distorts
  Roger Bacon has been
  lurking in my shadows
  scared I'll be the next
  in the arms of Christ
  on the list of the dead.
  We just got used to us
  for blood and screams
  old men chasing dreams
  live beyond their means
  bursting at their seams
  play their monkey schemes
  nothing is as it seems.
 Life comes and goes
  lurking in shadows.

Stepping high through the cotton fields
  so pregnant for picking the ***** midwives
  delivers cotton to white men calling yields
  counting the gold, nobody counts black lives,
  sush, keep quiet, the master needs his slave
  she is perfect his Sally so light so golden
  she bears his tainted fruit quiet and brave,
  history digs up graves and DNA TJ's beholden.

appetites are brakeless
    incessant sinners faceless
    ghosts hang everywhere
    whisper inside our lair
    we call it our dreams
    fearful what it means
    stare at the sun we see
    what will set us free
finally
gently
over edge of earth
back into universe...

I've looked for you for years.
   Soulmate, where is your shadow?
   I see your black hair and tears
   a Gypsy who will be my maestro.

   We ride lust unbridled in heat.
   Where are you? Are you a lie?
   Is it time to admit our defeat?
   Cross my heart and hope to die.

Hating me
set's me free
from the guilt
my cell I built.

did I see you in my blind spot?
were you ever really there?
were you no more than a blood clot?
we hid in shadows at a county fair.
we tried to make our baby Jesus
to walk on water and water to wine
you bled just a lost ****** ******
nothing came to life but our time.

The party was on fire the
  music was beating our hearts
  and we were courting on the
  the back stairs alone together
  and we held tight and soared
  into an impossible place and
  rode the beautiful beast as long
  as we could buried in my lies
  a grave stone in our eyes,
funeral choir played Our Song.

I watch the ****** on 5th St. dressed to ****
  circle over the wounded with starving appetites
  for all the sweets on display and perfume to up
  temptation for another 5 or 10 for Waffle House.
  Love is easy with fixed price and no strings.
  All I want is someone to eat forever after.

I turn a century tomorrow.
All my friends died long ago.
My face is melted candle wax.
My body is a question mark.
My hands are crooked claws.
My kin won't visit anymore.

This poem is born from the same
inkwell as Koko the Clown who
climbed the stairs endless nights
coming for my innocence as I
was still beneath my blankets.
They all come for my purity.
I gave it away at 11 to a Vargas
pin-up girl. I faux loved women
who never stayed my fantasy and
I took forever to breakup so I
wouldn't hurt them but always did.
Dismounting is always painful.

I submitted a piece of me
for your consideration.
Weigh me on your scales
compare my ugly creation.
It lives in squalor with
other poem ****** ignored
forgotten forever until one
of us will finally be adored.

A dime a dance
  seeking romance
  maybe seduction
  buying a chance.
  If hearts align
  among the stars
  our perfect sign
  and perfect scars.

Everybody dies. How doesn't matter.
    Life's a bad movie with a sad ending.
The living still send bills, call you up.
    Emails not returned to those sending.

The inks wet in the memory book.
Sooner than later you're forgotten.
Cremains in a dusty urn on a mantle. 
Funeral flowers turn black and rotten.

She seems happiest working in the dirt.
  She looks like a gypsy. Wild midnight
  hair, coal eyes and autumn's complexion
  smelling of earth, grass and dying leaves
  she takes my breath away and bends my
  knees as I beseech her to hold me close.
  She lives around the corner. I live in
  poet city where nothing is as it seems.

Come out wherever you are
outside your own inner space
lightening bug inside your jar.
Give a real smile on your face.

I remember as a child a trip
  to the zoo. Accountants count,
  janitors sweep, hucksters steal
  wealth, priests save lost souls,
  prostitutes sell easy love by the
  hour and pimps take a percentage,
  preachers sell heaven by the ounce
  and the IRS always gets its pound
  of flesh, politicians take bribes
  and shred the constitution smiling.

Susan Tucker
Thomasina Latina
Virginia Keenly
Linda Hotze
JFK Killed
Curly hair girl
Kathy my Love
broke our *****
made our Katie
in a Ford Mustang
killed your father
broke his heart
summer of love
tore us apart
burn the bras
halter tops
I drowned
in *******.

An invisible force that pulls
objects toward each other.
We were magnets and apples
falling from trees. Two planets
trapped in love's gravity kissing
in a photo booth universe.

I hope we did you proud.
  Mike died young of cirrhosis
  I live on in alcoholic haze
  no connection with the living
  just a **** or two and meet
  another **** in some dive bar
  where your ghost cheers for
  conquests without a heart.

Life is real
we lie
we steal
we cry
girl killed me
robbed her womb
too small to see
tiny attic room
we would've
had a ton of fun
you could've
loved your son.

You'll even miss your nightmares
    when they're gone. We exist on
    waves of time and build lives
    of small habits to hold our days
    together safe and sound. Change
    to routine is scary as hell and
    most unwelcome. I'll scurry like
    a mouse to your darkness. Trust
    you long enough to spend it all
    talking in a circle once again.
    We'll ride the wave again and
    wipe out over and over until
    the nightmare finally stops in
   a stone cold dead stillness.

The picture was from long ago in 1920's.
  Forget color they lived in black and white
  muted times with talcum powder and fancy
  hats and brooches. They look posed for a
  wax museum. 4 are smiling big but 1 is
  reluctant and looks forlorn. Maybe her
  husband died in Europe's wars or influenza.
  They're toasting something. Raised glasses
  to what I wonder? We all have things to
  celebrate and all have things to mourn.

When I wake again
I've lived too long.
Another day in prison.
My life is really gone.

Thunder storm
or war torn?
There's anger
in the chamber
no love lost
with a stranger
remind me to keep
track of every sin:
I'm trying
I'm lying
I'm crying
I'm spying
I'm flying off
the handle again.

You'd never believe what I saw.
Staring into the gaping maw
I saw Rusty's puppy paw
took him in my heart raw.
He died on the 4th of July
bombs exploding in the sky
I held him tight and knew,
it broke our hearts in two.