the more beer i drink
there more blasphemies
the more heresies i think
but honest…there is that
He knows what i’m thinking
but i only know me
only it seems when i’m drinking
every hidden thought pours
as if from some endless tap
every broken buried nightmare
cut into my scarred self
every lost place on my interior map
is thrown up and onto my lap
but He listens all the same
this great comforter of drunks
this beautiful lover of sluts and monks
He says…i know i know i know
i always knew, i never couldn’t know
and i can pass out stupid and broken
because He’s always there – just so

we are under
            under it all
under sky that presses
beneath the weight
a whole universe
under it too
not above…not really
under my flesh
inside my skull
i am, we are…in…
                        buried alive
comfortable and wrapped
bound tight in our skin
for the long ride

i am cold, sometimes
in the shining sun
and hot amidst
a winter’s ice
so strange to be
a broken barometer
where lows are highs
and wets are drys
but really
i would have it
no other way
with a spring
out of place here
and a cog loose
over there
why its a kind of character
i suppose
something that causes
me to click
to whir in a way
that turns some heads
and in looking
i might be seen

there are some old trumpets
that sound a better sound
the more beaten the brass
a mournful, experienced wail
that brings to stop the ones –
those that walk furious, fast past
it might be the cracked crying
of year over year over year
attempts at something bright
and dreams of a broader smile
that burnish the once soft gold
to something seeming forged
in a hotter, hellish blackened flame
but it’s now music all the same

what springs forth
from the crevice
of a broken heart
but water salted in blood

what makes the tear
worth the while
but undoing the rock
with a nourishing flood

that something living
might grow forgiving
a blind man now understood

Alfred, Lord Tennyson humbles me
with sixteen lines of Break, Break, Break
no more beats than two minutes of heart
but enough pure soul to make mine ache

this lighthouse sits on irony
spinning a siren blaze to the seas
an attractive fire in the empty dark

crying –

“stay away!
stay far from my lonely shore!
for i was perched on death
to sing you songs of danger
to save your life and those with you
leave me to face the grasping waves
for this is a bright you cannot have
lest you crash broken upon my rocks”

there is a hand i once beheld
a hand once first to be held
it is out there somewhere
maybe cold, or warm in another
maybe dead now – bleached and buried bones
but once these fingers unfolded
to twine in mine, enfolded
a first evidence to me
that i, that you, that we
we’re half of what we’re meant to be

your writings are like poor puzzles to me
you puke your poems from great heights
and they splash gross upon the ground;
were you drunk when you wrote them?
it’d take a forensic pathologist to break the code
how’s a guy supposed to know what you consumed
that made this partially digested verbal shit-storm?

maybe i’m just sick…
maybe my leavings are not tea leaves
for your personal prognostications
just get a mop and clean it up
or let it dry, hold your nose and move on,
move on to a cleaner place