At Gunpoint

Everything seems late,

senses finally come to stark

emptiness, and rest to skeletal-

you count your blessings

as life flashes in fret,

when (you're) at gunpoint.

Of fears and regrets

the always need to prove

to the world sanity, of hierarchies

and diminished things, a worthwhile

cause when it stares back at you

and tells you all is late.

So you can hang your head

high, your values low

swallow those shallow

forgive nesses, to tell her

that love is only the distance

between anger and a trigger,

and a reason to die.

the skin of teeth

as salt water sea, tears

of hate, tears of joy,

a pool full of chlorine

or pee, the sea

weed in your pipe

that looks like spinach

where time drowns in

leaves of paper

rolled into a joint

sour as lemon heads,

on the corner for work

that she so enjoys

the dollar bills to wipe

off the her filth

and needles

a black eye, a white guy

that sweats bullets-

running from drug dealers,

heels head up wicker,

sidewalk greets his face

noseful of snow and gravel

slip on a ice patch

under soft blown ghosts,

blood flows the same

red on a cold thick night

bandages on bruised sidewalks-

I have bled so in the middle

of manhattan, wondering

what man would offer his hand

to me as I lay on the sidewalk

bleeding with names graffiti

on the wall street of id.

Distant Fire

You tried to tell,

with words-

didn’t listen, just

kept throwing

wood into the fire;

heating a house

cold of a home,

spent less time to

what was on your mind

with artless words

voice reaches

in the small dark,

gone heart outside

the wind blows

breaks ice,

static time

makes a way

into abloom;

a room a father

lies dying,

dying lies

with words-

that a son

doesn’t hear,

just keeps

throwing wood

into the fire.

On the Run

I heard of a man,

who couldn’t stand

to see Time on the run,

being a two-timer

with a fistful of anger

he ran for his pistol,

stocked blind in the closet.

With an aim, named Glock

and a cock or two he shot

the clock stagnant on the wall,

and before it felled seam,

it let out two-chimes it seemed

and died with a dimmer to tell.

And though it was sad to see

outside the river and trees

flowing and falling in unison,

birds flapping their wings and

children ring-around-the-rosy

singing, told the old-timer

that Time hadn’t done stop.

And when that thought fail

he choked back his tears

for he had many years

sitting in awful resent-

so he pulled out his gun and shot

at the noontime sun that stood,

staring back with bite, knowing soon

it will turn night and blood moon.

Well, son-of-a-gun, he said

gaunt with a frail-hump back

and arthritis conquering bones,

he sat in the middle of his home

hammering out thoughts in mind-

deciding to use reverse psychology

to sate, counting backwards from

twenty back to one,

and he pulled the trigger a last time

against the gray of his head.