Though it changes appearance and even direction there is, in the end, one road and that is Love, paved through with kindness, peace and mercy. This is the road that leads us to God, and to each other.

These performers: the pay is not spectacular so how can that be what keeps them doing this? Or is it merely the sex? No, a man can easily have sex with another man in a variety of ways and places. If that’s what he wants. But there is some deep need to engage in this emotionally exhausting and psychologically risky deed of fucking and being fucked publicly, letting someone else see your strive naked with yourself, with another human being. Offer up to the public the most private deed you can do making fantasies real.

I really want to be a poet
I want to be a drunk ass bitch
I wasn’t to sit around butt fucking naked
Smoking poetry and reading cigarettes
Just like I am now
I really want to always
Always be like I am right now
And change forever
And everything I’m saying makes sense
Then I’m doing it wrong
Cause no one around here makes any sense
And if I’m clinging to things
I’ve been clinging too long
I really want to take all of my clothes off’
And roll around like a ball of dirt
I really want to shock the shit out of you
You never needed that shit anyway
And all I needed….
All I needed….
I am afraid that God gave me everything I needed.
And doesn’t
want me jingly jangling about
with anything I don’t

The long look is the one that serves the public best.

We are in this predicament called life together... we have no choice but to come to the help of the fallen.... ALL the fallen.-- June Calwood






To me every writer is a journalist, to write is to tell the truth, to give it the very long and examined look. Fiction provides the longest look. That is the power of the storyteller. Every storyteller is a poet. There is no poet who doesn't have the right to escape the lightning rod, and if we haven't jarred someone then we haven't done our jobs.

There’s not going to be a soul to thank me for these dreams--I’ve kept
I did not make them up
they fly on in
the din of weeping princesses fills this tenement
the lament of the drunk outside
becoems mine
whisky and wine
while I sit--while I lay on my back
naked--tracing shadows alone’
four in the morn--and light another
cigarette

ah--forget it!
you think the writing life is easy
how’s it easy?
No validation
this permanent vacation from the world
anyone else knows

Andn ow again--I know love--which is to say I get laid
and curl up in the widnow
hands wrapped aroudn ankles--to watch the rain roll
down on Reilly Street
I see one man below
--walking slow--to spite the storm
I learn
I learn the secret--life is lonely
No--only some of the time

When you came over the loneliness melted away
you said--you said putting your hand to my cheek--
give me your lonely--your tired--your poor!
thrust them into the door!
And in the dark I thrust them all night
My God! The door was so tight!
I imagine that a world was made in that explosion
I can’t imagine how you held me, my body tossing
the next morning your hand touching--
that spot--that bone--that place on my hip--
your arm tossed over me
your breast there to feed me.

And I thought and I thought
now there’s nothing else
Now--
I am really naked
and she understands me

And the bus rolls below on Reilly Street.

tonight i was going through old files, old stories. the amazing thing is that a few months ago i felt like i was at and end of my young writing career, and now i see branches and branches to travel in. this path is a good road to walk, it's a good river to sail. the river in.

1.

Don't leave me
here in this
so called longing
something more
than that
less than lust
a trifle more than
frustration
we would
always be
touching
if i had my way
and i would not be
burning
throbbing
waiting





2.

here
at the edge of the earth
I think I love you
Though I haven’t met you
And I long for you
Even though I touched you
Half a thousand times last night
When I was sleeping
And you came to me
And I woke up
Like a puff of smoke you disappeared.

In Indiana we get the leftovers, but thank God, only the leftovers, of the hurricanes down south. The rains of Saturday plunged us into a cold that saw me getting out of bed Sunday morning in August, trembling, and moving all business to the kitchen, where I opened the stove and sat in front of it, depressed, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the rain to fall. All I could think was how I was not ready for winter, how horrible the last winter was and how long it took for hope and sunlight to come again. This morning I was talking to a friend and she said exactly the same thing, and this made me feel better, part of the human race again.

i'd rather not write about losing you
leaves are falling from these trees
who will believe me
if i say i feel the same way
if i say
if i say
i get a little sick
thinking i will never
stick it to you again?

that i will never taste you
again

that i will never

again

be in
you?

i can't believe you're not butter
you should be butter
then i could spread you over toast
like you deserve
then i could spread you across me
consume you
revel in you

i can't believe
you're not life
surely you must be life
you are nothing but life
to me
and every
time i take you in
you are water
energy

and i talk of taking you in
then
why are you the one consuming
me?

past ten lightning levins the sky
and i go to the grandmother of everything

pour juice all over her terra cotta head
say

mother tell me

and she whispers to rival the wind in the tree
and the stone in my heart

grace is everywhere
forgiveness is not new
tears make the flowers
grow
have faith in love
know folks are foolish
walk in this spiral
believe in stone circles

he said

like someone who didn't know
but hoped

the meek inherit the earth?
and she turned to him and
said
"the meek don't inherit
shit."
and i know what he hoped
and i know what she meant
and privately
always believed it

sitting here now i know
what she learned
that patience
is meekness
that silence is meekness
and meekness is peace
and meekness inherits
by sitting in a rocking
chair
smoking a cigarette,
drinking your coffee
doing your daily duty
in peace
watching those fools run
around
run themselves
and their plots
through the ground
till all that is left is you
having overcome much
by the art of rocking
the prayer of smoking
in past times put upon much
but now
sitting here
meekly