A quick laugh

I’m good as a quick laugh

Sharp and direct

Needless to say the least

There’s no reason to react

Salt

Whenever it feels

I’ve nothing left,

I’ve always got a little.

And a pocket full of salt—

This Wilde Charade

The romantic in me

Wants to kick the charade

And love you less like Shakespeare—

But it’s this Portrait

Of Dorian Gray that’s damned me Wilde

I don’t dare

Laying Down and Underpainting

She called our love kitsch

From the 17th floor

Williamsburg high rise

Overlooking homeless in the park

Under dressed and over exposed

Was I kidding her or just killing myself?

Fascinated by her manic beauty

As she tore apart the morning in disguise

Throwing fits of rage like I’d paper in a bin

Stripping away my senses like her past

It wasn’t as much a choice as it was survival

Leaving her lust like the vanilla

She tasted on my ghost

While laying down the underpainting

For her latest masterpiece in loss

carnival games

I don’t really know

Exactly what I am

Perhaps a shadow of my former self

Turned inside out

Back to his former self

Like a Ferris Wheel spins

I can be any focused face in the crowd

Though I don’t know the difference anymore

And we’re too old for carnival games

Broken Violin

In a deep hot

Summer night

I was nobodies fool

Playing poorly

My broken violin

For no ones ears

But my own

Oddballs

We were so full of dread

Neglect and forlorn

That it made us invincible

And Oddballs to others

belly of the beast

I’m a writer at my worst

Never at my best

In the belly of the beast

I’m boiled like the rest.

Tomorrow’s Shadow

So now all we get is tomorrow.

While yesterday’s dreams unravel.

Ticking like a clock are we

ever able to grasp the moment?

Present in ourselves,

though hardly in another.

Tomorrow’s but a shadow

hurrying to catch up.

Rolodex

I’ve got this Rolodex emotion

Whose contacts intertwine

Like a bramble of commotion

When I’ve dropped another line