The Style

My parents don't appreciate The Style:
Be whatever, rip a bong, then smile.
I smoke a cig in my backyard,
I don't know what they do,
Or who to talk to.

My mother used to be the remedy
For her burdened child.
She's like a cop now,
I can't be honest without
a) fearing for my continued residence
b) fearing she's right
When she says I might not make it through the night.

I don't like that we fight.
I don't know how to stop it,
Unless I do as they say,
Drop It.

That's not it though,
(I don't want to sue
Again in psychiatric session)
But dammit here's a lesson
At least one of us has got to learn:

(When I figure it out,
This poem, my conscience waiting,
I'll return.)

Tipping Point

Perhaps the most modest and fair
Way to characterize man
Is to spot him center on the span.

Greater than the elemental atom,
Yet pressured evenly in the stratum.

He lives below the heel of Heaven's host,
But feats of strength and wit the child boasts.

The fulcrum of the lever as it tips,
As supernovas burst and cease to exist,
As bullfrogs hoot amphibian bliss,
As lovers idolize a kiss.

The only issue with this plan
Is its founder. Does he understand
Why God above has made him such,
Or why he wields the blunderbuss,
Or why his open wounds will puss?

He doesn't, so in the snow he shivers
And longs for widening idle rivers.

Bank of America erred in my favor

Bank of America erred in my favor,
Two hundred new ducats in my account!
What act of charity, what behavior
Rewarded me this auspicious amount?

20 buys beer and cigarettes.
40 pays for a parking ticket.
One hundred and forty for a halfie of sess,
Sell three eighths. The rest, roll that shit.

The beer is gone, the volume rising,
The squares and weed are working well.
Where is the smoke-sack, is it hiding?
Vanished to nowhere as far as can tell.

The Lord that gives from the thinnest air
Hath stopped the wind from blowing there.
Two Benji Franks, a sack to slang,
And none to smoke. It isn't fair.

The Anti-Climax

Up and over seven rocky hills,
Down into the valley to cross a stream,
I carried nothing on my back but chills,
Who chided, "Chase her, chase your dream."

I followed commands my heart issued out,
Racing, demanding, it yelled to me the route:
"Cross these vasty plains ye cowardly virgin!
Run to the place, I promise you her face."

The mountain I crawled up to call her phone,
(How long did I listen to a flat dial tone?)
Ringing, I did it, now it's up to her...
A voicemail message. The smoke and I alone.

My heart is a liar,
And I must wander home.

Beside Tonight

Alone in my parlor beside tonight,
A thought curdles inside my chest
Of she,
Who wears the wind upon her breast
And doesn't talk to me.
Doesn't think of me for all I know,
Probably
She rests her legs on a sofa
And rests her eyes
Where some other guy
Tore a piece of her heart and chuckled.

My heart will bear more sorrow ere
I'm rapt in golden-goddess hair,
But she, unknowing, wouldn't lose a wink
For my, still growing, tenderness that's pink
And reddens as I lay my eyes on fair
Features that melt Adonis into Hecate's stink.
I muse, I funk, I meditate on she,
Who thinks, considers nothing fond of me.

Lightly child of the Ocean

Lightly child of the ocean
Come to quell the witch's tide,
Instill in me the ancient's notion
To meditate, reflect, and bide.

A tragedy in twenty acts
Was set against the summer sun.
My burning wish was to attract,
But she, the mermaid, didn't come.

Zelda in her blooming years
Cut a figure much the same.
Gatsby, did he shed a tear
When Tom his rival spoiled the game?

I take myself to moonlit beaches,
Absorbing waves from far and deep,
And think of Gatsby as he reaches
To hold what he could never keep.

And I lay on the dark sand
As I try to weep.

Assuming a Grip

Man and she were put on Earth, as 'twere,
To celebrate bonds twixt him and her?
Such is the gift the Lord has wrought,
Confining love to a single spot,
The public arena for private affairs,
A boxing match for splitting hairs,
A hug-a-thon for subduing tears,
A mirror to reflect a tome of years.

The good Lord peopled his lands with differing types:
One to fish and one to wipe,
One to love and both to gripe.
I suggest it was under the Tree of Eden,
The titular sense of good and evil,
That lovers first quarreled and determined one to be regal,
The other, heathen.

Can a smothered sense of commonness,
An ignorance of universal duress,
Or total lack thereof,
Be the fount of universal love?
No son of damnèd Adam
Has found a Madam
Worthy to betroth
On the merits of her tenderness alone
I suppose.

Romanticism isn't in ditches,
Just occluded by some new school,
Which is...