Modesty
Boy-cut panties, crumpled on the floor
Weapons stashed behind the door
Crucifix bedroom wall backdrop for
The sexting pic sent to you,
Un-asked Modesty is a luxury
Hypocrisy
When life is exposed
For all to see
These are poems that never
Had a chance
Shot down, on some city street
At 25
By scared-to-death police
still alive
Scarlet letters and prison terms
Credit scores and carpet-burns
Poetry bombed to bloody shreds
While waiting on friends
At a coffee shop
that never came
Give your life away
Every chance you get
Like Allen Ginsberg’s
Marijuana cigarettes
What you don’t give away
gets taken, anyway
Forsaken and destroyed
Poems picked up
Roaming free in neighborhoods
With no tags
Then, out of mercy
gassed away
Like modesty, like secrets, like shame
What we give away
Comes back again
Like oceans turn to rain
San Francisco Postcards
I want to mail you San Francisco postcards
Postmarked Philadelphia, PA
I want to lay with you in Dallas
Curtains open,
Neon skyline glowing on your skin
I want to find you waiting there
At baggage claim In lingerie,
Damp thighs and hungry eyes
I want to fuck you from behind in Denver
In some beat joint on Colfax
And grab and squeeze your neck
As your Corpus Christi climax
Washes over us
I want to sit with you in dimming light
On a porch that faces south
And speak candidly, with humor
Of lovers we have found
Taken, made, or used
Let us celebrate the carnal,
With coffee
And consecrate what’s true
San Francisco postcards last forever
The postmarks never do
Spirals
I dig the perspective of poets
Elder professors and age addled
Heads
Beats that somehow survived
The scars of their lives
And sit now
To write
In public places
Since empty nest homes
Have become too lonely
Those that know it is an endurance race
On a circular track
Perhaps a spiral
Perhaps downward
Grey eyebrows furrowed
Above eyes that have never
Stopped searching the horizon
For a sunset or sunrise of beauty
I dig those with no more answers
That can easily see past
The next November election
That can love without
Wagering their own Identity