Secret Final Boss

This was the very definition of PRIVATE.
This is only for me.
But you violated even that.
I want to feel sympathetic for you, but this time is not so easy.

Move Along

Patching it up, "Goodnight"

I kissed her -  needing that time away

and deep down, here it is (the real me)

so feeble

I was caught at once - vulnerable

reaching out to long ago, where the grass grew up to my thigh

dirt roads

things like that

It came to me, all of it.

My grandfather, how regal he wore his Stetsons  

My grinning dog Bandit, capturing the shoes of our new neighbors 

My Yaya, stubbornly navigating floorboards with a paint-bucket walker

My naievete, how I took this all in stride

like it could never be gone forever

Nature Boy Requiem

down in the breaks again

country boy in a cold alley,

right out of the movies

displaced

with a kiss on the lips

and a memory in the head

tonight i will stumble over the hardwood floor again

toasts all around

unorthodox, shooting it to death

til it's dead

a bloody mess on the ground

forgotten and over with

finally

from where I am

listening to the music that we liked

with the school on the other side

and the kids

would come home

with our friends on the outside

in some other place somewhere else

but I was good here.

in the shade, licked up

where I had it made.

I would bring toxic drinks down to the pool

and no one knew.

How big this world is, now that it's no longer quite all mine

I have this kind of thing about me

that doesn't feel quite at home without deck-chairs

and the sun in my ears

again -

nodding off

feeling very far from where I am now

captain plan-it

Got it got it got it

right where we want it

I can cast this to trap it:

Most parts: booze

Others: blurry eyes and unopened cardboard boxes

Forming up now - a true dumpster team if there ever was one.

Squad 1 - Days at the Pool. Reading comics.

Squad 2 - Hot room. Whiskey floor.

Moving in. Surrounding on both sides and cutting off all escape

getting it getting it - right in the shade of the valley where we left it

all of those best days

it's time to break those best days.

BAD HAT

Lately it all goes to the same place

to my head and then to my fists

it all goes to red

the floor goes like the wall

away -

dancing out

between thoughts

I go away as well

hot and shot up

full of it

but only to end up right where I left off

with my face in my hands

sulking in the corner with the rest of the trash

the same way