you love your excess
bourbon scotch
            the thought of sex
 
they make you loco though
so you’re King Lear again
           yes running naked in the woods
your bat and balls flop-flopping freely
 
it’s too early for the stars
that rivet night’s black armor
for the comet that will strike
the pale blue marble
 
madness has a mortgage on your body
bloody lien upon your soul
 
so find the art in your distemper
your oppression
your old howling blue-eyed blues
 
go search the world for mercy
beauty justice truth
          these words obscene 
                  in poetry and maybe even life 
          unless you use them right
 
i never could

​oh angel we
            our fraught adjoining selves
were separated
by a door
 
that fate
or someone you or i
had locked
 
so like that cage
i welded stoutly
in another life
 
i bloodied nails
on that damned door
between us