The Loser's Creed

 

All of life is a vast conspiracy,

from birth to death,

liked a rigged spin

on a roulette wheel

where nothing ever lands

on black

and no deed or debt

is ever done.

Your Brain Is Broke

 

Your brain is broke

like a wounded bird

with broken wings 

crying in a field. 

 Your brain is broke

from that TV show 

that reduced the world 

to a mad house row.

Your brain is broke

from reason's slumber

while hidden monsters 

riot loose.

Bunker Boy

History

is overflowing

like a closet

bursting at it seams.

Creaking loudly

like a wind tossed

ship floundering

against

the waves.

Where are you

bunker boy?

In which bunker

do you play?

Did your Tonka tank

just roll away?

Is your cap gun

out of pops?

Madam Defarge is

knocking at the door.

Focused on her knitting,

fueled with her rage.

The tumbril wheels

are moving

from the bunker

to the blade.

March 3, 2003

It was in the

sunny chill of late winter

along the washed out

shores of Virginia Beach where,

after our brother's funeral,

we took a walk in silence

from the math negating

the sibling equation

with a fixed finality resembling

the half-surreal reality of

the streets that were lined

by palm trees wrapped

in plastic sleeves.

We watched the ships

leaving port for Iraq

while fighter jets roared low

as they continuously looped,

as one endless war

flowed senselessly into

another endless war

like the shrapnel our brother

still had from 'Nam.

A tangled ball of yarn

is the crazy strand

of a history

filled with a sorrow

and an emptiness,

a graceless epiphany.

So much like any death

in every family.

That evening in the parking lot

of a convenience store, I saw

a weathered hooker

abandoned in the darkness,

blankly staring at

the night's vacancy

like a renegade from

a Hopper painting.

Another spirit of our times.