"Smoke and Mirrors"

I watch her move through smoke and mirrors,
She smiles at me, I turn my back,
Then stare into the glare before me
And launch my voyeuristic act.

I hear her through the smoke and mirrors
Call out to me--she speaks my name.
She says she's waiting in there for me,
I sliver in and join the game.

She tells me how she now desires me,
Embraces me with arms and heart,
The music stops--she dissappears,
I wait for number two to start.

Illusionary lovers always
Are the best affairs for me.
We fall in love for life then marry,
At two a.m. I'm asked to leave.

Sometimes at night I wake in sweat
And reach to hold her, smell her, hear her,
Then realize she's just a stranger
Dancing in my smoke and mirrors.
__________________________

"Alzheimer's Grave"

I have raged against the storms of evil,
As you have slept through gales of wrath.
I have failed to thank the hands that sponged me,
You have failed to draw my bath.

I have ached to form a word of kindness,
You have slyly insults slung.
I have lived amidst the sickly aged,
You have died amongst the young.

I have feared the waning of my conscience,
You have feared that yours might live.
I've forgotten everything you gave me,
You've forgotten how to give.

I have marched at gunpoint to the Deathchair,
Where you sit there free but blind.
Pray not for me but for the hands that bind me,
Human means and human kind.

Shocking-shame the cure is nonconductive,
If so I'd climb those planted poles,
Electrifying this live generation,
And surge into the dim-lit homes of
All not clad with latex souls.
_______________________

"Five-Dollar Phil"

It's Monday a.m. at eleven o'clock,
It's time for the doors of the club to unlock.
The girls have arrived and are changing within,
And will soon be exposing their souls and their skin.

It's five after twelve and he hasn't come still.
They're starting to wonder if this time he will,
Show up with his roll of five-dollar bills,
Designed to solicit available thrills.

"Hello Phil, hey baby, can I get you a drink?"
Shreiks the topless attendant who will serve as his shrink.
"Yeah Darlin' just bring me the same as before,"
He pays for the double plus five dollars more.

"Hello Phil, hey baby, can I light up your smoke?
Hello Phil, hey baby, will you tell me a joke?"
"Sure honey, get comfy," he says with a snap,
As her buttocks descend on his plentiful lap.

This loser you see had an eye for the chicks,
But his tastes and his pocketbook just didn't mix.
So one day he thinks he could maybe get laid,
If he could appear like he had it all made.

So what does he do, this miserable geek,
Who lives on two-hundred and five bucks a week?
He sells all his shit, his house and his car,
And then spends every cent in the local tit bar!

He figures I guess it'll keep him in beers,
At least for a couple of glorious years.
And then after that, well no one will care
If this poor old bastard is here or is there.

"Gee Phil, is it over? That was funny I think,"
She winks as he offers to buy her a drink.
"I'm sorry, Phil baby, but I can't sit still,"
She says as she fondles his five-dollar bill,
"It's five after eight and I'm already late--
There's a big spender waiting in booth twenty-eight!"

The days at the Flix and Chicks Tit Bar and Grill
Belong to the legend of Five-Dollar Phil.
But when the music is raised and the lights fade to dim...
The evenings belong to Ten-Dollar Tim...
_______________________________

"Jack the Strangler"

What rancid rage wrenches this breath
from this waning wench's face?
A flacid stage, cinching her death
comes in, straining in disgrace.
A mother just this destitute
once was straying as a wife--
Another, now this prostitute,
is now paying with her life.


____________________

"Rage"

Sometimes I can feel myself
Emerging from the bowels of blackness,
Blood-drenched dripping, slowly slipping
Back into the world of living,
Fresh from bouts of heart-ache giving.

Sometimes I must ask myself
Why and what I've said and done,
Recalling only sorrows lonely,
Bastards of the tongue and anger,
Conceived in pain and weaned on danger.

Sometimes I disgust myself--
For those I pray to serve the most
Are those who face this heinous ghost,
While those whose hearts are far from mine
Are seldom there to see the crime.



______________________

"Depression"

This enemy I cannot see,
Slinking through the deepest recesses of my soul.
This enemy I cannot taste,
Drinking from my bleakest, deepest watering hole.

This enemy I cannot hear,
Screaming out in voices vaporous and surreal.
This enemy I cannot touch,
Streaming past my anger, slippery as a silver eel.

This enemy I cannot stand,
Creeping in the canyons in which there lies no hope.
This enemy I cannot ban,
Calling in his chips and debts too great for me to cope.





_______________________________

"Conscience"

My enemy stalks me,
Even here in this pristine solitude of midnight
I sense his rancid breath,
Fogging up my window pane
Like patient lethal acid rain.

My enemy taunts me,
Even though I have captured and destroyed his family,
And purged his rotten house,
Cursed and spat right in his face,
He stands here stoic, full of grace.

My enemy irks me,
Every time I defile him, undermine his purpose,
Pervert his twisted plots,
More resolved he comes for me,
My hatred fuels him mightily!

My enemy is me,
Conscience is my only decent foe yet breathing.
I grasp him by the throat--
Knowing fully should he die,
I can kiss my soul good-bye.

__________________

"Denial"

He stalks his prey through aching sacred streets,
Man without a mandate,
Soul without a soulmate--
He seeks respite in every whore he meets.

He closes in, encircles for the kill--
Self enstrangles selfless,
Breath becomes the breathless--
First conscience dies, then self-esteem, then will.

He leaves the corpse now perfectly aloof--
Morning stills the mourning,
Needs reseed the needing--
His victim isn't fear or pain--but truth.
______________________________________