Limericks get a million reviews Such short things, creating such queues, I wonder if maybe My novel, my baby, Would, stopped at line one, fill the pews?

She bled out in poetry They found her surrounded 200 pages of shaky handwriting Her last outpour as she lay in bed dying They were beautiful, of course. For years, she had leapt from one art to the next One side of her brain slowly burning itself out At the expense of the adrenal gland Pumping until her blood was Thirty percent poetry Thirty percent paint Thirty percent love Each bound to a drop of adrenaline Earned on One a.m. drives Three a.m sex Five a.m. coffee And quarter-hour cigarettes...

You have a wife in every port A hat for every yard You win them gifts, practice rapport In every game of die or card You win la femme with kisses With adventure and with flare They chase you through the streets But they can’t follow everywhere… For only one will lurk in alleys And still smile with shadow-lips Only one can laugh in costume As a swabber when the anchor slips That one will never leave you ‘Till you sail with Charon ‘crossed And even then she’ll dive for you Without a moment lost...

After so much paint So much mistaking carbonation caffination for hydration and So much mistaking flourish for nourishment, So much sitting at home alone creating in my corner when I could be a thousand other places and I’m writing instead… A few months ago, I stood on the Langdon Street bridge, Looking at a parking lot on the river which had crumbled into the water It fortold the disintegration of one of my homes, the occupants who have now scattered and are lost to me. Tonight I was told of...

We often sat in cars 'round the bend And smoked our cigarettes to the end Imagine the feeling The next day we're reeling To find we've grown, Heavens for fend!

When our darkness steals o're the land Fairy tales should stay at home Throw open the Inn doors and yank in the band On nights when werewolves roam If Humpty Dumpty had only known The ground was where that wall-top led He would have dragged ol' Jill inside And buggered her instead. The nights when petals drop aground And witches pass your windows Don't listen to the howling sounds or the pixies in the hedgerows Just get thee to a nunnery! A church, the castle towers! Tonight princesses climb ...