call me rough life

call me rough life

call me rough life

why do you not call me to play the fool

the arrogant roughneck drinking fool

that wrote for her - you know - 

those lurid nights of windowed cities

and bars and wet streets and brawls in

in stairwells of brevity kisses

and traffic hisses away down town

and frowns and downs and downs

to wet knee wet with tears raining down with

your mascara and bruised love if

love it be for me and my fallandering

why don’t you rough me up and

leave me with enough smoke-stained angst

to write the brutal lines that all the great 

do-no-good poets clawed 

upon the page’s confessions of regret 

and fabled acerbic pounding of

relationships gone on far far too long past

their ability to even breathe an emotion

why this easy ambiance this ease of life

that pours not cider vinegar but maple syrup

that has not one word to cut the days of

blank pages and no looks that could kill

in red ink the slammed book of poems

dedicated in hatred to all whose meritocracy 

i defied to entertain just my egotistical nonchalance  

now that i bare write nothing nothing at all for

having not died in that life i lay down nothing 

is it too late these aged years to ride

the bronco stallion of desire unbridled

and fly at last to the wild side of life

rattling penniless unrepentant galavanting

nailing dirty words smearing fetid words

bleeding grimy words spitting oathy words

leaving no stone of life unturned before

the days run down

is it too late

am i run to time run done

it is over mun 

it is isn’t it 

and was it not i 

who left it

all undone