Hi - This ain't no April Fool's joke I've relocated to ihatepoetry.livejournal.com Also, please continue visiting http://www.virtualpoetryreading.com and http://virtualpoetryreading.com/more/ as I will still be keeping those websites in operation.   Thanks to all my readers - Buddah Moskowitz ihatepoetry@verizon.net  

First, start with the title: it must be directly related to the content of the Poem - or not.   Then, begin the Poem with a phrase of tempting ambiguity, a detail so compelling that the reader will follow you as you pull back to reveal its unexpected milieu.   Continue by making an arcane allusion to a 17 th century English essayist or by adding a sly reference to one of the lesser known Beats (noth...

Everywhere I look I see the flock lost in their prayers:   young and old rich and poor Jew and Gentile.   Each in holy communion huddled around their electronic beads, their mutant rosaries.   Speaking in tongues to unseen companions,   each believer in holy solitude connected to something greater than themselves.   In gratitude they offer the abstract sacrifice of their time.   ...

This mortality creeps upon me like the relentless single-minded zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.”   Death and all her servants   keep dropping hints into my life like postcard solicitations falling out of magazines.   My eyes take longer to refocus. My torso stiffens overnight. My hips surprise me with their occasional ache and some presumably insightful thoughts vanish before they ever reac...

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Once again the day has been paid and now is gone.   These days gather speed as they snowball down the hill indifferent to me.   In these busy days nothing is negotiable and no one will budge.   I’m on the losing end of this tug-of-war but everyday I try to snatch for myself a moment unscheduled with nothing ...

When her biological father left she dove head first into depression.   The counselor provided by my insurance said "well, let's just handle her problems as they come up" not realizing there were five screaming meltdowns just on the car ride over. (This therapist was in over her head.)   Her next psychologist affirmed that she had depression and anxiety, and she was referred to a psychiatrist who prescribed Prozac w...

The world is vacant this early Sunday morning   except for the newspaper deliverer   and the liquor store and the customer who waited for 6am.   Mostly people are inside sleeping off hangovers   slumbering in a warm bed of post-coital narcosis   lone desperation passed out at a kitchen table splayed with overdue bills and trepidation.   Some greet the day with reluctance some will ride bikes and some w...

Your lips are missed as are the long weekends we spent as one.   Replaying those old songs, memories come back stripped of any imperfection.   There was intrigue in your kiss and I became dizzy with the possibilities.   I could spend an hour holding your hand and every moment had the thrill of finding an undiscovered river.   Where there was once mystery building a life together has brought comfort ...

My father taught me to develop good habits.   “Make it second nature so you don’t have to remember so much.”   Clean up after yourself. Iron your work clothes the night before. Work first, then play.   These habits hum in me silently in the background like a trusted computer program.   But every January 6 th I am trapped because the post office doesn’t deliver to his new location ...

I apologize, but I honestly didn’t know – I thought it was all some primordial fairytale written to mete out shadow retribution for some unspeakable incestuous rape.   I disguised my lust and gluttony as joie de vivre and followed them from every well-intentioned lesson as I blazed my pathetically predictable path.   I thought I was gifted with a vision, but now I see I was just another in an unending line o...

which is the struggle walking through the fire or resisting God's will?

the muse comes to call I'm too busy to visit-- two silent mourners.

  Rising from the battlefield bloodied but unvanquished she still radiates.   I know the struggle. I nurse her wounds. I am her partner.   There is nobility in her rising and fixing her vision on the next horizon.   At times like these she appears to me exactly as she did at our beginning: valiant, heroic, and beautiful.   The contour of her smoke-smudged profile and the jewelry of her tears inspir...

Fully human and fully divine:   the hallmark of humanity is sinful imperfection   and yet you had none.   I wonder how you managed to steer clear of everything but the bull’s eye.   I reconstruct your ignoble demise like a forensic scientist searching for something to connect me over the centuries to you   something that would betray your humanity.   As you hung there dying ...

The difference between the balance and the slip is microscopic.   Remembering the rules and honoring the impulse are flipsides of each other.   Id and superego fight me for the pride of ownership   as I struggle daily hourly and sometimes between this thought   and this one.   And that’s only me and you’re no different and if we mul...