Bret

I hope you pull through, brother. May God watch over you.

You are a lot to so many. I am listening to every rose now with tears in my eyes.


I was teenager when I first heard a Poison song. And now, myself at thirty-six recovering from a heart attack and a life’s worth of treating my body badly and Bret at forty-seven and having a brain hemorrhage that may serve as the catalyst to his demise, I feel like apart of me is dying also. He wore way too much make-up back in the day, but they rocked. They always did, and always will. Bret’s masterpiece, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, written while he sat on the floor of some (for him it must have been) lonely laundry mat is revolving around and around in my mind and soul.

For a Friend

When all is gone
look and you’ll find me.
When all has failed
look and you’ll find me.
When the storm is relentless
there, behind the tree,
it is there that you should look
and it is there that you will find me.

Spring Rain

I recognize you
like an old friend
like an endless monsoon
that I revisit (like a headstone)
or rather revisits me
in intervals that stretch
throughout time
so that they seem
to be all one memory
here in this moment—now
watching the way the water
beads on the window screen.


(c) 2010 James Eric Watkins