Love and Hope, poem by William Taylor Jr.

Baby we had such a good thing going
back before we ruined it
with all that talk
of promis­es and dreams

and all that oth­er pret­ty junk
that only served to break
our sil­ly hearts

love and hope nev­er brought us
noth­ing but pain

baby can we start again
I miss the way you laugh

this time we’ll not speak
of forever

let’s just fuck
and watch TV.
William Tay­lor Jr. cur­rent­ly lives and writes in the Ten­der­loin neigh­bor­hood of San Fran­cis­co. His poems and sto­ries have been wide­ly pub­lished in lit­er­ary jour­nals world­wide, includ­ing Poesy, The Chi­ron Review and The New York Quar­ter­ly.  Among his pre­vi­ous poet­ry col­lec­tions are Words for Songs Nev­er Writ­ten (Cen­ten­ni­al Press 2007) and The Hunger Sea­son (Sun­ny­out­side, 2009).  An Age of Mon­sters (Epic Rites Press, 2011) is his first col­lec­tion of sto­ries.  Bro­ken When We Got Here, a book of new poems, is now avail­able from Epic Rites Press.