black chalk
or
when the sunlight
tastes
like gasoline or where the
clouds
gather into fists
above
the hills
this
woman i know who
says
she loves me but
that
she won’t leave her husband
won’t
walk to the edge of the field
where
the child has been bound
and
shot and
if
there’s a truth i would have you know
it’s
that the war cannot be stopped
these
men who have written their
names
in blood on the courthouse wall
are
the biggest kinds of assholes
are
as useless as poets and
if
i were in california
i
would be kneeling at the feet of
i
would have
no
more use for words
would
forget the feel of salt rubbed
into
cracked and peeling skin
the
sound of metal grinding against
metal
on ten-below afternoons
and
i would learn to forget
my
children’s names
i
will learn to build
the
holiest of towers from their
tiny
bones
we
are nothing without
this
vast empty space between
joy
and pain
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
the failed messiah
yr
lover’s song pouring
from
a blood-smeared mouth
a
landscape of children’s bodies
washing
ashore,
their
mothers raped,
their
fathers tortured,
and
this will always be the past and
you
promise me you will make
it
our future
you
tell me our strength
lies
in creating fear
tell
me all you
ask
is blind obedience
all
you require is
total
devotion
and
you will dream of being
king
in this new dark age
of
ignorance and greed and i
will
wait with quiet joy
for
yr death
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sparrow
white-out
afternoon in
the
first days of spring
all
distances the same
all
answers multiplied by zero
wake
up hungover to find
the
baby’s dead or your lover missing
windows
shot out and all that
frozen
silence pouring in
’92
i think or ’93 and
i
was in love with your sister
but
sleeping with her best friend
was
waiting for someone’s husband to
kick
in the door and my hands
were
on fire with infinite vision
words
scarred the furniture,
stained
the walls, the
spaces
between us, and i knew i was
the
resurrection
knew
i was down to my last
handful
of pills and it was then and
then
it became now
the
dogs are sick and they’re
starving
but the baby’s name has
been
forgotten
the
divorces have been finalized
and
the river frozen over
we
lost the war we couldn’t lose and
then
we crucified the doubters
grew
up think summer would
never
end until the morning we
woke
up old and we have
no
fear but this fear for ourselves
overdosed
nurse in the back seat
of
your brother’s car and
you
learn to wear hope like a noose
i
pull the shades,
i
get undressed, i lie down
beneath
the dining room table
we
are forever fucked without our
empty,
fleeting pasts to
nail
us to this here and now
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