giacometti, softly

 

 

you can't talk about christ

at four in the morning

and you can't talk about love

 

you can talk about light despite

the absence of it and so you do

 

you walk from room to room

watching your family sleep

and you try to remember their names

 

you look at the phone

 

at the front door

 

and at some point you realize

that money tastes like rust and that

all you can do is choke

 

at some point the sky fades from

black to grey and the baby wakes up

 

begins to cry

 

believes in you only because

he has yet to learn
anything else

 

abandon

the faint illumination of yr heart

the sky at
this late date
huge and raw above these
snow-covered roofs

and what is space but
some simple thing
between us?

i know your name
your skin
your lips
and would gladly place
any part of you on the tip
of my tongue even as our
secrets all dissolve
into smoke and
ash

i would trace my way
through dark rooms just to
watch the faint illumination
of your heart

and you call this love
and the taste it leaves is
thick

bitter
but addictive
and the doors refuse to
close completely

the phone rings
at awkward moments
or the baby falls and
draws blood

and if i take this
one last step towards you
what am i forcing aside?

does it have or even
need a name?

and when we touch
i finally understand
the futility of
language

an interview

 

 

PENMEN REVIEW

 

 

 

 

expressionist landscape 1

save us all from love and hope

was breathing in the tarnished weight of silver skies,

was trapped there between forgetting and forgotten,
21 years of pointless starvation,
air thick with the approach of rain,
distant pulse of passing trains,
and the child in the back seat made no sound

had no hands

looked a little like me, but i no longer took

responsibility for any of the pain in the world
 

i no longer walked

when it was easier to crawl

had finally become my father

 

 

 

Sisyphus, Further Upstate

Nothing new, nothing you haven't discovered

yet, only America, only I will make you sing
it louder, will make you scream it, scream
AMERICA!! like it's the answer to a question
you can't imagine, like you're hanging from a
rope of used needles, hanging from a rope of
spent time, and it's a man in the back of the
room who asks the question, and it's a man
jumping from a bridge and onto the freeway
who answers it, only not with words because
words are too easy to misinterpret. Words are
too human. Humans are too careless. Just ask
the man his fucking name already, before it's
too late.