Friday, May 30, 2014

the kingdom, denied




in these sepia-toned rooms of
memory i relive
25 years of drowning

in the season of ascension
we eat only fear


and i have these pictures and i
have these poems and i am
not sorry for being thin
enough to fade from view

i have no use for your
anger and none for your pain

we were there at the table
when the bullet
caught christ in the throat
 
i was fucking your
sister on the afternoon my
grandfather took his
own life and
listen -
 
confession isn’t art
 
the starving know enough
to view your god as nothing
more than so much meat
 
all magic is contained w/in
the moment of revelation
and then all that’s
left is dust





Tuesday, May 27, 2014

excerpts from SENTIMENTAL EFFIGIES






5.

no one just some
holy motherfucker dead in the
shallow end of late winter sunlight and
down on the beach the righteous and
the just are laughing are singing are
crucifying his son and
in the aftermath of war all
gods are equally useless

in the slow passage of days all
poets & priests wait patiently to be
broken on the wheel of their
own desperate faith









6.

and every wish is
someone’s death no matter what you
choose to believe and no one’s
going to laugh if you cry
because no one’s
going to care









15.

dreams of the trailer at the
edge of the corn field, dreams of
silence and rape and
wakes up thirsty

wakes up and then
wakes up again like in the
movies and he thinks he’s still
                                  dreaming

dreams the bed is a tiny shrinking
island in a relentless tide
of blood

wakes up laughing at the
thought of mercy










Wednesday, May 21, 2014

broken hand w/ mirror




in this world where
almost everything is beyond
your control and your
choices are limited to false
god, slave, impotent king

vote or don’t vote
shoot or don’t shoot and
                      either way
the starving continue to starve

grow old
then

die

eat handfuls of dust

send postcards back to
your loved ones, to
your enemies

let them see you
                finally
for the empty threat you
                   always were





Friday, May 09, 2014

love song for the betrayed




all of us here in
this room without oxygen
waiting to be forgiven and it seems
like the safest place

feels like the fist of god
punching a million starving children in
the throat, and you know the
fucker’s laughing or else why would he
let them starve in the first place?

seems like a waste of
time inventing religions
instead of looking for solutions
 
grows into a world full of inbred
assholes with shit
spilling from their open mouths



Tuesday, May 06, 2014

holy days: an attempt at chiaroscuro




strange to end up lost in this
house i’ve called home for
fifteen years, and strange to
spend so much time considering
suicide on these bright
blue morning

if you were here with me,
you would be beautiful and stoned
 
if we had children, they would
learn to live with disappointment

they would understand the
inevitability of being born in
a building on fire







Sunday, May 04, 2014

perpetual motion sonnet






let the sun
break your heart

let nothing and
no one win

this is the moment where
                    my life begins
                             and then
this is the one that matters

this is the bridge we
stand beneath and this is
the song always playing in
the back of my mind

small lies to help hold
together broken truths

the rest of our lives
multiplied by zero and i am
trying here and i
am failing
 
i am thirty years older
than i was and i am
that much more lost

am dreaming of ash and
resin and the slow
stain of frostbite

and we were so sure it
would always be
summer





Friday, May 02, 2014

a belgian surrealist






in the silences between
words i thought i
was saying something

in the moment of
truth i lied
 
late afternoon

sound of breaking glass or the sun
crashing down to the horizon by
small degrees

sound of denial

weed-filled lots or
burned-out houses
 
always these choices made by
corrupt saints and crippled gods

always these rivers thick with blood

these corpses piled high down village
streets and in between the silence and the
stench there is only the heavy buzzing
of 100,000,000 flies

in between the moment of hope and the
moment of despair  there are an
infinite number of empty lifetimes and what i
remember in the middle of all
senseless violence is the night i left you
 
what i remember is the night you left me

all of the days that fell in between

our small acts of grace and our
small acts of mercy and in
the spaces between them just
these shimmering wasted hours









and you were lost and i was you