Saturday, September 24, 2016

wreckage:  a later interpretation


or she's eighteen and
her wrists are healing

the hills rise up on
every side of this town and
i get a letter from a man who tells me
that the indians have their casinos

that all debts have been repaid

and i drive slowly into the city
with a handful of poems
and a belief in empty spaces

i offer columbine as one choice
and cobain as the other and
no one speaks

no one stops me when i
get up to leave
and when she's twenty one
she no longer dreams about the
god of starving dogs

when she's twenty three
she could be anyone

it happens as simply as war

a man approaches you with a gun
and you live or you die

you learn to build houses
from the bones of priests

you're buried in the
frozen soil like a dog

like so much garbage

and the days move on effortlessly


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