VICTIMS AND THEIR HISTORIES

these little wounds like party favors

and then twilight skies and
neon signs and then
down to rooftops


down to darkened rooms and
the pale silhouettes of ghosts
and i have been tasting
your pain for so long now
my mouth feels bruised


i have dreamt my son’s death
once and then twice


after this there can
only be winter

THE GODHEAD AS BLASPHEMY

the measure

i sound like anyone else here


like the silence of dying children
15,000 miles away,
and i didn’t cause all of the pain in the world,
and so i refuse to feel guilty for it


and so blame will be
forced upon me anyway

those darker days of salvation & prayer

and out there in the frozen

sunlight we wanted to be beautiful
or maybe just loved
but there was never any time

the car was in the shop and

the rent was late

the drugs didn’t work any more

i was sick of poetry and you were

tired of starving and
between us we knew all the words to
every song dee dee ever wrote

we believed in the myths even

after they’d been disproved

didn’t seem like too big a price to

pay for immortality

didn’t feel like spring

with snow in the forecast

baby was hungry and

the windows all broken

christ was a story i refused

to find comfort in

just one more beaten dog

crawling towards an unhappy ending

MY FATHER'S LAST YEARS; AN ABSTRACTION

MAX, CONSIDERING THE POSSIBILITY OF DOROTHEA LONG AFTER HIS DEATH