Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Monday, August 20, 2018
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Saturday, August 18, 2018
BEAUTY CAN ONLY BE DEFINED BY THE UGLINESS THAT SURROUNDS IT
2004 maybe? Essentially issue 10 of TIN LUSTRE MOBILE, which was always good fun.
blue
here where
the streets all run
blue to the river
where the needle crawls
blind through
forgotten back yards
searching for the
one true vein
every one of these houses
is for sale
every one of these children
unwanted
and do you remember the year
of the burning girl?
it never ended
just spread from town to town
like beauty reversed
do you remember the
season of rust?
you do if
your sister lost her
unborn child
and maybe now you drink
too much
maybe you lock
the bedroom door and cry
while your own children
scratch to be let in
there is no future
so bleak it
can never come to be
indian summer
or october
which is the smell
of wet sunlight
on blacktop
which is the uneasy rush
of waiting to be
a father
of falling from an
impossible height over
some vague expanse
of wasteland
everything
suddenly beautiful
just when it no
longer matters
shaped by fire
she is less
than
what she was
she has been
shaped by
fire
has been
broken down
then put back
together and
no one is
holding
her
no one is
telling her
she's
beautiful
we are all
too busy
turning away
in the afternoon of bitter confessions
in the season of myths
i am empty
in the afternoon of
bitter confessions i remain
silent
these are the walls we
call home and
beyond them
the sky is white
the sun has lost something
is warm but only faintly
like an almost forgotten memory
and the trees all shimmer
beneath it
and the story is yours
and you tell it
softly
the suicide of a friend
or maybe the overdose
maybe the body found
shortly after midnight in any
pointless upstate town
the face black
the fingers rigid
around something
a steering wheel or a
bible or a pack of
cigarettes
and the air is sweet through
these open windows
and i am not
a compassionate man
am not the man you married
my eyes are pale green
my teeth white and even
my smile an angry thing
i could hold you
but don't
could tell you
a story of my own but
choose not to
i have become my
father's son
desperate poem from the season of rust
a small song sung softly
for this woman found
raped and strangled in her bed
an empty gesture
for the living
to comfort themselves with
take it with you
to the hill of fifteen crosses
take it to
the missing girl's door on
an overcast day in september
eight years after the fact
tell her parents that
you believe in redemption
tell them that the spirit holds
more weight than the bones
realize finally
how worthless your lies
really are
myself a bastard son
what i give you is the world
in terms of cancer
people devoured
and objects destroyed
and the simple truth that there
is no cure
that the children next door
stand on the side of the street and
dare each other to touch the
decomposing remains of
a small animal
and this is nothing new
it's where we've come
from the burning of witches and
the lynching of slaves
it's the idea that democracy
by itself
is enough to save us
and i believe in love
yes
but i believe in money too
i believe that beauty
can only be defined by the ugliness
that surrounds it
consider that every year of your life
has been defined to some extent
by war
by the deaths of both
loved ones and strangers
and in the kitchen
the faucet drips and
in the back yard
a cautious version of the sun
appears
the faint shadows of
buildings and of trees
the sound of an airplane
the sky
suddenly luminous with
possibility
letter to kurt cobain, seven years dead, on his 35th birthday
fuck this
idea of heroes
fuck this idea
of gods
of any kind
do you agree?
do you
believe?
i can't hear
you
the moment with clarity, but no definition
or else the boy
walks into his house
to find his brother murdered
his mother dead by
her own hand
blood everywhere
but nothing spelled out
nothing left whole or
recognizable
the future enormous
faith in nothing: a confession
or the smell of slowly
decaying houses
in these first warm days of fall
the unthinking weight i place
on april's heart
and what i can't
seem to shake are the
last meaningless words i spoke to
this man i know before he
went home and put the gun
in his mouth
do you understand that
i'm human?
it becomes harder to prove
with each passing year as the list
of people i would call friends
grows smaller and smaller
and did i have a childhood?
of course
but i can't seem to make
any connections between
the boy i was and the
man i've become
and i continue to
write these poems but what
any of them actually say
is an uncertain thing
what any of us choose
to do in the face of tragedy
seems irrelevant
i know i'm not the
only one to accept this
as truth
the age of pity, softly
this woman with a rope
around her throat
and her lover vanished
the shape of america pressing in
on this place i call home
and distance and speed
and the inevitability of addiction
a child found dead
in a cage
another found dead
in a closet
all of these bodies
covered with cigarette burns
and the constellations they form
when laid side by side
the man who insists that
nothing good can come from
obsessing over these atrocities
that define us
his belief in god
which saves no one
here where
the streets all run
blue to the river
where the needle crawls
blind through
forgotten back yards
searching for the
one true vein
every one of these houses
is for sale
every one of these children
unwanted
and do you remember the year
of the burning girl?
it never ended
just spread from town to town
like beauty reversed
do you remember the
season of rust?
you do if
your sister lost her
unborn child
and maybe now you drink
too much
maybe you lock
the bedroom door and cry
while your own children
scratch to be let in
there is no future
so bleak it
can never come to be
indian summer
or october
which is the smell
of wet sunlight
on blacktop
which is the uneasy rush
of waiting to be
a father
of falling from an
impossible height over
some vague expanse
of wasteland
everything
suddenly beautiful
just when it no
longer matters
shaped by fire
she is less
than
what she was
she has been
shaped by
fire
has been
broken down
then put back
together and
no one is
holding
her
no one is
telling her
she's
beautiful
we are all
too busy
turning away
in the afternoon of bitter confessions
in the season of myths
i am empty
in the afternoon of
bitter confessions i remain
silent
these are the walls we
call home and
beyond them
the sky is white
the sun has lost something
is warm but only faintly
like an almost forgotten memory
and the trees all shimmer
beneath it
and the story is yours
and you tell it
softly
the suicide of a friend
or maybe the overdose
maybe the body found
shortly after midnight in any
pointless upstate town
the face black
the fingers rigid
around something
a steering wheel or a
bible or a pack of
cigarettes
and the air is sweet through
these open windows
and i am not
a compassionate man
am not the man you married
my eyes are pale green
my teeth white and even
my smile an angry thing
i could hold you
but don't
could tell you
a story of my own but
choose not to
i have become my
father's son
desperate poem from the season of rust
a small song sung softly
for this woman found
raped and strangled in her bed
an empty gesture
for the living
to comfort themselves with
take it with you
to the hill of fifteen crosses
take it to
the missing girl's door on
an overcast day in september
eight years after the fact
tell her parents that
you believe in redemption
tell them that the spirit holds
more weight than the bones
realize finally
how worthless your lies
really are
myself a bastard son
what i give you is the world
in terms of cancer
people devoured
and objects destroyed
and the simple truth that there
is no cure
that the children next door
stand on the side of the street and
dare each other to touch the
decomposing remains of
a small animal
and this is nothing new
it's where we've come
from the burning of witches and
the lynching of slaves
it's the idea that democracy
by itself
is enough to save us
and i believe in love
yes
but i believe in money too
i believe that beauty
can only be defined by the ugliness
that surrounds it
consider that every year of your life
has been defined to some extent
by war
by the deaths of both
loved ones and strangers
and in the kitchen
the faucet drips and
in the back yard
a cautious version of the sun
appears
the faint shadows of
buildings and of trees
the sound of an airplane
the sky
suddenly luminous with
possibility
letter to kurt cobain, seven years dead, on his 35th birthday
fuck this
idea of heroes
fuck this idea
of gods
of any kind
do you agree?
do you
believe?
i can't hear
you
the moment with clarity, but no definition
or else the boy
walks into his house
to find his brother murdered
his mother dead by
her own hand
blood everywhere
but nothing spelled out
nothing left whole or
recognizable
the future enormous
faith in nothing: a confession
or the smell of slowly
decaying houses
in these first warm days of fall
the unthinking weight i place
on april's heart
and what i can't
seem to shake are the
last meaningless words i spoke to
this man i know before he
went home and put the gun
in his mouth
do you understand that
i'm human?
it becomes harder to prove
with each passing year as the list
of people i would call friends
grows smaller and smaller
and did i have a childhood?
of course
but i can't seem to make
any connections between
the boy i was and the
man i've become
and i continue to
write these poems but what
any of them actually say
is an uncertain thing
what any of us choose
to do in the face of tragedy
seems irrelevant
i know i'm not the
only one to accept this
as truth
the age of pity, softly
this woman with a rope
around her throat
and her lover vanished
the shape of america pressing in
on this place i call home
and distance and speed
and the inevitability of addiction
a child found dead
in a cage
another found dead
in a closet
all of these bodies
covered with cigarette burns
and the constellations they form
when laid side by side
the man who insists that
nothing good can come from
obsessing over these atrocities
that define us
his belief in god
which saves no one
LIKE SOME PALE CHRIST LEFT HANGING IN THE RAIN
Thursday, August 16, 2018
FUCK THE KILLERS / KILL THE FUCKERS
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
THE PUNCH IN THE FACE YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
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