scenario

the cold brilliance of
sunlight in the trees

a blue sky with clouds

the shadows of houses
pooled on sidewalks and
do you see why van gogh
pulled the trigger?

there can only be everything or nothing

whatever needs to be said
is lost in the translation

do you know the name of this baby
found in a plastic bag on a street corner?

do you know for a fact that
your lover
isn't fucking someone else?

and what about the fools
who tell you that jesus christ and
violence are polar opposites?

what about the young boys
devoured by priests?

and we drive with the radio off
and the children asleep in
the back seat

we pass through the town where
the burning girl's body was found

we stop at the edge of the field where
i first dug up the bones of the
bleeding horse and it's here that
you ask me why i write

it's here that you ask
if i still love you

all i can offer is the truth

sleeping gas

in the distance in the pale grey
sunlight
dust on your hands
in your mouth and
the highways where the cities end
the spaces between them all
broken glass and brown grass
all emptiness and pain moving
towards the hills
dreaming of franco of pollock
of picasso and the small
moments he invented
the women he buried
and there is no turning away
here in the first bitter days of
februray
there is no cause for joy
no forest that is not on fire
and in the distance there are
horses
there are riders
there are fighter planes
coming in low
casting shadows over
everything we have yet to build

empire

the soldiers drunk in the
first purple light of morning
and driving their boots into the
skulls of sleeping babies

cutting the breasts off the mothers
and laughing at the simplicity of it

and what you can do is plant
a painted wooden cross
by the side of every interstate and
wait to see what grows

an all-night truck stop
or a walmart
or a porn site where teenage daughters
are fucked in rest stop bathroom stalls

what you can do is follow
the hawk's shadow
until it meets the rabbit's neck

build an in-ground pool in
the middle of the desert and wait
for the hookers to arrive

wait for gold to be discovered
or oil
or the body of an eight year-old girl
raped and murdered by her
next door neighbor

and what we've done is send
the soldiers to another land and
what they do there is
shoot the fathers and fuck the
daughters

what they do is film each other
torturing the prisoners

what our reasons are for the
atrocities we commit is
never quite clear

the child, cut in two

not the dying man
but his reasons

his hands
which are grabbing

which are empty and so
what would you
fill them with?

the bones of his children
is an obvious answer
so look past it

reinvent the circle
if you have to

build a better bomb

we have been in this desert
too long now and eating
nothing but the dreams
of the starving

we have been bleeding
for as long as we can
remember but
listen

every day brings us
closer to a darker age

every war is the one
that cannot be lost

this is what we tell the
widows as
we undress them



* originally published in christ the destroyer

first and last

or i will be a man who
says nothing,
or i will be a man
who says less

it's not really the truth
that matters

the room is what
you'd imagine it to be

myself at a table,
this woman on the other side,
and all she wants is
a confession

all she wants is a
betrayal

an admission that power
will always defeat love

that money makes a sound
like hammers on nails

like nails driven through
flesh, into wood,
and so i say nothing

i sing a song filled with
the blood of ghosts

i consider what it means
to have an enemy