early afternoon, waiting for dawn

stand at the back door and
call for your children
in the last light of day

find your lover in a
pale blue room and tell her
you don’t love her anymore

tell her the earth is dying

tell her anything

wait for her answer until
the air becomes too
dark to breathe

purified

and then creeley dies and
then thompson,
and then someone decides that
rothko’s bones need to be
dug up and moved

first warm day of spring,
and the woman across the street
is standing topless in an
upstairs window

the hole in my back yard is
six feet deep and
ten across,
and it’s no small challenge
crucifying saviors

kill one
and two more spring up

change the station and
whatever song you find sucks
as much as the one you
left behind

nothing worth dying for,
but the man across the street
stands in his driveway
with a gun

laughs at the children when
they run away

isn’t there when his son jumps
the forty feet from the
bridge into the river, but it
probably wouldn’t have
made much of a difference
even if he was

the truth is easiest
when it costs you nothing

poem from a distance

never told you i loved you and
the days crawled by
without meaning or warmth

never held my father's ashes

never tasted them

forgot his face for my 30th birthday and
remembered instead
the women i'd fucked in the year
before he died

thought about his cup of coffee
growing cold on the kitchen counter
while he lay on the floor

wanted to call you but
you were gone

wanted to touch you
but the moment had passed

stood in the hall while my
sister said good bye

a sort of grace

and he is
tired of empty rooms,
and he is tired of falling
down stairs

he is tired

he is bleeding

one or the other

find him there on his
scarred and dirty floor

offer him your hand

let him feel the
warmth of your breasts

let him die

consider the obvious
burden of compassion

books books books and books

A fine selection of angst, self-pity and post-industrial malaise.

the poet takes his place in the actual world

fuck this idea of
poetry reaching back to
embrace the past

i will not worship
the martyred or the immortal

it's enough to be stuck in
this town of defeated old men
as they shuffle aimlessly
up and down anonymous streets

it's enough to watch the
factories burn

and i have driven in every direction
and i have seen nothing but
more of the same
and i am only waiting for the news
that reagan is dead

i am only waiting to hear
from a friend
who hasn't written in a decade
that all is forgiven

and i have a job that will never be
anything worth describing
and i have a son who will someday
want nothing more than to
escape his father

what i give you hear is a
pale blue november sky bleached
to white at the edges

the drone of a plane and the
sound of wind through bare trees
and there is a house of
delicate bones in this picture
that i call my home

there is a river that holds
the body of
a fifteen year-old boy

it doesn't bother me that i've
outlived him
but maybe it should