birthday song, for dorothea

with dreams of metal towers

and of static, dreams of silver skies

and then waking up
 

the here and now is a fist

and so the future can only be

whatever pain comes next
 

i have no other truths
 

have only one hand that holds and

the other that pushes away

 

have only scar tissue and

empty ideals and with the music

up loud enough the sun

makes no sound at all

the baby sleeps beneath

the shadows of passing clouds

 

wakes up crying softly

just as the air runs out

violence

chasing headlights down december

back roads, not yet 6:30 and
already full dark

half-moon and sleeping houses

this man with

a mouthful of poison

wants to show you how easy it is to

hurt you
then wants you to beg for more

absolute zero when the knife goes in

small wooden cross on the

living room wall
 

cop pulls the trigger and

the child is dead and how far do you
have to look to find someone
laughing?

for how much longer will we

allow ourselves to
be a nation of assholes?

been a long

fucking time already

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fine art collection

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self portrait w/ nude, on fire

and then late afternoon shadows and

the stuttering scratch of

leaves down forgotten streets 

the shadows of lovers, of

unwanted children and forsaken saints 

god and then no

god and then

all of the days i waste waiting to

                              see you again 

an empty room filled with ordinary ghosts and

no one says we have to be here but

no one gives us permission to leave 

this is called the art of standing still 

this is pollock in the

seconds before his death 

not acceptance but panic and

not understanding, not

ever

not ever

and i keep telling you this but

you still aren’t there

tanning

tanguy

one for yr ex-husband

  

dead man sitting in the
back yard w/ his eyes closed,
face turned up to the
dull silver sky
 

just wants attention so
don’t give him any

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ernst

klee

miro

after the age of giants

And this is not nothing, this sky, these

clouds, these hills, and it’s not the
whole story because nothing ever is,
but listen.  Distance is an important thing.
Forty feet from the bridge to the tracks
below.  100 miles between the woman’s
body and her husband’s faith.  And have
you ever tried defining yourself by
something other than sorrow or fear?
Will you crawl from lover to lover with
nothing to offer but fading bruises
and the promise of more?
 

It’s okay to pause before you answer,

to consider, to weight your options. 
It’s okay to accept the fact that we’ve
never really meant anything to each other.
This is why the sunlight casts shadows.
Why time only moves in one direction.
The moment arrives one hundred
million times a day, and then it passes.
The song is forgotten.  I wanted to
sing it to you, but you were married.
You were crying.  It was a sound
just like any other.

one for neverending love

and i will be me and

you will be the song i
sing with a mouthful of
blood and who was it that
ever promised you happiness?

how is it my fault

you chose to believe him?

why should victory feel

any different than defeat?

because love and hate

even here in the clean, cold light of early april,

in the solemn emptiness between
berkshire and speedsville, between  somewhere and
somewhere else, nowhere and

nowhere, the shit of civilization

growing up through the weeds and dirt, the

cigarette butts, styrofoam cups, fast food wrappers,

the wounded and the dying
 

the trees and the hills
 

crisp blue sky
 

no sound of traffic or of industry, but two

empty beer cans and a shattered bottle
on the side of a rutted dirt road
 

taste of rust when I
turn to kiss you
 

birds
screaming

you and i lost in the forest of meaningless symbols

the sound of human voices in

                          august rooms

the sound of heat or the

weight of it

thunder at the edges

mountains grey in the haze or

blue beneath a colorless sky

asks where’s the map?

answers why do you need it?

and both of them naked
 

both of them waiting

and pollock is dead, of course,

                              and cobain,
                               and christ,
just to give you a better idea of WHEN
                                                  and
she has freckles on her pale breasts

he is never quite comfortable

in his own skin

says i’d like to see the desert and

she smiles at him and laughs

says but i need to get home

you see?

there are always places to go but

they will never be arrived at

there are some reasons more important

than others, or at least there
those who see it this way
 

one more time he says and she agrees

there is here and now and then

                                       (later)
there is the idea that HERE and NOW
are fading into the past

sits alone in a darkening room

and begins to understand this

excerpt 1

* *

drinking poison all day and she

said she was thirsty asked
why all it did was rain and then the
needle tracks of course and all of the
tear-stained apologies

the white spaces between houses

the smell of the river and

the same old argument

said the baby should have a name and i

told her there was no baby and
she asked why i hated her

she asked why i kept denying god

and the police had a  clear shot

but then he jumped

the streets were empty all

afternoon but i kept hearing the
sound of laughing children
 

kept getting off at the wrong exit

knew i was almost home but

couldn’t figure out why

uncertain terms

someone and someone

was feeling okay was

slowly approaching
the idea of suicide
 

was four below

zero at two
in the afternoon
 

sunlight and the

taste of road salt

the ghosts of

old lovers

nothing to laugh at but i

was laughing there at
the highway’s edge
while the river froze and
the first of the massacred
children was buried

while the

conspiracy theorists
fucked each other
in curtained motel rooms

and i forget if i was

nothing but i knew we
were nowhere and it felt
like this mattered

felt like small birds

singing but without the
hope of spring

felt like frost filling the

cracks in the walls

colder than the morning

they found my father on
the dining room floor,
though the same shade of
grey, and at this point in
time all objects in the
known universe are
                  of course
still moving further
apart

at this point in time

your body
means more to me
than your name

seems like a waste of

breath to apologize
for things that aren’t
ever going to change

a cage in the forest

tell the blind man there's
nothing to see


let the politicians

fuck your daughters


don't settle for the facts when

the truth is what really matters




don't worry about man ray

dead now for 30 years in
paris, and i still keep
waiting for his call




i stand on the edge of the

porch roof, next to the

hole in my house where the

light pours out




look






the days are shorter now

and all of my fears that much
closer to the surface

no amount of poetry will

ever cure cancer




no man who would ask for

your vote would
ever give you his in return




these are things to think about

while you watch dorothea
undress, and when she asks if

you love her, you should smile

without answering






you should

kiss her breasts




words aren't the enemy,

of course, but it's always

best to act as if they are

four ghosts

sleepwalking

knew him when he was dead,

early spring or late summer, town filled
with the stench of decay
 

a parade for jesus on some

bleachwhite saturday afternoon

flowers and virgins, senile old men

holding rifles, and what i remember is that i
could no longer remember which
century was mine

sat next to an open window

listening to freeway traffic, someone’s
girlfriend screaming in the second
story apartment across the
street, then laughing
 

almost midnight

july maybe, maybe october

birds with broken wings, angels

caught in branches, in nooses,
and politicians, and terrorists, and all of
them concerned with butchery and power

all of them concerned with

vengeance and he said fuck this

said let’s go find a bar and i

knew him to be dead and i knew him

had dated his sister had slept with

his wife and i said wait

i said the parade’s going to start soon

and he just smiled and shook his head

set fire to the house

pulled the trigger

something stupid and dramatic and the

girls on the floats were all
beautiful as they smiled into the sun

portrait of beth (from memory) late in the season of doubt

the golden dog

or lives controlled by

need and not desire


end of summer and the
                  idea of fear
too large to be ignored

gun held tight in the

fist of christ

taste of gravel and of

              broken glass

cold blue sky over empty parking lots,

over the clean, meaningless lines
                             of gas stations

over the corpses of children

killed by chemical warfare, because
the world is always so much
more than your own small,
                      petty failures

the kingdom of ashes

begins at your door

the missing man is found two weeks

later on some weed-choked
stretch of riverbank
almost eighty miles away

his wife is with her boyfriend

when the news
makes its way back home

even now

the possibilities for joy
                   are endless

the enigma of the dying west

such ordinary fear

landscape w/ flesh & bone

the refusal

shoot the doctor in the

back as he walks away then
tell him he’s a coward while he
dies at your feet

it’s an addiction,

like humor
 

it’s a punchline

you capture the soldier, a

boy of fifteen or sixteen, and
then you torture that fucker
until he’s on the floor in a
pool of his own shit and blood

this is how wars are won

make your children

understand this

tell them how much you hated

your own father,
how much he hated you

show them the scars

explain how they can only

grow up to
repeat your mistakes

blood music 1

mapping the edge of the world

for dawn

knowledge and despair

sincerity

man on fire in

the street holds his
son tightly

confuses love and

hate like a
woman i used to know
 

says all pain is

meant to be shared

says silence is

a gift

nothing left of the

child but
ash and bone

excerpts from NOTES FOR MAGELLAN'S DAUGHTER

* *

 

endless unnumbered pages in the

book of pain and it’s here where you
write your truths and it’s here
you are written on

wars

  yes
and the more complex atrocities
                             of one-on-one

cupped hands

overflowing with blood

take her money

then dig a shallow grave
 

another child’s mother

buried alive
 

a small chapter no one

ever remembers








* *

tongue tied in

holy knots w/
eyes almost
blind he is not
speaking to god
he is not
speaking at all is
not sleeping but
dreaming is not
awake but
falling and he
is standing at
the edge of the
highway and
he is laughing
and she is
almost she is
getting into
the car she is
smiling and
she is crying
and she is
driving away
with the rest
of his life

the kingdom, denied

in these sepia-toned rooms of

memory i relive
25 years of drowning

in the season of ascension

we eat only fear


and i have these pictures and i
have these poems and i am
not sorry for being thin
enough to fade from view

i have no use for your

anger and none for your pain

we were there at the table

when the bullet
caught christ in the throat
 

i was fucking your

sister on the afternoon my
grandfather took his
own life and
listen -
 
confession isn’t art
 

the starving know enough

to view your god as nothing
more than so much meat
 

all magic is contained w/in

the moment of revelation
and then all that’s
left is dust

excerpts from SENTIMENTAL EFFIGIES

5.

no one just some

holy motherfucker dead in the
shallow end of late winter sunlight and
down on the beach the righteous and
the just are laughing are singing are
crucifying his son and
in the aftermath of war all
gods are equally useless

in the slow passage of days all

poets & priests wait patiently to be
broken on the wheel of their
own desperate faith

6.

and every wish is

someone’s death no matter what you
choose to believe and no one’s
going to laugh if you cry
because no one’s
going to care

15.

dreams of the trailer at the

edge of the corn field, dreams of
silence and rape and
wakes up thirsty

wakes up and then

wakes up again like in the
movies and he thinks he’s still
                                  dreaming

dreams the bed is a tiny shrinking

island in a relentless tide
of blood

wakes up laughing at the

thought of mercy

broken hand w/ mirror

in this world where

almost everything is beyond
your control and your
choices are limited to false
god, slave, impotent king

vote or don’t vote

shoot or don’t shoot and
                      either way
the starving continue to starve

grow old

then

die

eat handfuls of dust

send postcards back to

your loved ones, to
your enemies

let them see you

                finally
for the empty threat you
                   always were

love song for the betrayed

all of us here in

this room without oxygen
waiting to be forgiven and it seems
like the safest place

feels like the fist of god

punching a million starving children in
the throat, and you know the
fucker’s laughing or else why would he
let them starve in the first place?

seems like a waste of

time inventing religions
instead of looking for solutions
 

grows into a world full of inbred

assholes with shit
spilling from their open mouths

holy days: an attempt at chiaroscuro

strange to end up lost in this

house i’ve called home for
fifteen years, and strange to
spend so much time considering
suicide on these bright
blue morning

if you were here with me,

you would be beautiful and stoned
 

if we had children, they would

learn to live with disappointment

they would understand the

inevitability of being born in
a building on fire

perpetual motion sonnet

let the sun

break your heart

let nothing and

no one win

this is the moment where

                    my life begins
                             and then
this is the one that matters

this is the bridge we

stand beneath and this is
the song always playing in
the back of my mind

small lies to help hold

together broken truths

the rest of our lives

multiplied by zero and i am
trying here and i
am failing
 

i am thirty years older

than i was and i am
that much more lost

am dreaming of ash and

resin and the slow
stain of frostbite

and we were so sure it

would always be
summer