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

a belgian surrealist

in the silences between

words i thought i
was saying something

in the moment of

truth i lied
 
late afternoon

sound of breaking glass or the sun

crashing down to the horizon by
small degrees

sound of denial

weed-filled lots or

burned-out houses
 

always these choices made by

corrupt saints and crippled gods

always these rivers thick with blood

these corpses piled high down village

streets and in between the silence and the
stench there is only the heavy buzzing
of 100,000,000 flies

in between the moment of hope and the

moment of despair  there are an
infinite number of empty lifetimes and what i
remember in the middle of all
senseless violence is the night i left you
 
what i remember is the night you left me

all of the days that fell in between

our small acts of grace and our

small acts of mercy and in
the spaces between them just
these shimmering wasted hours

and you were lost and i was you