don't give me the
gift
of jesus christ
don't tell me that
faith
carries the same
weight
as anger
who would you kill
without regret?
silence is one lie
denial another
at some point
every age becomes
the
age of gold
we are all worth
more
or less
than someone else
we are never enough
and maybe you
recognize this as
the root of all wars
maybe you believe in
blind absolutes like
good and evil
a young boy left in
a
department store
by his mother's
boyfriend
the mother dead and
her body hidden
and what happens
next is that
the world moves on
the boy pushes
beyond the
edge of the poem
grows up
or possibly doesn't
like others i've
known
billy drunk and
unconscious
in a burning car
linda devoured by
cancer
always the phone at
two a.m.
and the faint smile
in
the voice on the
other end
this girl at the
door who says
she just needs
a place to spend the
night
says she'll fuck you
but that needs a
ride to
her cousin's house
in the morning
says her
prescription ran out
two weeks ago
and she can't afford
any more
asks for a beer
a cigarette
says she hasn't
slept in
three days and in
the
morning she won't
look at you
doesn't want to hear
about
pollock or picasso
and when you
get back home you
notice that the
money's gone
from your wallet
you consider all of
the lies
your father ever
told you
all of the reasons
you have
for hating them
and the way that all
it makes you
is tired
the way his friends
disappeared after
picking
the corpse clean and
now
here i am seven
years later with
my wife and children
with nothing in the
bank
and the mortgage due
with this anger
which can
feed me for
another hundred
years but which
burns the skin from
my
family's bones
which makes me as
hateful a
god as any of yours
my hands moving
always
without regret
