sleepless

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