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