IN OTHER LIVES, BEFORE WE WERE DEAD

 

your government is your greatest enemy

 

and who is it that takes comfort

from your children’s deaths and

who is it that profits?

 

why the fuck would you ever send them

off to a war fought in the name

of someone’s useless god?

 

how many machines can be fueled

by an ocean of blood?

 

how many starving mothers can be

kept alive with

the flesh of rotting corpses?

 

the mathematics of cowardice

are a choice

not a necessity

poem without a blindfold

 

hands trembling against

the thought of you

 

tongue lightly across

your flesh

 

taste of salt

 

of vanilla

 

one finger slowly inside

and then two

and the sound of your breathing

 

the arch of your back

 

everything between us so

totally honest

for this one perfect moment

THE DAYS COUNTING DOWN UNTIL THERE ARE NO MORE LEFT

 

CONTROLLING CHAOS

 

A NEW BOOK-LENGTH PIECE BY MICHAEL ESTABROOK.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

https://atmospherepress.com/books/controlling-chaos-by-michael-estabrook/

in defeat

 

in the back yard dying he is

not and you were never and

we are buried here beneath

grey skies and unpaid bills, and

you said apology was easy,

you held out the knife, held out

the bones of anne sexton, the

idea of suicide as art, but i

was only 25

 

i was only 40

 

had nothing new to offer,

which made me the same as

everyone else, and in the back

yard there are children and in

the back yard there are the

screams of children

 

there is the laughter

 

we are lucky to

be more or less

 

we are alive

 

don’t believe the fuckers

who would tell you

otherwise

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NEGATIVE LIGHT

 

WINAMOP

 

http://www.winamop.com/jsw2200.htm

 

 

holy poem, after the death of god

snow all afternoon but
nothing is made beautiful

 

no one is considered holy

 

at some point
the last city is built
and then there is only slow decay

 

sons are shot and
daughters raped and all of
the missing are given names

 

and some of them come home
while others are martyred

and there is always the threat of
another religion

 

of the crippled
leading the blind and
of a war that everyone can
believe in

 

a way to kill only the
truly deserving

 

how much of your life are
you willing to waste
making these decisions?

FORGETTING THE JOY OF LIGHT IN THESE NEW DARK AGES

 

imaginary poem while waiting for rain

 

but this is only the day of

angels and we are only cities on fire

 

we are in the car for eight hours straight,

up and down side streets,

scoring and then using and then looking to score again and

what we smell like, i’d guess, is

slow meaningless death

 

what we believe in are better gods

or no gods at all

and the radio is tuned in to neverending static on the

morning your husband walks out the door

 

still gone four days later,

fucking someone’s sister in a leaky trailer and

together they are only a monotonous story with a

predictable ending

 

a suicide that drags on for seven years

 

and her children sit and wait outside the

bedroom door, and this boy no one knows is found

alongside the interstate, raped and beaten and dead,

eyes gouged out, coat hanger wrapped

tight around his throat

 

fourth of july in this

age of casual oblivion

  

religion forced down your throat and

deep up into your ass and whoever tells you that

voting will bring about change is a liar

 

power will always be power and poverty a crime and

we have been walking lost through this forest

for days now or for a month or maybe for

half our wasted lives

 

i have told you i love you and i have

told you i hate you and

neither one is anywhere near the truth

 

i have tasted your sweat and i have

drunk your blood and i have

offered you mine and

we are dying stars in broad daylight

 

we are dirty needles on piss-stained floors

 

the truth sounds better as a metaphor and then

better still as a lie and the windows here

are all broken, the walls filled with

dead and dying bees

 

end of july

 

walk out the door and drive through

100 miles of nothing and then

100 more and then start to see a pattern

 

believe only in what you can hold

  

fall asleep at the highway’s edge beneath

a relentless sun and

what the fuck were you thinking,

growing up, starting a family?

 

what the fuck were you

thinking, giving yourself away?

 

bought a house with no roof, no walls,

water in the basement

 

pulled the plug on your father

 

spoke quietly about your grandmother’s suicide

in a roomful of strangers and none of them

listened and why would they?

 

this is the 21st century

 

age of emotional famine

 

age of indifference

 

wake up in the middle of frozen lake in

early february with a head full of

broken glass and think about summer

 

try to remember how you

ended up here

 

open your eyes for once in your life

IN MY MIND, THERE WAS NEVER ENOUGH TIME

 

THE TRUTH WILL HELP YOU LIVE WITH LESS

 

9 empty rooms in the dead man’s palace waiting to be flooded with meaning

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hETliYfXErtDtR77I4VJuG_Y_MYdNLyY/view?usp=sharing

AND EVEYTHING FUCKS YOU UP, AND EVERYONE LOVES THE TASTE OF YOUR PAIN

 

palace of forbidden light

a river of blood through

the upstate desert

 

a lake of raw sewage

 

dead trees rising up to a

cloudless sky and the

concept of beauty

which never holds still

 

the fact that i still love you

like a knife pinning me

to the map of my past and

then the past itself

 

it’s simple

 

what i write has nothing to do

with what actually happened

 

the house always had its own

reasons for burning down

 

teach your children how to

lie and they will only

grow up to be just like

the rest of us

 

teach them to hate and

they will try to rule the world

 

all they ever wanted to

do was make you proud