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