but the sun is
not the face of god
the low drone of planes
off in the distance
soft walls of consciousness
and
memory that i push against
on these scorched summer
afternoons
children ignorant and starving
in a
land where ignorance and
starvation are rights
given at birth
more laws for greater freedom
bigger wars for a better
selection
and what good is money,
really,
without all of the bright
shiny shit it
can buy?
but i
remember you
circling
the sun
i
remember your face
like i
remember the future
your
sister crying behind a
pane of
broken glass as you
slide
your hand through the jagged
opening
to touch her and then
picasso’s
suicide at the
news of
paul’s death
the
simple fact of ringo
told me
he was your favorite but
i think
you were drunk and i
think
we were through
a phone
call, maybe,
or a
letter from rehab
the
drugs that you swore were
better
than fucking
the
threats from your
husband,
the communist
said
there were children both
real
and imagined that
needed
to be considered
said
there was an ocean view
and a
brighter future and that
the
stones were better anyway
told me
he was on
the
next plane out to
come
and find me
told me
it seemed like kicking
my ass
would definitely be
worth
his time
was the
last thing i ever heard
from
either of you
bright white light and this
nineteen year old girl falling
three stories
which is enough
and no one can find the baby's father
nothing can grow in the shadows
and we spend our lives
being sorry for the wrong reasons
we dream of fire and the ease with
which it consumes
the way the soldiers killed
the children in their sleep
we wake up to dirty silver skies
and the news that everything is true
the women were
tied to beds and raped
the ground was frozen
but a giant pit was still dug
three hundred bodies butchered
and burned and
the country that grew from them
freeways and strip malls and these
teenage girls fucked
in the name of internet cash
this man who
beats his wife to death
and then his eight year old son
and then cries out god's name
in an interrogation room
waits for an answer
hears only the sound the
body makes
when it finally hits the ground
or all
of the suicides out
freezing
in the sun, or all of the rest of
us laughing
in empty rooms
drowning
behind closed doors with
severed
hands and crippled hearts and
are you
here to apologize to the junkies or
are you
here to wipe the earth clean?
are you
in love with
the
idea of being in love?
it
happens all the time
the age
of unwanted children
never ends
truth,
supplanted by the
idea of
truth
j
christ and all his crippled sycophants
looking
for a fix, looking for
the
asshole who owes them $50,
looking
for teenage pussy while me &
st. amanita
are out drowning in the sunlight,
out
crawling through the desert,
alive
in this year of dying but
worried
about the future
junkies
and suicides and the
always-rising
cost of freedom
the
tyrants and their whoreboys
and you
gotta fight, guns or no guns,
and you
gotta be ready to bleed
because
every age is the age of fear
every
forgotten song is
the one
that should’ve gone to #1
and we know the words to all of them,
me
& amanita,
and we
choose life over
life
spent on our knees
we
drive through
ghost
town after ghost town with
the
radio up and our windows down
with
our tongues cut out
no one
hears the truth if all they’ve
ever
known how to do is talk
always asleep in the
kingdom of nil until the
day you wake up dead
because
everything is cause
for humor and
those not busy being
born and
so on and so on
iggy pop, right?
might as well’ve been
fucked up and
bleeding and just
waiting to bury lou,
or maybe it’s joyce
i’m thinking of here,
smearing himself
with peanut butter, with raw meat and
shards of glass and
screwing all the prettiest girls
better drugs for
better living
ezra pound with a
machine gun,
because the false
king has no future and a
shallow grave is too
good for any of his children
leave the corpses of the
faithful and the traitors
for the crows
leave the rags of
your bitter, twisted faith
for the true
believers
let the blinding
light of
pagan faith
define whatever days
we have left
is and isn’t in the
pale yellow light of early morning
while she licks the frost from his eyes
no ghosts,
no sleeping children,
no sound of softly closing doors
back yard shadowed and seen from
a 2nd story window, bones trapped
in mud,
october flowers held tight in shades of
grey and brown and she calls it
love but she’s bleeding
he says nothing
and means it
this is the wisdom of his father
laid bare
