Wednesday, October 25, 2023

delusions of reference

 


with soft rain in the afternoon and

an abundance of green

 

with the dogs all hungry but

none of them starving yet and the

simple fact that this is one way to live

 

this is only the blind man’s dream

of the western ocean

 

st maria in those last pale grey

centuries before her ascension

 

told her i loved her but

it was more like need

 

was cerulean blue and

darker than addiction

 

the highway into the desert

uncorrupted by religion

 

littered with bones and the fragile

skulls of missing children and

i am not a believer in the

age of reason

 

i am a different whore

than the one you remember

 

found new and better

ways to hate myself

 

stood naked beneath the smothering

heat of august afternoons in a

neighborhood of absence

of locked doors and flatness in all directions

no trees

no birdsong

just anemic shadows nailed to dead lawns

and i knock on every door

but no one answers

 

i close my eyes but get

no sense of waiting

 

no sense of hope or potential

 

a week’s worth of rain on the way and

then the loss of everything we’ve

spent the last twenty years amassing

 

the simple joy of despair

 

a small gift to give to my

sons for when ordinary miracles

are no longer enough





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