NO ENEMIES BUT THOSE WHO INSIST THEY KNOW WHO THE TRUE ENEMY IS

 

2nd floor, 3000 miles away

 

this is how the world collapses

 

these are the hills closing in,

the sky pushing down,

pulling the oxygen from your lungs

 

pills, but the pain won’t go away

 

the proper dosage, and still the

heart remains a broken record

 

and who is pollock in this

kingdom of despair but a

surrogate father or an emperor in exile?

 

who is your father but a drunken

stranger in a faded photograph?

 

or maybe there’s nothing but

dull grey rain all fucking day and

your hands refuse to work

 

the brushes gather dust and

the colors have no meaning

 

man with a gun in the doorway of

your sister’s room or

hanging from a greasy length of rope

 

says believe in hope but

don’t be a slave to it

 

gotta remember that every age is

the age of murdered children

 

gotta stand by the broken window

and watch water pool in the

corners of your lover’s heart

 

wait for the future to arrive and

then hate whatever

small irreversible change it brings

an obvious question

 

AWFUL HIGH AND FUCKING LOW

 

APPROACHING THE BORDER

 

it's all good advice to me

 

ALL THE YEARS YOU'VE BEEN ASLEEP

 

this country of polished chrome, these ancient ruins

 

made a flag from the bones

of dead soldiers, built a nation from

the skins of the natives

 

raped children in full sight of god

 

in houses of prayer

in houses of shame where the

water ran black

 

where the dogs ate what the

priests puked up

and we hid in alleyways

and we started fires where the

homeless slept

 

we were the bitter

hands of jesus

 

we had come to stone

his lover

 

she said pain was better

than feeling nothing at all

FUCK THE MAN

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5pLFktstcD3f2zYnB0V7QaIYnnbm23O/view?usp=sharing

with ash in your mouth

 

like blue skies over rows of

split-level houses like

lush well-kept lawns

 

like driving lost down

anonymous suburban streets

 

says sunlight is all he has to

give you and so

you take it for your own

 

says the bridge only goes

half way across the river

 

reminds me of my

grandfather’s suicide of the pale

luminous skin of the only woman i

never stopped loving

 

feels like war

which is what we always say in

this age of neverending

                      atrocities

 

a million children

starve to death just so you

can grow up fat

 

a job digging unmarked

graves is still a job

 

dream of warm saturday

afternoons and the sound of

                         church bells

 

wake up to the

smell of gasoline

 

and god is neither lost nor

found and christ was only ever

one more frightened junkie

 

woman i know tells me she

can’t see me anymore but says

i’m still in her prayers and i

have no answer for this

but laughter

 

i keep driving

up and down silent

sunwashed streets hoping to

recognize one of these houses

                               as my own

 

i keep waiting for the

moment of truth to end

YOU WERE ALWAYS SUCH AN ANGRY CHILD

 

go blind

 

find my father’s bones in

the desert, but not his wings

 

take the diamonds from his eyes

 

this is what i remember

from the last century, and so

this is the basis for

all of my lies

 

i don’t want to hear about his

death in a hospital bed, and

i don’t want to hear about

the motherfucking future

 

the plan is to tie up

her parents

 

the plan is to take the child

from its home then drive

down to mexico and kill it,

and i remember laughing

 

the plan falls apart, but not

before the oldest

daughter has been raped

and listen

 

there is no plan, of course,

only a silence that needs

to be filled with

meaningless words

 

there is only money and

less money and no money

 

my father’s bones in the

desert, worth less than the

small cost of burying them

SOMEONE LIKE YOU CANNOT BE FREE

 

no fear, only oblivion

 

slow bleeding in a cold room and

he’s the same age as you

 

he’s a father and a son and

a believer in the age of miracles but

the age of miracles is gone

 

the west coast is a fading dream

 

all those saints and angels waiting

for the last house to fall or

the needle to hit bone

 

all those death row inmates

laughing at

the idea of salvation

 

tell her you don’t believe in murder but

what about all of those

people you’d love to see dead?

 

think about the ocean

as it begins to rain

 

two half-truths are a start but

the map still needs a key

 

the desert means something

different to each of us

 

tell him this and he turns away

 

a clock on every wall and they

all give different times

 

it’s like some definition of

god that finally makes sense