distance w/out time
but this is part of it,
the immigrants in cages for the
good of democracy,
the dreamers arrested for what they write,
for what they think, and then it
turns out that we really aren’t
that safe after all
it turns out that the reasons I
have for denying god are
all i really own
this one small gift for
my children,
and then the silent crush of
fear
upstate triptych
i. cortland, late summer
got off the interstate to avoid the traffic,
thirty miles of dead grey roads through
dead grey towns i never knew existed,
my kids asleep in the back seat, sunlight
like a shroud of broken glass against my
skin
wanted to be lost,
but it was too late for that
wanted to be home
kept confusing the idea of locked doors
w/ safety
kept closing my eyes
against the rush of oncoming traffic
ii. endicott, again
woke up hungover & blind on the
day i was fired and staggered
to the bathroom to drink
the faucet dry
tasted blood
tasted vomit
considered the names of the saints
remembered talking to you the
night before
laughing when you told me i was
the only one who could save you
how we’d crawled naked
like animals
to find each other in the darkness
iii. waterloo, december
sat there next to her in the
laundromat parking lot w/ the heater on
while her sister talked to the cops
told them yr mother’s boyfriend had
never touched her
said she just wanted to go home
and i counted out change for the dryer
you looked for
something better on the radio
just kept raining like the idea of
christ could somehow be washed away
and did you think this was easy?
flying, right? with his arms
outstretched and the city 14 blocks below but
not every child needs a father
not every hand
becomes a fist
and she laughs, asks is that
supposed to be profound? and then
she passes the joint to her sister
says she was there, saw him get up on
the railing, saw his smile and
she says it was beautiful
says he’d been crazy for as long as
she’d known him, 4th or 5th grade, and she says she
fucked him once after a football game, back seat of her
boyfriend’s car and then they’d left her there in the parking lot, made
her walk home, and then she goes to the kitchen for
another beer, and are we really alive here or
are we just moving without purpose through time?
shit
all i know is that it’s always summer,
always 11:30 at night,
always 80 degrees in whatever 40-watt apartment
we end up in, and there are always ghosts
there is always regret, but
never enough to make any difference
never enough to keep the story from ending
the exact same way every time
for everyone who lost their way
the names of all these party girls
who have grown as old and bitter as myself, and
did we ever actually have any fun?
taste of puke and of blood
BTO on a cheap radio in the motel room and
i think i was married by this point,
but only for a short while
i think i had already taught my
parents the nature of true disappointment,
or maybe i remember my father at
the door with a 12 pack and a
bottle of tequila
maybe the past ends up being as
uncertain as the future
keep moving in either direction
long enough, and your story ends up
having no meaning at all
the poet w/out hands, w/out a tongue
sat there wanting to
write something
sat there thinking about
all of the things i'd said to you
and all of the things i'd
kept to myself
knew the priests would
end up devouring the children
knew the idea of democracy
was just one more weapon
for the rich to beat the
poor with
had a song going through
my mind but i
couldn’t remember the words
was watching it snow
outside an upstairs window
listened to the sounds the
animals made as they starved
to death by slow degrees
No comments:
Post a Comment