|
in the furious season
december and warm
and i am waiting for reagan to
die on a friday afternoon
i know i'm
not the only one
i know every mirror in this house can do
nothing but tell unpleasant truths
and so i turn them to the wall
i drive two hundred miles to a town
where not even my wife
knows my name and i feel safe
each barren field leads to line of trees and
beyond every line of trees
lies a barren field
the horses starve
or they are whipped blind
the children cry
and it was the patron saint of innocent dogs
who told me that some men have a need for god
and it was my father who taught me how to
hide in empty spaces
it was all of the bleeding women i've
ever known who showed me the beauty
of locked doors and the only thing i
did in return was leave
i never meant for
my promises to be confused
with the truth
variation on a poem without a title
there is no one here who will
put pollock back
together
there is no reason to cry
the poem can be a mirror but
it cannot be the truth
and what if every pregnant teenage girl
has a name?
what if every child is born late
in the season of rust?
it's not enough to live for only
seven years
and then die in a windowless room
it's not a life on your hands and knees
being fucked by the friends
of the man you love
i tell you these things simply
and with the knowledge
that i have never saved anyone
if there is shame in this
i ignore it
i sit by the phone and
it doesn't ring and the rooms that
surround me all feel empty
there will be ghosts
whether you believe in them
or not
there will be martyrs and
crack babies and
even small moments of
indescribable joy
at some point
we all start speaking of christ
in the past tense
improvisation. somewhat after kandinsky
these same few stories
that i tell over and over until
all they are is bones
the bleeding horse
and the drunken father
and the god of starving dogs
who is really just one more
unhappy man
who might even hate me
more than i hate him
and what i'm thinking about here
is a seventeen year old waitress
with slashed wrists
the names of all her lovers
spelled out across the
bathroom floor
the weight of her father's anger
pressed like a shotgun
against the base of her skull
the sound her boyfriend
makes inside her
small and lost
and totally unaware
[Home]
|
