I genuflected all my second chances away
on a wing and a a few prayers,
a scattered poem here and there
to end this static relationship with daylight.
Realizing it was merely winter in the Northwest
I broke out the whiskey and limericks,
stocked up on sugary snacks and sold my high metabolism
for a blanket and two dozen fat cells in a syringe filled with sunlight.
Me, who laughed too much at bad jokes,
choked on one too many garter belts
and devoured whole chocolate bars unbeknownst
in the dark dark single nights of a lonely
intoned by the absence of a fog drunk on daylight.
As salmon slapped their tales away on a river with no ears
you poured wine out on my skin before the fire and had everyone's way with me
before the sun rose on our stuffed schedules
and we sobered to the scuffed reality of the despicable clicking of clocks.
Seven chapters, a six pack and a bottle of cab sav later
I decided to Google true love once and for all
but all I came up with was some dude named Haysus
who didn't say enough but we wrote too much of it down.
Right now I collect milk crates from dark gas stations,
romanticize people named Pablo late at night atop the keys my tipee-yo-yo,
dream of tropical beaches with a great beautiful, brilliant nothing stretching out
to the absolute limits of my fancy, fantasy, folly or fucking el fin.
My daughters sleep upstairs while I commune with Bacchus,
piss wine-red beet blood out beneath the rotting apples.
They sleep, mourning their stems on strike for autumn,
as I press their ancestors into a fine pulp we guzzle down around the fire,
blessing blood and fish and fruit and root and worm alike.
Remembering that nightmares used to only happen in our sleep
the newspaper leaves my hands read with blood.
My scrambled eggs lack the substance they did before war tore
my breakfast cereal asunder and wore my patriotism ragged,
eagles may soar but weasels don..t get sucked into jet engines.
You know there's something wrong when you read
about Tibet and Cuba to cheer yourself up.
You know there's something wrong when your recycling outweighs your regrets.
You know there's something wrong when signs become confused with sins and sighs,
when someone else's tomorrows masquerade as our todays
and we regret to remember days better than this one.
We who invested our happiness in Hollywood daydreams
could not bear the blinding light of reality boring into our artwork,
tumbled coffee mugs in some diner we gambled against bombs
before someone wrote it down or remembered to remember this time,
or remembered how to speak so people hear.
We who invested our veins in someone else's bloodbank.
We who bought our seats in heaven from a devil in disguise.
We who have the luxury of poems and the time to digest steak.
We who muddy the waters of slaughter in a poem someone else dreamed last year.
We who bleed the blood of others out upon a canvas dedicated to the dead.
Our humble empty words strive to fill the stomache of some God we only think we desire
as our systems crush our systems and we struggle for a breath in this landscape bereft of beauty that we only envisage as being real. We fall, failures for freedom, under a flag set rigid with wire so that not even the slightest breeze may tickle its...
