Shadows & Lies

Because for some easy breathing I 

would trade you

we were born of dust and air and

clouds

evaporating

you want to cry

but you have been dry for so long

that despair has cut a 

dirt rock river

through the canyons of your 

lungs

Bullets

I wanted to trade the

violence for something 

holy

transform sky into

reality

Everyday my face seemed 

the same 

until the morning I no

longer recognized 

what

remained

Paradise Lost

Listen to me.

We are the paint peel chipping
dangling over the prickly
bushes
waiting with an eye
toward falling
I wonder who I will be
when I am cut and
bleeding 
I wonder who I will be
when I have
given up

It is like the blanking of
a color screen
the bleaching of dark
green carpeting
hold my hand for just
a little while
We are moving
and fading
on and on.

Pieces

And when I choose to come here again                                                                     

will it snow how it did in my dreams

                        will I be

a story worth telling

                  because the sadness—

it crackles in the night

           

for you           

the mistake worth regretting

                           the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend

this planet a box that holds me

Atomic Pain

Old truths fill the

black hole where

I buried the leaking need

for you

I know all about incurable wounds

            So much and for so many weepy and

            lonely afternoons 

            I meant to leave you

            for so much, my friend

                        and I did

Never more

I have considered you as

I watch the creeping

mould overtake the

fading paint on

the walls.

As the dampness of an

unventilated room drowns

each molecule of

air.

And I wonder which certainty

chased conviction away.

But whatever took me down the

other road—

it becomes simply another irrelevant,

better left unknown.

Through the Backward Lens

“What are you going to do now?” Mrs. Clancy asked me at the cottage.  “I’m going to write a book,” I answered.  The last confession of the sun god, told by the little girl he’d loved beyond all reason.  Except, as it turned out, he was no god at all.  Just a weak, damaged man who had lost everything, and who had known even less.  But in the end truth is irrelevant.  History is written by the winners.  

The sun god is the biggest loser of them all.