I will fight everything
tooth and nail come
Hell or high water
by pen or sword
or just that laser-point
stare that I get
when the cards are
on the table
Oh, and if I die
in a pool of blood
or a pile of guts
or a floundering heap
of real intention,
I hope I at least
keep my shoulders square
enough
And I hope I always know
that my mother loves me
Is life summarized in empty soda cans
or stacks of boxes of fine old clothes or
the silences of long car rides after funerals
and tragedies? In movie quotes? In filing cabinets
in debt collector’s offices?
You are a book with a table of contents
and and an index in the back
and your best friend indexed a lot of it,
for you, until he got bored and did other things.
Then you spent your time with a beautiful woman
or an electric guitar or
both, but neither for long enough
and so your reference notes grew more confusing
but less meaningful, really, with
every passing day.
Now you tend bar in a seedy town
and the money is pretty good and you haven’t
seen what’s her face in years but who gives a shit.
Your guitar was sold at someone else’s rummage sale
last January.
There isn’t much fight in you these days
and you pour as much for yourself as for
everyone else, though you haven’t had soda in months
now.
The cans are still scattered near the kitchen door.
Disease is a thing that happens
to grandmothers and Brazilians
and other people’s children
So it hardly even interests
late at night on a poorly-funded
television special when
there’s nothing else to do
One day you took
a lot more time to
take the kind of breath
that meant something
You coughed, too,
though it was the
hottest part of
the middle of August
And then your heart
started racing and
that desperate worry
settled in,
like a spider
on a ficus leaf
You’ve held out this long
you’ll hold out longer.
But you said it through
gritted teeth as you clutched
at those important parts
Then you remember,
all at once,
that sometimes things don’t
end the way
you want them to.
With every passing moment
the straps get tighter
and that breath you once loved
is only a memory
There is a place not far from here
where the wind whips fiercely and
the sand and dust flies in your faces
so that you can not even think to go
further
The water is cold on this ill-tempered
beach and the ships have all come in just
to stay alive amidst a red-flag warning
and water was boiling and everyone was
cold and alone and etc etc etc
so we walked streets that offered nothing
and we saw ships that we fancied all the same
for different reasons. We watched the ducks.
You shivered.
We came back, then, from that treacherous place
feeling glad to be alive even if we hadn’t got
our toes wet like we wanted to, and as far as
I could care those waters are still boiling
and everyone is cold and alone and etc etc etc
except for some of us
Some chapters close
and God willing
never open again
I remember a thunderstorm
in a field one summer and
the lighting was better than
every firework I’ve ever seen
Then four years went by
and you packed up to go
from one place to another
though you stopped here
for a moment,
at least
Then four years were
purely inconsequential
and everything was just
as it always was and
if the sky cracks any differently
in Texas I know at least
you’ll see it the same
And thank you, for it.
You can move the universe
with six steel strings
and conviction
We can not burn down the heavens
no matter how much fire we send
skyward
We can only till our fallow earth
and tend our gardens carefully
and then it wont matter if
Heaven were burnt down
or not
I am a delicacy
in the desolate night
fit to be consumed by
passing tigers
and I would fight
but I would lose
I’m certain
but I still will wander
this desolate night
and damn those
feckless, transient tigers
anyway
Leaves fall every autumn
after dying and they
crumple up and blow away
and some people are just
the same but some people
write great records before
they go and instead of brown
mulched detritus we are left
with a snapshot of those leaves
in all of their glory and
we still must rake the yard
but the sitting room will be
beautiful
when we do finally come inside
Oftentimes the most gorgeous pictures
hanging on the nicest walls
are covering the ugliest holes
and crookedest nails that there ever,
ever was
Those pictures get knocked down,
sometimes, and they tear out those
wretched hooks, and all that’s left is
the scars that were once hidden by
their beauties
I will not despair, however, when those
blemishes come to bear:
for though that frame may never hang
again, it will certainly
lean against the wall atop my
mantle
Fry dinner on the kitchen stove
understanding only crying for onions
all thought lost in sounds of french-frying
I watched this movie once
and I can’t remember all
the characters’ names but I
can see their faces in my head
and I was sad when I saw this
movie because it was a sad movie –
it was supposed to be sad – so
I wasn’t upset that I was sad when
I saw this movie but the characters
who’s names I don’t remember made
me think a lot about you and
it made me thinkg that I’m really
glad that our life isn’t anything
like this sad old movie even
though it’s one of my favorite
ones
This town isn’t going anywhere
and half of us
or more
are destined to toil and moulder
within her limits
She will give every ground
and she will be gentle and caring
but some of us are just not
cut out for this whole
‘taking initiative’
thing
Stuck, might be a word
or washed up, another
and instead of reaching the stars
we might deign to move potted
plants at a local greenhouse
She isn’t going anywhere,
and maybe neither are we,
that’s true,
but her limits, though narrow
are poorly defined, and have
been so for ages, and
maybe a long country jaunt
is all any of us really need
Even when the tough stuff happens
it’s only tough until it softens up
Your breath is staggered, no doubt,s
from the liquid coursing through
your veins.
Your little pump
coos and chirps like a mother hen
and even though your breath comes
so sharp and shallow
it feels alright
At least tonight your eyes
are closed, and the man screaming
two doors over is screaming just
a bit less.
You smiled a lot today,
and there was color in your cheeks.
things still hurt, sure,
because that’s how things go
before they get better.
The noose around your throat, though,
that’s been cut and tossed aside.
And you smiled a lot today,
and that’s the main thing anyway.
Your great great grandad was a cannibal
in a cave in the mountains of Africa
and he might have eaten my great great
grandad when he came down, many years ago
to take your great great grandad back
with him.
Now you’re yelling and I’m yelling and
we’re both on the same side more or less
and fighting the same fight kind-of sort-of
and isn’t it a wonder of the modern age!?
Time heals all wounds, I heard,
and George said that all things must pass
and that’s true;
even with everything going down the way
it might have, all those years ago,
nobody has to eat anybody anymore, and
I’m sure as shit not taking you home
with me.
the sieve and the sand 
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