said the blind man to the carpenter, you'll have no sleep tonight (or: i'm fucking dead)

charred trees against the sky
stuck in my headlights like another person
(or so i thought,
but look, i'm all alone again,
and no amount of god)

god is pounding his way through my eardrums
borne on the music of young men
(he's a clever one, he knows my weaknesses)
but you can't make yourself believe.
i wish i could tell my son that one day.

red black open graves as the crow flies all alone

you can drown yourself
you can drown yourself in sex,
seize it, take it from their willing hands,
you can commit a thousand murders,
rip the blood from fragile and gasping veins,
you can pull bottles dry
of misguided antiseptics,
but no amount of sex and blood and vodka
all over your silken body
no amount of god
all inside you
can erase the fact:
you are the human stain.
you will never stop hating yourself.

why am i so disjointed
why am i so scared all the time
why am i suddenly so scared all the time

christmas night, 9:45 p.m. show

the way,
and the alley way,
every brick,
slab of concrete, or limestone,
marble, dying snowflakes,
birds and the dogs that eat them,
benches, rusted pipes,
all of it, the inner city, my inner city,
not a maze but a way,

but she is all angles and anger and she does not whisper
oh no i need that softness those curves those
voices simmer like summer and pour
sweetness into my ears not the

roars, machines, foghorns,
seething fumes, the smoke, bodies,
rotting feathers, or corpses, mud flats,
sewers, shadows and trash cans,
whores out for drugs, druggies out for whores,
revolvers or knives, steeped in blood,
and smelling like sex, reeking of it,
in white-powdered noses, and
every day it snows, but

the women who pull me don't drag me let me in let me be
a man who breathes really breathes for once
a man a real man who dies and is afraid
and who will drown someday

but i can't have that.
inside me i find it,
the way,
the alley way,
and the rooftops, and the balconies,
and the cast-iron gates —

my city screams.
i feel her.
god.
i feel her.

dear jamie woods (visions of 5th grade)

we always made fun of you for your imaginary dirtbike.
you weren't very smart but
you were a total jackass
and i hated you a whole lot.

yeah, i bet you can do all those cool tricks.
why don't you bring in a picture of your dirtbike? hmm?
you never actually brought one in.
we laughed at you for a while.

you were a bully,
all "look i'm so badass," but you got so angry.
you swallowed quarters to impress girls.
i remember all that.

you had a girlfriend in fifth grade.
when the health teacher asked if anyone knew what sex was
(we were in fourth grade) you raised your hand.
i was jealous because i didn't know what that meant.

i remember this: only once did i see you struggling.
you were staring at a math problem (an easy one)
but you couldn't figure it out. you ran a hand through your hair
and your voice — your voice was quiet.

because you had problems in your brain.
and now i think, if you knew what sex was when you were nine,
and you snickered about it, then what was your life like?
for some reason i seem to remember you crying once.

i wonder why you were so angry.
i wonder why you knew about sex when you were nine.
where were your parents?
why didn't they help you, jamie woods?

i'm sorry.
i'm so sorry.

the underdog and summer heat

all i am
is chemicals and waiting.

my hands are ghosts.
they have bloody pasts
and they could scare you to death
just by wanting.

my spirit is not yet alive.
so my body will curl it up
incubate it
until the day my eyes see a world
where it is worth it.
worth living.

my mind treads water,
clinging desperately to that memory
of the last time it was still awake,
still breathing.

december feels like summer (or: waste of breath)

not helping my mother even when she doesn't ask me
makes me feel guilty.
i sat on a chair and read a book that i've already read,
fell in love with a boy whom i already loved,
made a wish for a brother that i've already given up on.

i hope no one ever sends me a shoebox full of explanations,
even if it tells me that it's not my fault. i don't want
to end up shivering inside a rocket ship that is
forever grounded, drawn to earth by
children and backstabbers,

even if i can see the stars through the top.
where is that canvas mat?
where are those ropes?
i don't need gloves. well, i need them.
but i don't want them.

curly hair,
flannel cuffs,
halfway ice crashes wetly to the ground,
and every day i learn something
i never wanted to know before.

i hope today will not become one
of my thirteen reasons why.

tony romo vs. the giants defense

i could see it
where the pain lanced up his spine
and he thought
"these quarterback pads are —"
but then he tried to get up
and he stopped thinking.

he was lying on the ground
when he saw a pair of cleats
(red or white, it didn't matter)
and he needed someone right then,
who would take him by his shoulders
and drag him from where he lay

wincing at his fingertips
and his profession
and he shook it off when he got up.
i saw that.
but later on
(the cameras didn't show us this immediately)

there were several people wondering
if he was okay and he (unaware of the cameras)
reared his head back, in a magnificent grimace,
because all those other guys are
depending on him to hold them together,
but he is stuck all twisted up

and it came back to haunt him,
later on,
when he was dragged down,
beaten down, thrown down,
in a field of blue,
watching every single thing in the world

slip from his fingers
and fall beneath their bodies,
and he was so slow getting up.
(he needed someone again
whose wrist he could grasp tight)
and he was so slow getting up.

he won the game.
the announcer said something about a contusion.
he is twenty-eight years old.
ten years from now, when he thinks back
on the systematic and thorough destruction of his body,
he will wonder if it was worth it.

impossible

frantic, hit-by-a-car
gun-in-my-mouth
snapped-fingers
wide eyes and no words to be found,
nerves surging through my skin
in yellow strings or webs, lightning,
shivering as if the fever
was already dismantling,
systematically dismantling every defense
that i'm throwing up against it,
confused and desperate and drowning
in that tidal wave of
everything i can't change

half the time i want to kill
and half the time i want to die.

"jesus christ i'm alone again so what did you do those three days you were dead cause this problem's gonna last more than the weekend."

in the past couple of days
these two anvils,
shovels, maybe, lead pipes, wrenches,
have been beating me about the head
and shoulders

i was trying to keep my balance
and then along they came —
i was trying to have friends
and then along they came —
how does that happen?

i've been counting the weeks.
have you?
yeah well.
i guess not.

i spent the morning listening,
watching
the young people of yesterday
begging us not to repeat their failures.
the inherent problem is:
they didn't realize that they had failed
and logic follows that neither will we.
it was sad, really.
the way he pulled regret out of thin air
and settled it on his shoulders.

one day i will be like that.
regret will drift down and condense in my hands
but i will have no shoulders upon which to settle it;
they will have been worn away
by those two anvils,
shovels, maybe, lead pipes, wrenches —

no, they are not any of those things.
the power of words.
the power of words.
i never believed it until now.

the hollow boy (lovingly ripped off from t.s. eliot)

I.
i told you already what i am made of.
the wind whistled through my mouth,
and you, disappointed, listened,
to the scraping of sand against fabric;
you were hoping for words
but i do not have them.

i am the trench long after the war is over.

i tried to make you believe i was worth it,
i was scary, i was special,
i was worth the few seconds, the few chemicals
it would take to lodge me
make me stick in your memory.
but you weren't fooled.
sand gets stuck in your shoes
and fabric wears away with time.

II.
chorus of angels.
let me hear thee
the voices and the sunlight
the truth and the meaning
which i cannot be.

sand will be scattered.
fabric will be tattered.
but they will not die.
i will be battered
but i refuse to die.

III.
in the crater i see the face of a king,
broken in two,
and a beggar climbs over the corner of his lips,
his nose, his left eye,
to whisper in his ear:
"give me the starlight.
i shall never want again."

i wish he was not mad.
because i find myself praying, one day,
that the stars will bend to him,
and i want no part in the mind of this man,
broken in two.

IV.
the heart is gone but the broken bones,
jagged trees, chasms,
great mountains,
cracked under the effort of
bearing our weight for so long.

we know there is nothing left.
we hold each other's hands.
there are no hands in a place like this.

there are only slipped knuckles,
bruised bones,
sliced marrow.

i do not want to see again
because if i do see again
i fear my body will be gone
and it will be only me
when death dreams
that is where i will be.

V.
our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

a hundred times.
a thousand times.
it must have been,
i have said those words
and i have never believed them.
i have tried so many times
to talk to god,
and nothing,
i swear,
i would not lie to you,
about a fear so terrible,
because i have heard the bells
with their deep, solemn knells
and i have begged for reprieve
and he has never, never, never
reached down his hand
to grasp the clapper
and the knells have echoed
through the hollow of my body
and the knells have driven me
far, far away to places i do not know,
and i cannot get back because
the clapper, it swings like a pendulum
and one day they will find,
covered with sand and a fabric shroud,
bleeding with knells that sound so loud,
the body of a boy
broken in two

this is the way my dreams end
this is the way my dreams end
this is the way my dreams end
not with a sigh but a scream.

i am going to write something short (1968 DNC convention, or: richard daley is a moron)

riot police, riot police.
you came all this way just for me?
oh don't even pretend to frown
when you stomp me into the ground.

the time is now! the time is now!
look at all these kids for you to beat down!
lift my face from the curb and look at me.
i'll smile at you with my broken teeth.

friendly fire (or: my life is fucked)

sniping from the hills,
bullets like words
words like daggers
enter in her ears;

they are in the same regiment
supporting the same cause
but there is conflict
amongst the ranks;

so i fly down my helicopter
and i tell them to
"break it up"
but the sniping continues

and i want to stop it
but i'm afraid of getting hit
so i just sit
in my helicopter and say nothing

later on she laughs too loud
and his voice is too low
and he asks too many questions
and she says she needs to;

but all i could think was
sitting invisible on the stairs
listening to sniper fire
and wondering

how the hell we're
supposed to get out of this mess.
they tell me the cause is just.
but i don't believe that.

so many years
so many lives
so much money
wasted on one spectacular failure.

when people look at me
i will wear my pin and wave my flag
and pretend i am supporting the cause.
but really
in my mind i am condemning her.

this is war

i don't know what to do with myself.
obligations, duties,
so far away and feckless;
half of me feels born again
but the other half
slowly
sinks

i went looking for adventure but
my lai in the morning
was far too difficult;
i do not have the courage
to stop them
(i cannot fly a helicopter or command a platoon
or stand between the horsemen and the refugees;
and even if i did, i would just die of cancer
forty years later like a normal kid.)

it's okay.
it's too late for me already.
go use your helicopters and chemotherapy
on someone who's brave enough to want them.

one day i might be a doctor or a teacher or a fireman
or something.
first i'll go to college and then grad school and then
i'll get a nice safe career
wife but no kids
a pet cat who lays on my stomach when i'm sick.

can you tell me how to get there?
apparently i can find the way by finding the will but
my will is smarter than i am it
saw how fucked this situation is and it
ran away laughing.

i'm young
i am so young
it's been a hundred years since i knew what i wanted

tracy, california

seventeen years.
i can't even imagine,
literally, cannot begin —
don't even tell me
it's part of the mystery
because those bruises —
i would say they
speak pretty plainly.

your silence scares me.
seventeen years.
they tricked you into thinking
that this was normal —
when did it go too far?
was it when they chained your ankle to the car?
or when they covered you with ashes
in an attempt to hide your bruises
from your own eyes

(maybe it was a careful balance:
we can do to him whatever we want
until he stops obeying
and starts running.)

i wish you'd known.
i wish you'd known to call the police
before you turned thirteen.
i wish you'd known to stay at home
because these people don't want you
to be alone.

and i wish i'd known.
when i saw you taking out
the trash that one day
your pale, drawn face
(you were emaciated and empty-eyed)
and i should have thought.
i should have known.

seventeen years.

every one of them was hell.