"we will wear compassion, we will wear it at the gates of hell and they won't stand against us." -as cities burn

amazing grace, how dark the sky
that killed a boy like me
i once was cold but now i am aflame
was safe but now i'm free.

every day is a brand new defeat but
still i have faith
that one day i will have faith.

the defeat (or: in which i reference eleven songs/albums and talk about the apocalypse again)

television off, apocalypse on.
if you'd been paying attention you would know that
there is no way to prevent this tragedy.
watch the sons of the fallen nation limp
in livid agony
through the nuclear winter
every step driving the fragments of their broken lungs
further and further into the backs of their throats.
they beg for guernica.

look under your feet.
god is sleeping, trapped beneath the ice,
and all his sons went downhill fast
dead between the walls of jail cells or mosques.
bowing to the wills of advertisement executives.
kissing the feet of automatic rifles.
are we rich or just sinking slowly?
the earth isn't humming.
it's not even breathing.

only the clouds reach down
to check for any whimpering remnant
of a once-seismic pulse.


there are giants in the ocean
the rising tide carries them towards land

nothing else

maybe i can only find it
when my back is pressing up against the seat
when my hands separate and dissolve
when the seams in the road run parallel
to the seams of my collarbone and inner forearm

when i am not concussed
in danger of coma
when i can fall into a fearless sleep
and find no sorrow in it

dammit janet (a true story)

your eyes were all mist and murder
seducing me even (or especially) with
the silver knife you kept so slyly in your
left hand, pointing it downward as if
you did not intend to wound me

but your voice jerked me back to life
straining me through copper-wire
modern modems and too much
makeup and snippets and pixels and
how much are you worth to them?

last year we had pearls and record players
and we sat with our chins resting lightly
on our fingers and we drank flutes of
champagne and we smiled just enough
and never laughed too long

now all these paper crowns shine too bright
and all these pastel colors wax sinister
and i see all these flimsy frozen people whose
mouths never change and on the television
the volume is turned up two notches too loud

be mine 4 ever

the rhythmic thumping of the washing machine
i wondered what the young boy, hidden behind
the arm of the sofa, had seen of the masked man,
or if the chill point of light had blinded him into
magnanimous ignorance.

the rhythmic thumping of the washing machine
i wondered if that man had considered, even
comprehended that he might die tonight, in a
way that would make joseph mengele himself
applaud in admiration.

the rhythmic thumping of the washing machine
i wondered if that woman knew what she was
getting into when she agreed to take point, or
if she had to look around first before she found
a jawbone across the porch.

i wondered too:
the rhythmic thumping of the washing machine
and the smell when she finally opened it up

memoir

if george patton talked to general westmoreland,
would they get along?
did the soldiers have it easier
forging the shenandoah or the mekong?
were they more scared of bright faces in the desert
or darker ones against the swamp?

i wonder, the guts at right angles to bayonets,
fanned out by land mines,
stenciled by cannonballs,
connected between little pieces of shot,
slatted through with grenade fragments,
do they all look the same?

addendum to "short storee"

you saw my eyes wide like a deer in headlights.
notice that you were the one approaching me
with a glare you don't even notice anymore
but i, shivering, with thin legs and my
big black eyes all terror and sideways,
could not move

and every word you spoke
put one more dent in my insides
until finally i collapsed
with my smooth hide
and my guts all bruised up and unsalvageable

a giant eclipse

i probably looked dead behind the eyes but

actually i was still in the process of a)

hanging myself

b) splitting my wrists

c) giving myself concrete shoes

d) sticking a fork in a socket

e) drinking a bottle of advil

f) spilling heavy metals in my scrambled eggs

g) sticking my head in an oven

h) or a microwave

i) dousing myself in gasoline and lighting myself (like) a match

j) taking a pistol to my temple

k) or my chin

l) or the roof of my mouth

m) taking elliott smith to heart (or rather his knife)

n) drinking hydrofluoric acid

o) depriving myself of food

p) or water

q) throwing myself off the golden gate bridge

r) standing under a tree in a thunderstorm

s) swimming in an avalanche

t) feeding the tigers (with myself)

u) pointing a gun at a police officer

v) running my car into a brick wall

w) cannonballing into a bucket of razor blades

x) or possibly just eating them

y) taking vicodin AND celexa AND clonazepam AND johnnie walker

z) eating the wrong kind of caterpillar

someday i will find perfect despair

and i will tell him

that i would like to annul the adoption papers

because i no longer want to live

with his twenty-six younger brothers

god's good ocean gone wrong

did you ever care that i was taking risks?
because you never looked at me enough —
hypothermia was coaxing blue back into my face
when i smiled at you so rare,
and you just smiled back and didn't seem
to care.

if i breathed you in i am sure i would not survive.
you would infect me and i would not notice
the water pressure building up inside my chest,
the creaking of my ribs as the seams burst
and the hull splintered into flotsam you'd rather forget,
but still i cannot help asking you:
would you condescend to let me?

they travel fast and alone

i guess i see it differently.
behind their eyes
their bodies are bombed-out,
shells that have been shelled to death

and i live in a house
behind my mind —
it blocks the stars and moon so
i can't see them at all

thanks, nova, for scaring the shit out of me (or: global dimming, look it up)

yeah, i don't want to believe it either.
but god. god. it's true.
scientists are raining down these apocalypses on us
(speaking in controlled, pensive voices that betray,
and for some unfathomable reason
they all wear glasses and the glare on the lenses renders their eyes
unfathomable)

and did you know? because i sure as hell didn't
that we are caught in a catch-22
a catch-3 degrees by mid-century
catch those snowflakes in your mouth while you can
(or don't actually —
they are all poisonous)

the only thing keeping us from total disaster
is the same thing that's causing the disaster in the first place.
the sun is dimming behind our industrial veil.
but for every degree it cools us,
it gives us just a few more cancer cells, in places we might not
even notice them. i certainly haven't.

remove the veil and give us our health.
remove the veil and wash us away
with higher seas and dying animals at the feet of our beds.
you know, we could always just leave it there.
at least then we'll be the ones showing up
at the feet of the polar bears' beds

wondering how we let ourselves get
so fucked over in the first place.
catch-22.
i'm starting to think
a .22 might be
the only way out of this

uhhh

i've got all this kindness in me but
i'm too selfish to tell you about it —
i would rather nurture my rage and not tell you about that either;

when i grow up, i want to smoke cigarettes
and i want to be this thing that everyone cares about
an ounce of self-love for every ounce of generosity;

i lose my shit and get humiliated
and i look for dark things and hide what i tell you,
yet for some reason all of you like me and one of you loves me.

well the point of this is, i would say:
i'm not amazing.
i am amazed.

i had a bad dream

my hands were still cold from winter
and his back still wet
when i set him ablaze.

my hands were still sweet from sleep
and his neck still soft
when i slit his throat.

ski sundown

the architect of this mountain could not possibly have known
that one day i would rip it to shreds