night

Ghosts pass by in parking lots
Lonely reminders of everything missing in the purgatory
Of gas stations and pay phones
And hot neon lights on cold foggy nights

Before you were born,
Trees rose up beside highways
And there was no chaos
Between people and reality

Now I look out at wet asphalt
Dying bricks, struggling wires
I see your life in all of this
Just like the lives of every forgotten ghost
Left like cigarettes to soak up rain

i am haunted by the eternal ghosts of this city
and the ghosts of my dead ancestors
and the ghosts of my unborn children

somewhere down the line someone might forgive me
for looking too intently and ignoring what i see
and taking things i don't want as payment for things i've lost
but it won't be anytime soon

life is heaven and hell and purgatory
and when we die there is nothing left
there is no way to measure or experience eternity

masses in the distance
pumping their white smoke into the sky
an offering to whatever gods still exist in the vast infinity of space

what qualifies as success
when we have all exploded from the same piece of dust
and we will all implode into it again
and there will be no
"good job"s
or certificates
or buildings pumping white smoke
or even white smoke?
what will you tell your mother
when you fail?
when you implode?

d

blood burning in restricted arteries,
a lightness in the chest
like too much air
like too much smoke
dizziness and nausea in the throat

i met you once and planned out our future
in dreams and sweaty-palmed anxiety
my thoughts directed our actions
like mind control or telekinesis
like just wanting something could make it come true

i couldn’t wait but there was so much holding me back
i gave you over to alcohol and lonely nights
of isolation and hunger
and missed something about you that had nothing to do
with what you said or who you were

i didn’t get to have you but i made it close
and cancelled the low rise of feeling in the heart
the slow desperation and confusion in the heart

a bad day
we can hear it in the deepness of trucks running alongside the river

feeling lighter
with blood pooling in the fingers and toes
we lean back in rooms of dissipated shadows
colors of taupe, mauve, celadon
colors of old women

breathing carefully
looking upward
we know everything
and we are nothing

we met between junkyards
graveyards
greasy diners

we held hands in moonlight
firelight
smoke burning our eyes

i have pictures
of people smiling into the sun
mostly records of moments
i wasn't there to remember

our ghosts separate
as parks are built
houses painted

were we ever there?
will it ever matter?

questions for my family

where are you now, my mothers, my fathers,
my lovers, my brothers?
were you taking care of me when I was taking care of you?
what does pain in the heart measure?
and what does it matter
when you have bars and cigarettes
and cataclysmic events
to take your mind off
the heartbreaks of everyday life?

who, besides me, will tell your stories when you die?
who will add up all your emotions, all the frames of your life?
who will cry for the day of your death, though still you live on
through all your suffering
understanding time only as moments
and taking parts of me with you
‘til I have nothing left?

we were born in dirt fields
in blinding sun
aluminum siding only exacerbating the heat

after minimum wage and prison sentences
those of us still lazy enough to sit inside during the day
went on to community colleges, state schools, and federal grants

learning fast to take what we could get,
we were ill-equipped to argue grades or bureaucracies or medium-rare steaks
and when we did fight, it was only out of the innate resentment that comes from being born in purgatory

mary

My mother named me mary
Before she realized the implications

There is a conflict there
And in a sense most girls are marys
Doomed to either chastity or promiscuity
No middle ground to escape sexual ostracism

I was not born to abstinence
Nor, I like to think, to excess
And it was not my goal to remain ignorant for so long
Or to be passed around in homes that weren’t even my own

I had hoped I would have a choice
Uncommon to most women
But available to me
Because I assumed I lived a fortunate life

But my mother named me mary

2

You wonder about me as I pass you
You want me but I won’t react
You are confused by your failure
If it is failure
You? Fail?
I must have something wrong with me
To not want you telling me what to do
Sliding your cheap fingers over me
Fingers that have slid over so much before
I must be crazy to not want you sweating on me
Calling me “baby”
Stretching in the morning like you have won some game
I pass you without acknowledgement
And am I really such a fool
To go on with my day
And not wonder about you?

out for a night

out for a night or in for a night
the result is the same:
suffocating under grotesque images of moving flesh
bombarded by perverse, psychological complications
of confusing and obsolete instincts
who are these vile creatures who prance and caress before me,
so proud of their desperation?

who am I to feel so empty,
so tied down within myself,
enduring the constant struggle
to embrace that which disgusts me?

distance/dissonance

Distance
Carrying out raids on tumbleweed fields
And flat expanses of chain linked dirt
Not even a horse to reassure me
Not even snow to promise hidden life

Dissonance
And no destination
Sounds with no source, land with no end
Futilely alert, still seeing some hope in dust

mothers + sons

mothers, whose sons I need to protect from you,
whose sons I need to re-raise,
know your sins have no forgiveness
the echoes of your anger will not subside with your temper

the things you say there are no apologies for
your boiling blood will drain out
and your skin will rot to unnatural shades
but your teachings will live on
in the hearts of all the children you’ve wounded