And you stood there,
blood smeared across your cheek
as you lifted up your
soil-covered
hand
to wipe it away.

And I watched you,
held
in some sort of
prolonged agony
as you
died
NO
more like rotted
away
into the Earth.

You'll be away from me.
But at least you will be in peace.

You made excuses and ruses
And egregious misuses
Of all we hold sacred;
You misplayed it to the hilt
Until you almost killed
Almost all of us with lies.
So many were unwise
And fell for each guise
Every smiling mask
And gave them what they asked
So they could bask in false glory.

We didn’t notice our story
Did not match the tale as told
And before the ink could grow old
Each criminal prophet grew more bold
And, changing the names of blessings
They continued messing around
Until our Constitution was on the ground
Trampled in the dirt by those
Who cannot ever be hurt.

Because they bribe those of us
Who have missed the bus
Somewhere back in elementary school
When they didn’t play by the rules
And we didn’t learn what cheating looked like;
Didn’t tell the cheats to take a hike
And let us get on with making better
The world they were destroying by the letter
Just as they tore up the words
Of those who started us all and heard
Our voices of blood and pain.
They are greedy enough to want us to fail again.

Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.

The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.

It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).

And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.

And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.

i still say hello
to the tulips in
my kitchen,

speak to the
two sunflowers
in my garden

who grew
despite
my absence

I've run out
of what little
patience I had

yell at people on
the road and tell
people to get out of
the way at the store

convinced I am
probably meant to
be alone by the way

I still say hello
to the tulips in
my kitchen,

softly touch the
two sunflowers
in my garden
and smile by
their gentle adversity
and the way they don't
respond at all.

The basin drains her polluted blood as wine envelopes morose
Every minute is a memory, onset of her blanketed comatose
Vying in a fog of icons and myths, words always fail them
From every misread evil that is disposed of improperly
From every neighbor or friend eternally mute again
From every gilded pattern that leaves a cuff for the eyes
From every fetching barroom, where all such nadir lies