Don't worry about what your aunts say
Or your uncles
I will protect you from the brunt of
Their recriminations and disappointments
Who asked them, anyway!
They don't know how you feel exposed
And naked when they heap lectures on you
They don't know what you went through
With your latest loves and failures
They do not know how I will fight for you
When push comes to shove and I grow claws
Friends? The very best, the best I've ever known

Yet you would leave me hanging
Out the window
Avid in my interest for you
Mid-gesture, mid-thought
Interrupted

Yet left hanging would I still sing
Thinking naught of chilly shoulders

Yet in laughing you are dying
Listener, I am, and sorrowed
Your softening whispers coaxing
Think you that a lower volume
Will set your words to a gentler scheme

Look at how we treat our dear young men
Appointed to do our ***** work
While we are sitting down in comfort in our homes
We ask them to ****** for our sins

Please do not hold your head down so low
And know that I forgive you from the bottom of
The hollow space that used to be my soul
Before it was stolen in the heartbreak of the world

Their hearts are laden down and bowed
With lead and the things we never should have left unsaid
Those things that are beating through their heads
And bruising all the beautiful clear air

“Little child listen close to me”
But do not hold their words as law
They have not seen the sights
That you wish you’d never saw

Maybe all you want is to go home
To curl up with the blankets up around your chin
To have a hand to hold as memories walk by
To have someone to hold you while you cry

The pain you go through
I do no pretend to comprehend
I will not insult you in that way
I can thank you for the days I live

But how can I apologize
For those who will not see the sun’s sweet light
Even one more time
With their dead and open staring eyes

Please do not hold your head so low
And pay your penance out with honor
Serve your sentence and know
That there is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

Let the gentling tide of evening come
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
Perhaps you did things you do not want to own
You thought once that you were serving for the good

My life and the lives of others
You have swayed
Are precious to us and our families
More than diamonds or foreign gems of jade

Please do not hold your head so low
Maybe you feel a debt
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
There is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

It is the long, hot summer nights like these
that leave me transfixed,
So hot, it feels as if my skin is glowing, as if
I could simply
burn up,
wasted by fire from
a deep within.

The water, cold tap, does little
but the
little
it
alleviates
is enough.

How can it be that I am so feverish?
Am I delicate?!
made of paper?!
to be consumed?!

I have always
been a warm sleeper,
my body raising the temperature
of a room,
and even
unconscious
I take care to kick away my covers
to get them away
that would so dare to cause my discomfort.

Yet this heat serves a purpose,
as, inflamed,
my brain quiets all distractions
and I am gifted
a blind,
deaf, intense
focus.

Often it keeps me up,
during the hot
dry
desert summer.

Nearly always, this
eerie focus
is aimed wistfully, agonizingly
on cooling down, on twisting, on cold and lovely thoughts.
Icy, unattainable dreams
billow like plasma
through my mind

But they
Are
Only
Dreams,
and it is a kind of torture.

And I loathe to think of it,
but when the nights
grow chill
and I grow
Still,
will not I be
glad of this heat?

Here it is,
here's your plan
there's nothing beyond it,
it makes me sad to see you reach low like this

You want a fancy car
A fancy house
A fancy woman
  (who only says
the right things,
   quietly,
at the right times)
A large salary
No problems
Miniature models of yourself
         well-behaved and clean

You want a stable, antiseptic love
Something static and sterile

Here's news,
If ever I was in tune with
Hermes and his speed and unashamedness,
(He was ever proud of being the God of Thieves)
His partnership with Iris as messengers
It is in speaking to you, now

My dream is not your 'American'
Because if it was,
It would be neat and profitable
Copyrighted to unnamed sources
I don't want that

I want, chiefly,
something frenetic,
Nothing tidy about it,
Cluttered with memories both wondrous and awful

A proudly imperfect man
To share flaws with
To say "You too? I thought I was the only one!"

Problems to muddle through
And be caught in
And solve, with a happy crow of triumph

A small garden, which I will probably end up killing anyway

Rambunctious, willful children
Who will not be afraid to challenge me
Whom I will teach to argue intelligently
Raised to be civil and
Above all, to be curious

I will not mind the mud
And the blood
And the pain
So much at the end

Because I will be able to die
Without shame for the life I lived

What I am trying to say,
with the hope you are not injured,
is that I don't want a part of your envisioned future
I don't want such sweet synthetic sterility
I supremely enjoy the whole of the mess

Delicate as thin, cold glass
I cannot give you what you ask
Why can't I have my time to be
Alone and growing, healthy, free

Where is my bright future now
The silver lining to this cloud
The golden horizon I shaped is dead
Traded for the daisies about my head