Those who believe that
words cannot ****
have never read
the Second
Amendment,
or witnessed the blood it has spilled.

Now I lay me down, in bedlam—
nighttime stories never end well—
and I can’t think to breathe,
the sweat is soaking through the sheets.

Streetlamp lights send shadows skittering
wild and wicked through the blinds; they
cast themselves like hieroglyphics
upon my walls: (is this a sign?)

But no, it’s just a fever dream,
I’ve seen these lights a hundred times, and
I’m always contemplating life:
(a radar blip; a satellite!)

On nights like these,
when, wide awake, I
hysterically search for some escape—
(the heat in here is overwhelming!)
–and as I feel my center slipping,
I look to you; your picture framed.

Grounded in an iris, carved—
or crystallized—out of ice,
(my favorite way to meet destruction
is to be frozen when it starts).

But Frost was right, in his desire—
(you know, the world will end in fire)—
and so I will not sleep for days,
as hidden flames rise ever higher.

Last fed is the last out of bed.
Just a few words to live by.
I guess what I mean is
I meant what I said,
I never looked back as I tore out of town.

Back home, folks were slower than most,
lazy days, nowhere to go.
Not much disrupting,
except occasional snow,
and me, I kept right in my lane.

Now those days are gone,
and for real,
I don’t miss it.
Never been ****** like I was that one Christmas;
now holidays hurt, but I won’t
cross those bridges.

Symbols in smoke are sketched in the sky,
I mistook them for clouds,
guess the shapes caught my eye.
My sister once scribbled a scene in her notebook,
looked just like Milwaukee, but felt just like home.

Everyone hurts,
we’re all just the same;
but I’ll make a name, when I dust off the dirt.
Can’t quit for trying, and won’t keep pretending.
All we can do is
keep on enduring.