the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
*******?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

it has been four months
one week
one day
and five and half hours
since the last time
I saw you
I hugged you good bye
you tugged gently at my bright blue sweatshirt
I imagined that to be your plea for me to stay
You said "I'll talk to you"
I held back tears
as I climbed into a car filled with unapproving stares
I spent twelve hours on a bus
thinking that what went wrong was
disastrous
but that what went right was
magical
I spent the next
four months
one week
one day
and five and a half hours
trying not to.

My days ago
are piled
with excess.

My days ahead,
clouded
with letting
go.

This day today,
empty
as the bottle
laying next
to me.

And there's
no way
to grow
young
again.

Letting go is never easy
it's always going to be hard
that's just how it is
but if you can, I'll write you a card
giving up on dreams
is heartbreaking
believe me it's even harder
when your mind is shaking
but if you can
I'll write you a song
I'm sure it will help you
to move on
but right now you'll be sad
and you just want to be left alone
so I hope you don't mind
because all I wrote, was this poem...