they still reek of stale smoke

like the golf-green front porch of this widow’s home
locked,
years of promises enclosed.

And the dead men
they’d lined up all day
one by one
just to pass through

And when the last one has left, like an alley to death
your body is but
a cave

holy in its’ loneliness

no man’s words reverberating off
the walls inside your brain.

when your body stops being a hallway

no longer weighing their heavy thoughts, their pending deaths
all their could be’s making your worried skin
ripe with sweat

you pull grief out of yourself
like weeds,
ripped from their garden-beds.

love
all wrapped up, lifeless
spun, in their careful webs


when finally, they shut themselves in their coffins

and your death guilt has dulled

your dreams will condemn
all the dead men
as you watch them shovel dirt
all night to
bury themselves
side by side

sharp tongues
and fuzzy eyebrows
a dead fish mouth with a hook to the side,
a lazy, lazy eye
you haven’t listened the entire time
as she is breathy with stories and the life of a young woman
but you pounce (i saw you crouch)
at the adverse ideas, that we live in a space and time
much newer than yours

that my boss could be a woman before he was a man
that my friends might look and sound and feel different than you

but who are you, stuck in your room, glued to the tube?
to spit such fire, to set ablaze a hope i’d raised
and coddled since it was a sprout
who are you to raid this land, and damage it with doubt?
a man, a-fraid
of losing what he’s won

dreaming of those
olden days
of fighting, just for
fun

how many Junes will
run me out of home
how many summer nights
undefined in their destinations
ending only
empty-handed, no stories itching to
leap from our tongues
exasperated
dried out from heat
that hangs from the sky
like the skin on our backs

we wait
until September turns his back to us
until the leaves trail the ground
until I am too
left barren
laying in these streets

dark nights
push me face-first into
a new year
cold.

how many months
will phase me
until I start to see the world
bloom
instead of fold?

in the air I breathe, dust stirs
and old men stare
kick the concrete in my way
but don’t cry in public!

sidewalk stale trash smells
creep up from below

children yell and the elderly saunter
space full of lungs and shouts and smoke and thoughts

there is firm and fatal
there is passing and translucent
wafts of fresh bread, intimate eye contact, the jump of your heart
it all passes
and soon too
the city passes
and all that’s left is this limp air
daring you to keep on living

I am drinking water that is meant for the plants
I am singing songs I used to sing for my dog
but she’s dead now

and I talk to myself while I scrub greasy pans,
read messages but never answer.

my vocabulary doesn’t stretch the length of expectations
by now I know that my silence sends the right message,
clearer than my hand-picked words
when I feel my blood boil and my brain lunge to keep up
I shut up.

they are just waiting to speak
at me and
I am just trying to sleep