A hard luck kid
Pushing and fighting
Sleeping and reaping
Hand hold his girl Joann
Sleeping over drunk and high
You always slowed me down
You always made me mad
It's funny how your dishes in the sink
Would **** me off
But now I wish you were still around
To eat off the plates
And scrape your teeth on the fork
And leave your clothes in the floor
I wish you would open the door
And ask for a ride to buy beer

But

Now I'm smoking cigarettes
On your bedroom floor
Looking at the empty bottles
Wondering about the dresser
Filled with your drawings
And your lava lamp still going
Joann comes in
And cries in the doorway
Because she doesn't know what to do
With your clothes and your pictures
And I want so bad for you to open the front door
Singing Merle Haggard at the top of your lungs

In the hanging kitchen, the smell-
cut cayenned sausage, ejective tomato slices
the whole thing in the back of the throat, inflamed.
Olive oil. Vinegar. Billie talks about her "girl
friend." She lives in Mayfair. (Almost pretty;
don't look too long.)

At times I feel sick.

American man he
strikes the figure of a half-God
broad-shouldered, burned
he does Not exist, John Henry
split his bust long ago and we
are huddled small boys imperfect
in the dust of his legacy.

Our fathers stood from dinner tables kissed
wives were kissed by children one last sip of old
wines and walked into the night looking
for burned-up lamps, the memories of mountains.
Ate stone. Drank mist.
(A thirst for adventure is close to your heart.)
Fell into the grit, the failure, fell
into everything.
(Little else has taste once the spice of life is on your tongue.)

I have nothing but my understanding.
I want to be swaddled, paralytically blind, shamelessly loved.
Or to go out in the wicker
world, there to find whatever our best
died looking for, tigers or ruins or
a life after adventure.