My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

Excuse me, if you must,
as the spinning causes seasickness.
Open the clouds as you continue on
in an aeronautical sarcophagus,
thirty-thousand feet
above broken land.
Grab your lover’s hair,
last resort to prepare for
the emergency crash landing
into mother earth’s disease,
or are they simply parting the seas,
causing darkness to spread
from the unfilled hole in their chest?
Stomachs turn as the
broken wings and sails
fall upon the shores.
An ocean of rage delivers
waves of hatred embraced.
The surf clears, exposing pain
and the premonition
of a cleansing blood red rain.
Shrieks of the banshee
and the howls of the hurt rise
to meet the clouds seeking
to brighten the days afar.
As thousands flee in terror
we make a toast in the French Quarter.
The chariots gain speed
and the wake gains mirth,
laughingly applauding
the approaching dark comedy.
The newly arrived antagonist
has forced the hero’s hand
and now she births forth
a wave of healing epidemics.
The wake’s in the wind
and the funeral’s imminent.
Its population’s been soothed
into a sedated slumber,
but our character has issued
too many warning,
and strikes deep at the heart
of this sinful city,
breaking apart the basin’s barrier,
and lulls its children back to sleep
with bloodstained lullabyes.

I don't stay
up
until 5 a.m.
anymore
because my brain
worked
way too much
on so little
sleep.
Because
the only words
I heard were
"you, you, you"
and I didn't
like it.
Because I woke up
with pen marks
all over my hands
and smears
on my face.
I don't stay
up
until 5 a.m.
anymore
because it started
to know
all of my secrets.