The cloth I gave it as cover for chill
is lying still.

Christmas eve was its last night.

Not that I knew
when picked it up
and gave it back
to the cold night.

I'm still holding it
heavy and invisible
on my heart
as my eyes repeat the scene
of crows pecking out its eyes
the head rolling on the earth
eyes closed.

I close my eyes
scared life could be so thin a thread
barely holding
and incredibly uncertain.

I thought I found it.
I thought I had it in my hands
I thought ;
I thought.
It was never there.
It could never be there.
Out from the belly of her gut
And onto the street,
I am here,
I am here;
And that is all I've ever had.

Bile in the curb,
Word ***** has never done me in worse;

Popping pills is not my thing
Let me rephrase that
Popping pills can't be my thing

Sometimes I conjure
the after after the end:

our plaster cities bent and broken,
entire skylines scythed as flowers,

skyscrapers rent into oblivion,
lofty hotels and office towers

leveled to dark flatline—
the monotone of a final

wind barreling down,
inexorable, with no one

to hear its elegiac howl.

I picture myself ensconced
in an underground parking

garage scrounging to survive,
dismantling abandoned cars

piece by piece to pass the time, or
curled on an improbable mattress

remembering how I once watched
two birds quarreling over a piece

of pizza crust on the sidewalk
as I walked home from work

and thought to myself
as they startled into air

this is not the end.

Sometimes I conjure
the after as it ends:

when in an instant

every last bird rises
into the sky as one—

a cloud of feathers and bone
devoured by a heartless sun.

I don't get offended when people criticise me because nobody can hurt me more than i've hurt myself.