So I sat here writing a letter,
trying to recall events like the weather,
why red and blue have been fighting forever,
the kid in the newspaper with some new fever,
or that house that set itself on fire.

I wrote off the lines and on the back of the page
about a mother and father who abandoned their children,
a street that went up in a riot,
the telephone poles and the trees,
pipelines and the sewers, and their eventual decay.

I wrote, “Will you marry me,” one thousand times
Then I wrote, “I don't love you anymore,” one thousand and one.

I sat here
and I wrote a book that wasn't long enough
it couldn't explain the things I wanted to say.
An AK-47 sent through the mail.
The tower that fell with no plane.
Flower sales and drive-by’s,
what really happened to JFK?
Why wasn't it **** Cheney?

But I barely wrote half of what I could think.
A declaration of war, like it's a game.

I sat here, alone with my 90 degree angles
every night is a race to the bottom of the glass.
A prisoner to my own mind
which I cannot escape.