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.

Dear Shyla
I keep the suicide note that you've forgotten you wrote our mother folded up in a small wooden box in the corner of my bedroom
It's there so that on my worst days
When I've run out of friends who will listen
I can remind myself that other people feel this too
And after all we've been through apart sometimes our depressions and our mistakes are the only way I can remember we're related

Dear mom
I've hidden a diary you kept while struggling through your ill-fated relationship with my father
In it there are weight loss goals
Vows of marital celibacy
Existential questions
But mostly just a whole lot of why's leading you to answers you wanted to hear
While all of the things you needed to say you left in the blank spaces between the lines on the pages you never made it to
Your favorite thing to say after the divorce was that you were grateful to no longer have to walk on eggshells to protect his feelings
It has been twelve years and you still can't admit the feelings you were trying to protect were your own
And your feet still hurt

Dad
I have an envelope of pictures of you and I
From when both of us were oh so much younger
In each of them you are smiling at me
And in every one of them I am smiling back at you
I don't remember most of them I was quite very young
And for quite very different reasons I can imagine you would have a hard time remembering them as well
When I flip through the envelope I'm left sitting criss cross applesauce on a tore up linoleum floor
Staring at the scales of justice
Weighing the honest love of a drunk
Against the stoic rejection of the sober man you've become
And I am ashamed with how often I choose love

I am the keeper of this family's pain
Somebody has to
Someone has to admit it's real
One of us has to stare at the elephants in the room and see them
To know how each of us actually feels

Dear family
We are nothing more than four misfitted human beings
Tied together with tin can and twine telephones
By an astronomer, who in an effort to console himself,
Confused a congregation of lonely stars for a constellation
And eventually that is going to have to be enough
For each of us to love ourselves
To carry our own pain
I can not keep carrying all of this for each of you
I have my own pain
Which on most days is more than enough
I assure you
On most days
It is more than one man should

Oh sleepless night
What a trick on me you play!
For the reason I cannot sleep
Is because I anticipate the day

We build our day up
To have it elapse at night
But how too often a time I experience
A continuance through the night

Oh how unfair to me you see
For nighttime is a break much overlooked
Because I walk through the day quite sleepily
Which is difficult in a day so overbooked

Sleeping figures
Rejuvenating minds
Your mind is cultivating in peace
While my face is forming lines

Oh how I wish I didn’t get so worked up
I expected this to happen
Which ironically is the reason
My tiredness has been dampened

I lay in bed, ready
Ready to try this out
A pleasant sleep is all I wanted
Without completely passing out

How I get so jealous when
You lay there and drift to rest
While I’m dealing with two polar issues--
Either abruptly collapse into sleep or else from it slowly digress

Oh sleepless night, you tease me so
You fool with me and upset me so
For when thinking of tomorrow I surely know
I’m not going to be as lively as my potential.

It’s like I’m a hobo on Fifth Ave
Looking at the rich not realizing what they have
I get excited over spare change
While you collect your pay checks again and again

So let’s face it, tomorrow I’ll be miserable
And I’ll look forward to when the clock strikes night
But then the hours I have will become considerable
So I’ll lay there restlessly and drift away just before the light.
So I’ll get a taste of what sleeps like
But I’ll never get to experience it right.
Oh you cruel, mean sleepless night!
Where dwells your brother so known as the “Goodnight”?

You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why
Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented--
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry.

You are aware that once I sought the Grail,
Riding in armour bright, serene and strong;
And it was told that through my infant wail
There rose immortal semblances of song.

But now I've said good-bye to Galahad,
And am no more the knight of dreams and show:
For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,
And my killed friends are with me where I go.
Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;
And there is absolution in my song