If I  could do some other thing,
I'd take it up, unhesitant,
Give up this self defeating game
Of rugged words that finish slant,
Rip off the face of wind and sun,
Renounce expectant casuistry,
As if we'd really just begun--
No sacrificial history.
Whose will can ever be defined?
Forsaking words for altered skin,
Stretched tight enough to bend the lines,
Where like a thief the blues come in.
Such thinking born of hollow bones,
Whose yard collects a set of stones.

These blues ain't made their mind up yet,
If whiskey gets the night or pills.
Both call you on a sucker's bet,
That knocks you down before it kills.
Try standing in your lover's room,
The night she packed and left for good.
You ****** up one last time & Boom,
There ain't no woman where she stood.
Apologies wear out and ****
You used to get away with knocks
Your words outta your mouth and yet
There's no need now to lock the locks.
Who cares if someone robs you blind?
You got no life to leave behind.

In a small apartment, close enough
To the tracks he can hear the whistle
Twice a day, as the train--
One locomotive, boxcars, tankers,
And a dull red caboose--
Approaches the deadening.
Sometimes it wakes him
Enough he rolls over or goes to take a ****.
It's hard to sleep in the daytime anyway.
Nights he's stocking shelves--boosted
A little, when he has a dime--
Not a bad gig, except for the pay.

Hard called sinner, get the spirit.
Myself, accountability
At stake stood, faced eternity
With boyhood sins in my pocket.
Imagine if you've ever burned
Yourself, you know how much it hurt--
Revival speaker sweats his shirt--
And I, respecting what I'd learned
Fast from a dirt bike muffler dropped
Against my leg in some bar ditch,
Could understand this preacher's pitch--
What if that burning never stopped?
Outside the men smoked cigarettes,
While ladies spoke low-voiced regrets.

We understood each other well,
And both of us found pleasure's song
In languages we hadn't heard,
Slow dancing as the light grew dim,
Such effort spent denying death
The time of day.

The strength of my companion's love,
Hegelian against this dark,
December night when nothing else...
When nothing else has quality,
Gives some direction, reckoning
From yarrow sticks and founding stones,
Inspecting bruises on my heel--
Misjudgment of the starting point.
Believers' voices shout me down,
Gainsaying reason's starting gun,
While traitorous, self-conscious death
Goes nowhere without company--
The sundial estimates the night,
Lies waiting for the angled light.

Uncertain as the view tonight,
Before your eyes have had the chance
To focus on the innocence
Of children with a human right
To play outside and then be fed,
And not expect the sky to fall--
Not be shoved up against a wall--
To dream in a familiar bed.