Everyone is almost beautiful
and adorned with beads  
in the room where a cat
you do not know
is a spirit animal
not yours but someone’s
and you love fiercely
both the cat and the people
while the beads
golden and blue
sparkle like incognito stars
and adorn the men and women
as the cat yawns
and purrs epic stories
you are too dull to grasp
and almost beautiful women
laugh at jokes
told by god at your expense
as the cat wanders off
leaving you shaken and alone
hideous
delighted
and driven to ground
amid this cyphered
and dying
glory

My daughter stomps
on the bubble wrap
from the box my books came in
and it is loud, like gunshots
and my son doesn't like the noise
and neither do I
but I let her do it
because it makes her happy
and it's over so fast we can forget
and move on
we're running late anyway
and in a rush to get in the car
and when we are safely
inside and moving
I ask them if they know
why May 4 is important
and they do not
so I ask
if they have heard of
Kent State
and they have not,
so I tell them of the war in Vietnam
and the protests across America
and the one in Ohio
that drew the national guard
to a college campus
and the shots that rang out
and the four students shot dead  
and my children don't say anything
so I say they need to remember
Kent State
so maybe it won't happen again
and my son says that it will happen
and he seems sure of it
but calm
and soon I'm dropping him off
at his high school
and then my daughter
at her elementary school
where active shooter drills
are common enough to be boring
and angry young men everywhere
keep guns at the ready
for their special purpose
on a day maybe determined
but not yet revealed
as the birds sing
and the sun shines
and the world goes around
and around and around
like it does
with nothing new to say

Enter Bonnie and Clyde
stage left
or Baby Face Nelson
maybe Pretty Boy Floyd
and stolen roadsters
racing **** cops
under crisp afternoon
October skies
every one of us ready
and riddled with bullets
everyone here for victory
and Tommy guns blasting
pretty outlaws
and point blank refusal
West Texas sounds better
than you might think
and we'll maybe
make Arkansas by dawn
if we keep our nerve
drive on, cowboy
sweat is all you need
and white knuckled grit
like diamonds
adorning the air
to stay alive tonight

Some words
in proper combination
and just-so order
contain light
but only light for certain eyes
and maybe only at certain times
light like no other
light for parents
whose children scream
or fall silent
light for sisters
who have lost sisters
light for the desperate and lonely
light for men drowning drink by drink
for the girl not taken to the dance
and the boy lacking courage
to ask her
light for the surgeon who failed
light for the bored housewife
contemplating escape
light for the third child
of a forgotten family
seeking shelter
in a dead city

Light for the wounded of the earth
and the lost

Some words are holy
though you are unlikely to find them in scripture

Some words staunch the bleeding

Sometimes these words
are lightning
sometimes thunder
sometimes a breeze across the ages

And I have lived my life for these words
in their pursuit and service

Come Hemingway
Come Faulkner
Come Hannah
Come Bukowski
Come Caldwell
Come Carver
Come Lee

Come the unknown genius who knows the mysteries of my heart

Come you thick Russians
Come Borges
Come Bradbury
Come Brautigan
Come Welty
Come Brown

Come light
Come, always, light

Some words
in proper combination
can save your soul
can teach you its pits and textures

And we are all ****** and bleeding and words are what hope is made from

And some words
are what remain of heaven
when angels give way
and sometimes
they are enough

She still asks and I usually say yes
just now it was egg nog
and yesterday
she wanted to bake a cake from scratch,
the frosting, too,
which we did from cobbled recipes
and conjured the best red velvet
that could happen
and the frosting, against all odds,
was delicious
but just now it was egg nog
and my young baker
required I pour her drink
because that is still, for now, my job
and too soon she will forget to ask
a slight so easy to miss —
the responsibility of egg nog
glittering small
is gold and quickly spent

Sometime later the sky opened
things fell upon us
upon the streets and houses
upon the cars and movie theaters
upon the old women with canes
and their idiot husbands
sometime later the sky opened
things fell upon the bicycle riders
and acrobats
upon the prostitutes and police officers
upon the destitute and dying
and the beautiful girls with auburn hair
and the brave young men with flowers
things fell
crushing those objects you might imagine
they would crush
even dogs and children
not cats, of course,
for cats are wise and adept
at vanishing
but it was unspeakable
this crushing
so I can’t comment on what they were
these things that fell upon us
that crushed us
but sometime later the sky opened
it did
and things fell upon us
and things fell
and fell
and fell
and I was not sad
because I knew it was coming
and I am, after all, a man
and I do not give in to sorrow
I will miss you, though
beautiful one
I will miss you most of all
I will miss you like my own blood
amid this wasted splendor

Beautiful girl has
no umbrella, she carries
her shoes in the rain.

She's a sonata
minor chords and broken glass
ashtrays, lies, spilled wine.

Obscure Bogart gestures
and Hemingway
in the good sun
wounded and stoic hours
take their toll
like this hard sidewalk
cracked beneath
worn shoe leather
and if you’re lucky
some woman
somewhere
might have a tattered soul
to patch your pummeled one
in the dance
between drinks
and betrayal
and you walk on
stealing looks at strangers
just so and dangerous
gliding in your sharp fedora
looking for her everywhere

I’ve realized too late
that life is too short to not
be Janis Joplin

she was in the corner
reading Gatsby
and we were all drowned
and stupid with youth
the play of beauty
on a page was everything
and she was in the dark corner
reading Gatsby
as the guests danced
and drank in the light
she was unaware, golden
sitting in the corner reading Gatsby

There is a movie theater in my head
that mostly shows cartoons
and grainy  previews
of coming attractions.
My favorite stars you
lying naked on our green couch,
sipping lemonade,
and thumbing through a magazine.
The magazine is inconsequential,
but, for the record,
it is called Cat Fancy,
and you linger
on a photograph on page 46.
It's an old movie -- a classic! –
though I never really
saw you naked,
and we never owned
anything together,
and, as far as I know,
green couches
are nothing but myth.

This world once had snow in it
and used car lots
***** lampshades and photographs
of inspired 1916 Bolsheviks
the world had tigers and punk rock
and drugs to make the young girls
sling sweat and dance dance dance
classy dames with runs in their stockings
drinking cheap whiskey
straight from the bottle
the world had red hair and poets
even Sylvia Plath
just imagine a world with trees
or something beautiful
almost no one remembers
but that's how it was
under these cold and constant stars
such a long time ago