God's wrath struck the Joshua tree
   and reduced it to cremated ashes,
   let Rattlers unwind. Left it to be.
   We watched it in lightening flashes.
   We died in angry desert cactus scrub
   hidden branches of the poison creosote
   where the only touch is death's rub.
   We just grow colder without hope,
   join our bodies on this unmarked dune.
   The stars are your bright eyes above.
   I stare at your beauty in a full moon.
   Kiss is a final breath our dying love.

I'll flog you and tear nails out
laughing while you flail about.
Rent a bed for an hour or two
rent a lover to swallow you.
Live inside the human stew,
own nothing not color blue.

A thousand strings of a thousand gods
  orchestrate our lives. We think we are
  in control. Baby boomers, spoiled brats.
  We missed our hardships to make us pure.

  Our parents did the suffering. They were
  damaged from brutal truths they bled
  bent on keeping us safe from the flames
  that licked and kicked the living to dead.

  We live as puppets of circumstance and hope.
  We seek answers where none exists. We'll die
  like those before us. Hating life and death
  not for the actors but for the play's lie.

I bring you invisible to the party to
   meet my friends on an autism spectrum.
   They drink every third beer and **** on
   the hour. They avoid eye contact and guess
   your IQ and love your smell and fear you.
   They like us. They invite us to come again.

I exploded
then floated
mist above
fierce love
killed Jews
in the news.

I barely live
day to day
hard to give
flesh to pay.

To yank a soul out
of nonexistence into
this meat and to force
a life into this thresher
my child died painless
still inside my innocence
she spared me the sin
of having been a father.