Would you **** me
Twenty years ago
Would you **** me
Right now
Despite our different
Outlooks
Could congress
Advance somehow
Back then did you give a ****
And do you
Weigh it now
If we can't even talk
Straight
What's the point
Anyhow?

I could care less
Scream the Americans
On both sides
Of the divide
But that don't
Make no sense
If you could care less
You care the most
That's possible
In this life.

the coffee’s burnt again  
and the cat’s staring like it knows  
I haven’t cried in six years  
but I’ve been leaking in other ways
through the fridge light,  
through the cracks in the drywall,  
through the way I say “fine”  
when I mean “I’m rotting.”

the mailman dropped another envelope  
with no name, just a whisper  
and I thought maybe it was time  
to bury the version of me  
that still believed in clean slates  
and women who don’t flinch  
when you say you write poems.

I’m overdue for a funeral  
but nobody wants to dig  
unless there’s a paycheck  
or a priest involved  
and I don’t believe in either.

the barstool still remembers my spine  
and the bartender’s got a face  
like a broken clock
always stuck at 2:17 a.m.  
when the jukebox plays Sinatra  
and the drunks pretend  
they’re philosophers.

I tried to write an obituary  
for the part of me that used to care  
but the pen ran out  
and the paper laughed.

so I lit a cigarette  
and gave the ashes a name.

What do you want?
Could you put it on a scale?
Are you sure that's
What you're after?
You could end up in jail.

When they
Carried round
The lino
That they might
Spin on their heads
Around
The
War zones
Of
The old city
The world
Was
Waiting
To be fed.

Your love is like a frozen bird, a
feathered stone falling from the sky.
I wish it didn't die.
It should be flying, and soring, and
healing, against the warm blaze of
the afternoon sun--weaving and
diving through the coolness of the clouds.
But it's gone, and all it can do is
plummet and take a few more
birds out, on its way down.