--NOT EVEN FORGERS ARE HONEST THESE DAYS

In This Story Everyone Is Guilty

We are a small collective of hard truths.

We are Fear Death Love and Sex

overlapping and unwinding.

If you don’t say it, does that make it a lie?

All this time I believed words were important.

Yesterday the queen parceled out grace

while people painted pretty pastel eggs.

Today, they located The God Particle in deep, deep space

yet it’s been raining here

since I lifted the lid off this thing.

Tomorrow we might have more time

to agree about what it all means,

but for now we’re too busy dancing,

stripping the flesh from each other

just because

we can.

No One Tells the Truth Anymore

There are roads here that lead to cliffs

and people know things they will never share,

even if threatened at gun point.

Someone told me white is no longer a color,

but how about black?

I know what became of Pluto,

stripped of its rank after so many flat-lined years.

I can’t be bothered by any of that.

I’m busy crushing daisies,

counting the creases in my skin,

jailhouse hash marks of the days

I’ve been

without you.

  

Everyone Knows You’re Famous

All my friends are talking about leaving,

yet you’re sitting pretty in a pool of pancake syrup. 

I never understood why you were such a glutton.

Guardian angels hike up their skirts.

Little girls give each other identical war wounds.

Billboards and pool boys have each taken turns with your face

while I wear my broken bone structure

like ragged skeins of wool.

You needn’t worry so much.  People have comebacks all the time

and grace is gotten cheap these days.

Just look at your last man who

hung himself from that tree.

Nobody Wins

Across state they are shooting at the moon.

I’m never sure who is right and who is wrong

because I tend to crumple when unfairly ambushed.

My Dad’s clan were strong people.

Calluses like mitts.  Eyes that could cut cords of wood.

When I fell in love the first time

my sister said, “I should slap your face.”

All my choices have come with warning labels lately.

There could be a refuge for people who dance hard,

but I’ll never know.

In some countries monkey brains is a delicacy.

Here, we stiff arm cows while

hillbillies shoot down the moon

just to see whose side it’s on.

Lit

On Wednesday

I wrote you a poem.

It was honest and sweet and

would have made you smile.

I described how shy you were those first few talks.

I mentioned your eyes quite a bit,

the way their color shifts in the light,

shimmering when wet.

I even admitted how much I miss you

as well as some of the things I’d do

just to hear your voice,

smell your hair,

feel your skin.

But by the time I got to the last word

the paper combusted,

alarms when off,

and I sat there while sprinklers doused every stitch of this room.

I had a hard time explaining it to the firemen.

I had a hard time explaining it.