--IT’S RAINING BUT THERE AIN’T A CLOUD IN THE SKY

                                                           Retrograde

So sad today.  I’m sorry. 

The sky keeps trying to shake me alive, stab a needle through my chest and save a pulse that might not be throbbing. 

But how do you fool a fool?  How do you dress a sun-bleached bag of bones that would rather be ground down to chalk?

Out there, unseen in the fog, geese wonk wonk wonk, their broken notes a traffic jam of confusion and displaced anger.

I wish I could feel that rage, bear that, lift that, anything, even my cannibal voice which has eaten itself alive. 

And those trees I love?  They look at me like I’m a best friend who’s let them down again. 

Clouds say, Don’t Follow me.  Ledges say, Please do. 

Everywhere there’s too much mercury, even though Freddy’s been dead since ‘91.

So, I pop a top, pop a top, pop a top, but each bottle’s empty and bottomless.  That’s a long way down.  Satan’s Slip N Slide.  Infinity chute.  The perfect blackhole bullseye.  Catch ya if I can’t.

Who said, Time heals?  No regrets?  I believe in you? 

Was it Jesus? 

Was it you?

Really, I need an answer.  Sometimes, no matter what I do, I just can’t seem to find one.

After all, didn’t you once say you loved me?