Apr/May 2002 • Poetry |
burying the sun
late september
and the cold is sudden
and each day shaped
like a fist and
every moment defined by
the disasters that have
brought us to itdo i move too fast here?
there is only
a certain amount of peace
to be found sitting alone in
an empty house all
afternoonthere is only
one song to be sung
when de chirico calls with
the news that he has discovered god
and at some point
the shadows eclipse the objects
they spill fromfive o'clock becomes six
and the sky begins to darkenthe voices of those who
discuss beauty
begin to fadeare replaced by the sound of
a crying child
or maybe only by the silence
after a door is kicked down
four minutes too lateafter a tiny body
breaks the water's surface
far beyond the sight
of landits eyes open and staring
not at god
but to an empty sky
room filled with broken objects
a room filled
with broken objects in
a house
waiting to burnis this what you dreamt of
as a child?a man wearing
his funeral shoes and
an insincere smilean empty bird cage
a sun without heatany number of
meaningless objects that
add up to the same life
your mother lived and all the
baby does is cryall the man does
is read the words of
dead south american poets
and pretend to
understandand the difference between
cold and numb
is a subtle one when
everything you hold falls
through your fingers
to the floorand the weight of the sky
is brutal
but necessaryyou have
spent your life believing
this lie without
question
a pale yellow sun in a plain white house
the word is
god
and she has been making
her blood holyshe has been eating
the poisoned heart
of her unborn childhas been spreading
her scabbed legs in the
name of religion
and will you glorify the smell
of death that clings to an
eighteen year-old junkie?will you love her if
i call her christine or
allison or tami
or have we moved too far
from the sun?and imagine she has
parentsa pale yellow room
in a plain white house
somewhere in the midwest
to call her own
and yet here she isa thin girl
just beginning to show
her pregnancya damaged smile filled
with too many teeth
as she walks towards you
with one dirty hand
held outyou will kiss it and
taste only pain