Flatbed trailer
beside me in traffic.
Full load of wreckage
including one smashed up
white Accord with glass
gone from every frame…

look, I know it’s some reflection
or my fatigue but it’s looking
like Jesus is up there
behind that cracked wheel,
smiling and waving
and looking
David Bowie fine.

It’s been
a long workday,
a long home commute.
I’m sundown run down
and ready to fall down
on the couch
and just be lonely
and trust me — 
no Jesus will raise me
once I’m down
like a pancaked car
and safe in the living room’s
everlasting arms.

I’ve been told
I could make this place beautiful
by poets and 
realtors and
rarely by lovers
but I have always thought
that’s too much to ask and
the wrong kind of work to demand
of someone like me. 

It would take
a lifetime of bone sacrifice
and blood-bathing
for me to get this place
past acceptable. 

I could make this place tolerable; perhaps
with an act of God or two
could clear away everything else
so comparison becomes impossible.

If I ever find myself 
in a land without mirrors
or morals I might fall into
some default called 
until something better
comes along
but until the improbable happens
this place won’t be made beautiful.

The realtors and the lovers
and most of all the poets
will have to make do
with this: that I will make the place
less wretched than it was
when I found it, and then others
will have to take it, leave it,
or do their part to make of it
whatever they can.