I really don’t have
anything pretty
to say. This
is a problem.

I’m supposed to drag
the good words out
almost on demand, 
certainly at my own command.

I don’t put much stock
in the idea of a Muse.
I don’t channel
anything, am no conduit.

Still, right now
the moments that get me in gear
to pull a stunner out
are just not happening.

I will not blame
anything or anyone for this.
I will not blame the President
or dark weather.

Instead, I will melt down
the rough lead I’ve been pouring
into molds for bullets and sinkers
and make from it instead

a dull gray god. An idol
for a religion of beauty
I used to follow, but cannot
put current faith in. 

Once cast I will set it up
and pray to it. I’ll ask it
to make my hand strong
and show me how to forge ahead.

I will wrestle up a vision
unlike past visions. It will not
be beautiful, but it will be 
true. I do not care what Emily said:

they are not always the same
but it’s possible
that they know each other
and that they talk;

I hope they do and when they do,
I hope they discover
that they both know
my name.

Daylight arriving:
too much of a thing,

neither bad nor good,
that inserts its presence

without asking.
Dusk and dark:

blankets only, 
fixes for nothing.

Day or night
the air smells like fear, like

blue lights
in my rear view.

I am broken,
I’ve been told.

I’ve been told
I’m in the process

of healing. Terrifying words,
broken, healing; broken

for how I’ve been
and how I am seen;

healing for its reminder that
I have not only not

been repaired fully,
but that I may never be.

What I do daily, nightly,
is pretend the healing is working.

I sit in the scent of fear
and bathe myself.

I call it a treatment.
I treat myself to 

immersion in what you call
healing, which for me is

a rough massage
of broken parts

that is alleged to make me
better, but really 

just moves fractures
into hiding under my skin.

The hurt never changes
and I can’t escape the smell.

I am more broken than
healing. This is my life.

I live it and have lived it
but I will not pretend

to have liked 
much of it. 

Sweet Boy took 
one in the chest.
Miraculous moment,
he did not die there;
instead he walked
across the street to 
do it. That’s where they
found him looking up
at the stars, eyes fixed
on the zenith.

Sweet Boy,
sang the heavens, welcome
to you. Welcome to you
from the world of difficulty
and miracles that should not
be needed. 

Another boy,
not so sweet, not so 
boyish, falls in another
street, this time cut;
he passes at once.
Rough Boy, miracle of 
miracles, rises up from the blood
on a song like
Sweet Boy’s song,

though it’s daylight 
and he’s not going to be
as missed as Sweet Boy and
it’s a different world more in need
of miracles than the first

so the song shifts in key
but they name him Sweet Boy too
because that’s a name
heaven can sing for dead boys;

and Sweet Girl dies in song,
and Sweet Man, and Sweet Woman,
and Sweeties 
who refuse the other songs
until they get their own
just as sweet as those;

miraculous songs, songs 
for the dead that do not
choose or blame, that only 
welcome and lament,
that offer sweetness to 
this bitter world.

On behalf of my left leg
and its limber history
I’d like to apologize 
for how it has kicked
and lashed out on occasion
for reasons gone dim
and mostly forgotten, which
may have seemed vital at the time
but now are nothing, nothing at all.

On behalf of my right hand
and its misshapen grasp
of importance and digging in
when things get tough
I’d like to do penance 
for those times I held fast
to what I should have released
and let go of those I should have
held close. I truly believed 
in myself when I did those things
and now that I know how untrustworthy
I was and still am, I cannot look
down at my arm without shuddering.

On behalf of my genitals,
I am sorry I listened to them 
as often as I did. On behalf
of my eyes, I am sorry I did not
see what was plain. On behalf 
of my skin, I apologize for
not paying attention to how
the hairs stood up on my neck
around some and how they did not
around others, and for how often 
I got it wrong — more often
than not, more often than seldom.

On behalf of the body, I lay myself
down and say no more. On behalf
of what the body did and did not do,
on behalf of how I drove it and dragged it
and how it took me and pushed me
in turn, I say sorry and my fault and
agree to every accusation and complaint
lodged against it and against me, 
even the ones only I know enough to make;

I see now how the body and I
colluded in this festival of indifference
and poor choices called a life, and 
on behalf of the body, on behalf
of myself within, though I know
I cannot offer enough
of what’s left of us
to justice or mercy,

I say
take what there is,
and let us be done.

Everything is horrible
except for these apples
and these lilacs. Except for
the open eyes of this doe
who died by the side of the road
not long ago, eyes that still look 
darkly alive for the moment.

Everything is terrible
except for the wind
and the song I hear coming
from the house next door
that’s being sung by a woman
a cappella, in Spanish I think,
although the wind
is bending her syllables
and they could be in a tongue
I don’t understand
that is moving me to tears.

Everything is lost 
except the memory
of how it’s always been like this
and there have still been apples
and lilacs, and 
in death there has also been beauty,
and there have always been songs 
to puzzle the ear and churn the air
regardless of horror and terror
and in spite of having no way
to translate happiness to all at once.

Nothing is minimized
by being startled into awareness
of what is possible 
beyond the worst we can be and do.

Nearly the last time
I’m going to say anything
about the clocks under my skin
and how the count off rhythm they deliver
relents only when my attention
slips under water and drowns

then revives itself over and over.
Nearly the last time 
I’m bothering to explain myself
about how this body works or doesn’t.
How I slide along until I hit a stone
or seam in the road and then
derail and fall singing to the shoulder.

Nearly the last time I do much of anything
with this head limping along as it does
as I try to make sense of happy and sad and 
the complicated mouthfeel of my breath 
escaping back into the mistaken effort
to stay alive exactly as I always have.  

Nearly the last time I try to make sense
and I say nearly only because
I’m under the assumption that one day
soon I’ll run into someone who will make me
want to make sense again. They’ll ask me
how I got so far in spite of the clocks and
my runaway organs.  I’ll slow down and tell them.
how in every life there’s a Someone to capture. 
Someone you want to capture.  Someone’s a trap
I want to trap. Someone is a mistake
I was born to make one more time, a someone
called by my name I haven’t met entirely well.

Our time is come.
Bloodrain washes hard

over us all. I am one
holding on against it.

Would never have believed
at a lesser age

that I would live to be drained
by existence itself of 

a hope for salvation
yet still be hanging on

from habit, not from hope.
I look for light,

see a flash here and there
which may or may not be real,

which are so distant
and diffuse 

that they serve no purpose, 
offer no direction.

I am not alone, I know. 
I hear others out there,

calling.  Maybe that’s all we are
now: solitaries, crying out, 

waiting for a light,
clawing toward flashes

we think we see, unaware of how bloodrain
has stained us beyond cleansing.  

Once I longed to pray in joy.
I longed for my tongue to form

a prayer of peace.
Now I cannot speak

one happy word.
I cannot find a thing

to praise for fear
of being betrayed

or of being named
a betrayal by others.

Once I longed for light. 
I long for nothing now

except a silent end.
No prayer, no sound,

no rain upon me.
A simple drying out

from a deluge,
then rest.