
Sing me a song for the hollow dead
echoes in their eyes, dust for lungs
the anguish of distance and the greyness
of a sky heavy with rain. Sing to me
church bell goodbyes. Sing the way that
willows will bend, the shape of the earth.
Sing a song for the hollow-eyed living,
a hymn for the saved, or something that
sounds like salvation, or just the sounds
of sheets against the mattress, the hush of
a lover sleep-softened, a sudden startling
coldness to that side of the pillow.
Sing me a new day. Sing me renewal.
Who are you going to kill tonight?
The ghost in the mirror who
Cries when you look away,
Or the ghoul that screams in
Your mind as you fail to sleep?
Kill the little parts of you
That still insist upon bleeding.
Leave them in unmarked graves.
Forget them, kill them, kill them.
Shall we write the stars a requiem
As they cremate themselves?
My love, I feel this pain daily
Shuttered lights won't reach us
And we live in darkness because
It is what we believe we deserve
I am writing us our requiem
We were, like stars above
Too fond of distance
Today, she turned to me and said,
"How do you know that I'm real?"
The static in my ears rumbled
It's hazy beat, a mechanical heart
Gripped by some magnetic fear.
The trees were silent and
Oh so blinding, oh, bleeding,
Too full of life to be anything but dead.
I knelt down to feel the stony ground,
And it laughed at me, running away
Like a child playing a game of tag.
Today, she turned to me and said,
"Do you know what is real?"
I want to kiss the sun and
Not cry out when I fall
I will not be sad in leaving
Him to his empty sky
Because I loved in such a way
That I cherish a death in his eyes
How many times must I write
The word, "Love"
Before it at last reaches you?
Cracks open your glacial heart,
And lets me bury myself
In the cradle of your bones?
Do you exist for me to love?
Do you exist at all?
I will write it once more,
And hope to God you hear it:
"Love"
If I could show what he meant to me
Behind eyelids, stars would form
From dust and fire and pain
An all-consuming emotion, devotion
If I could let you know what he is
There would be no such things as
Shadows, a light touches every
Blank corner of my chambered heart
If you could hear his honey-sweet speech
You might know love that is beyond love
There is blood on my hands
Is it mine or is it yours?
When you strung me up
By my fragile wrists
I bled
When I took the knife
From your shaking hands
You were bleeding
Now that our edges blur together
Are we brothers?
The cactus flower blooms once a year,
And then withers in only a night
When there is no one around
To give witness to its passing.
In this suburb, yards either hold
Pebbles dumped by the ton in space
That did not need the gross intrusion,
Or grass and sprinklers and the
Wasteful act of preserving pretension.
The cactus will live for decades
In this suburb I now leave behind me.
I am not sure I know how to miss it.