A raven perches upon the lifeless branch

Calling for you

Laughing at your weakness

As you tremble at the iron gates

Small steps inching forward in the darkness

Shovel in hand

Digging your own grave

Collapsing in exhaustion

Buried under its weight

You are the forgotten

Skeleton

That's still walking

All that pretty hair drifting through your fingers on the way to the ground. So light the sun blows right through, like caring was a dream. That heavy hand of hope pressing out color from adolescent afternoons, our hands slow, careless, quivering novices. All those noes before inhaling, stilling regret, then speaking. One more morning dive beneath covers before sailing down a river, smelling pomegranates, and knowing your stomach turns at their longing. The almost of an early Spring, one breath away from frost, the upheld pause, suspension that expects the fall. Inevitable, endless, earth; we no longer recall how to regain the moon.

What we wear upon our skin

comes down to how we

hold ourselves in light against

the grief, the bullshit

-the photos we carry within

are what we use

-hope against routine

the old poets are dying

today I read a poem about

Philip Levine by a writer

on Prose.

who goes

by the handle of

justinbarisich

and it took me back

to the days when the poets fed me

clean blood

before I became old and closed off

before I tired of the complaints

of the ages

and burned alive and dead so many

of my heroes because I began to sense

falsity in them

but the truth is and always was

what I know now

time only gives a sentence so many

ways

regardless of how we do it

I think back on this and I feel

somewhat bad for walking away

from them

when I should have realized that

I was one of them

even though I didn't want to be in

that club, I was born in it

not to spin this around on myself

but the weight of things for me

comes down to the word against

the page of the world, the old world

the new world, the world we will leave

and the world they will leave

it all burns in a circle

it always has

-a factory in Detroit harboring

steel poetry

-Bukowski's widow laughing to me that

their house will probably be a museum

-the sorrowful exit of Vonnegut against marble

-Hamsun's shamed picture next to Hitler

and all the deaths that carried the weight of beauty

into the ground to be buried and remembered only

by the readers they touched, and to be less and less

mentioned by those of us who have the reach to

remember them in poetry, in stories

all while containing and preserving our own

precious voices and self-respect

our own bullshit

that some other

fucker pushing 30 or 40

will start start detecting falsity in

and less of them than us today

will record them in poems

while those of us remaining

will constantly reach for the

resonance of Whitman

and other timeless entities

to ring through space after our deaths

but we will also forget this

during the course of things

and regardless of

whatever this is

we are only fed

by the hot blood

of artists.

waiting for news. Blood work.

sitting here, a bar north of Mexico

save the fucking comments

we all must die.

God or no god.

Personally, I will leave here without

faith, without belief.

I will leave behind bio mass.

a body that feeds the soil

but tonight, in this blink of life

in the moment

I see drunken mutants dancing

with fat, brown women

awful music

on the juke

the words of mine over the years

carry my corpse in a glass coffin

above the freaks

above the damned and the

falsely saved

we're all born for dirt

all of us are here for a flash

and I know this flash

it follows me like a hungered thing

it follows you

your money is jack shit

your home your wife

your adoring faces

all of it is fleeting

but it counts

the love I feel for you

the love I feel for the words

the way I hide behind

phrases and cowardly

poems so prominent

but the truth is

I love you all

I love your hearts

from a young age I

was taught to obey the

rules of old men

the lies

and I rejected this

because the words fed me truth

they burned sunsets with fires

beyond the grasp of Satan

and Christ

and Buddha

and all fiction.

Do I love you, regardless?

I do

I do because the mutants dance in front of the

bar and a fucking freak asks me for an

autograph

and I tell him I am nothing

but shit

but there's no convincing

a mountain of lies

of images

I remember the ghost of my mother

the ghosts of dead writers

the feeling of them

the way the rabbits run

beneath a Sun so orange

so flawless

you and I, we have a deal, we always have.

But let me break though skin and define

the fear:

I write, and hope it's not shit

I write and send it off with crossed fingers

no matter what it means to me

personally.

Do I love you all?

I do.

Can I admit it soberly?

I can't.

But the rooster flounces

before the hens

and I am nothing more

I am a pile of begging words

and to say anything

otherwise

would be a sick attempt

at something

I can't abide soberly,

in the light

of you.

Everything we are is what

I earn

and from Schopenhauer

through celluloid,

I'll take the heat, climbing the dirt trail

while I wait for what I already know

the diagnosis

I am dying

and I make it to the top of the

cross on the mountain

my breaths short

my failing heart

and mind

and body remembering the

lyrics of Buckley

we share the first name

but he died before me

the lines of his carved in my skin

on top of the mountain I've reached with

one last labor:

As she weeps on my arm walking through the bright lights

and sorrow. Oh, drink a bit of wine we both might go

tomorrow. oh, my love.

I think about the eyes of my dog, and I remember what I said to the doc when he remarked that I was taking the news so calmly:

I'm just thinking of the words I haven't written, the places I won't see. I just want to outlive my dog.

And his confused, stupid face, the doctor, the trained fool. He had no idea what I meant, the intensity.

I stared at the paperwork of the EKG

Anterior infarct -age undetermined

-Negative T-waves -Possible Anterolateral ischemia

Basically, I've had a heart attack in my past that didn't

take me out, but I'm on the edge

my doctor is an unfeeling piece of shit

further tests are needed

I am 44

I am not real anymore

I am side to side with the ghosts of my mother

my father

I am a shell of life

I conceived this space

and a team of young, healthy blood built it

I am successful and close to death

the epitome of irony

but I left this mark

all you writers

from any distance from the

grave:

write and edify

offend

inspire

be free

stop at nothing

know that

there is something counted beyond

the servile hours

and

the mountain from which I write this

Jeff Buckley's Grace blasting through my headphones

while I watch the mountains of Mexico:

As she weeps on my arm

Walking through the bright lights and sorrow

Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow

Oh, my love, and the rain is falling

I believe my time has come

it reminds me of the pain

I might leave behind.

I reach the top of the mountain, and I stare over Mexico

I remember the whiskey

the women so perfect of eye

the mercy of the hours

and the song returns in

a morbid reminder

and I remember the words

the tours

the people so astute

that never ceased to amaze me

not to sound incredulous, but the

words grip me at the summit:

And I feel them drown my name

So easy to know

And forget with this kiss

I'm not afraid to go

But it goes so slow.

and I watch the earth from where

I sit, and my heart gets heavier

and if death takes me now

it takes me with a debit

it takes me with words unwritten

and I think back to the fucking fat doctor

with the facial pussy

hitting me with the news

and my eyes welled up for a second

All the words I haven't written. They will have nowhere to go now.

And the fuck looked at me, confused, and I left there to go back to the hotel to be with my dog, to feel his eyes upon me

through me.

To feel again the thought that

I wouldn't die soon:

Regardless.

Friday night

the metal pours out of

the speakers

spills across the keys and desk

the city on the other side of

the door is most likely

pulsing with drunks and

sure things

live music

drink specials

and

possibilities

of every kind.

sitting inside behind the

machine, sitting forward

on the desk

leaning into

3 Inches Of Blood

blasting like a Mars symphony

sitting here in the quiet chaos

of this, in the blood of focus

without fences, without physics,

without laws or definition or

even a basic understanding

of any of it.

a complete and flawless

silence of the unknown

pulses with the

metal, no, the music

and space created by

the words and metal

the scream and vacuum of

colors, the rush of the

lines cutting into

the page

the music and the

escape,

always that,

disappearing

into

the words

and music

and space

never wanting

to

approach

comprehension

never wanting

to

leave

until

it

shuts

you

off

to

keep

you

owned.

the ghosts come sideways

diagonal

vertical

forwards

backwards

and up from the floorboards

angry fellows

one holds a clock

the other a ring

one a set of keys

two are cradling a marble coffin

and one has my face on a pole

my heart wedged in my mouth

that's a new one, I think to myself

normally he just laughs at me

Christ, don't tell me he's running out of

ideas, too.