the non

watching his simple chords and even untrained fingers might as well
be a plane straight east and a bus straight south, both double-paned
and humming, because
i can only see myself behind a microphone on a boxstage
in a village that used to mean something to the creation
of the world. i can smell the rich
of sweat and the solvent, pooled in this valley of heretics and cynics,
all cleaning their guns with hairspray
and eyeliner, making a murder look good. the fashion dictates that i
could get away with lies about my throat and the marks on your shoes
as long as it’s loud enough. all the while making eyes,
i’ll make these eyes at the pretty little things that walk along the
edges of a room, heels finding the half-inch quarter round
where the wall meets the floor, the sharpest points slide to the floor.
i feel like a carpenter (retired) arthritic with hands that used to build.

but in this room where i’m about to be a stranger no more, i can sing
about a father that hit me with a rope, i can talk about the earth
that covers the ring around my finger. i can even name you, the one
who let me into this room, as the reason i drink, the reason
for the reasons i imagine a life of dissonant harmony,
because with a reason,
any reason
(even without the non),
as long as it’s written, then
i could at least blame you for something.

the best part is the existence of it all, the life that comes with
the air we all breathe. a waking mind is a visionary,
and probability dictates someone is living our dreams.
with a government check spent on candy and cola, a pocket
with a bus card and a sky scraped clean,
pre-teens use any excuse for a wish, grasp any chance they find,
pray to a list of any and all gods and demons,
that when that next day dawns,
they wake up me.
as that room under skull is a place where poets pretend, some jumpstart
with his sister’s guitar is lying a melody. he’s already building that history
that can’t be proven otherwise and making a killing,
digging a mass grave with a six-stringed shovel,
his barrel smoking in the wake, lips red hot with the bullets shot.

bodies will roll down the slopes mistaken for measures, the staves
failing to note where they lie, and his novice fingers ache
with every hollow bar. thinking genocide tough,
he could stretch his knuckles for relief
and a wandering and painted eye might imagine
them once split in a short-lived rage against a wall against the world
against the sixteen-year veteran of secret wars, fingers
bruising familiar with a memory like a hammer in the fist
of a father; and like the eulogist, he can’t consider the reality,
because you can always see the casket
even with your back turned,
and everyone is still listening.

but even with the lies carving cavities in your teeth, holes to
hide in, that non bleeds through your gums. it’s quiet, blind and slow,
like a cloud, a worm, a comma.
it is the reason i wish for a lethal childhood, a hazy adolescence,
and lungs that carry words to ears (wishes another lives).
my words are burdened and hunched, thirsty and unshod,
for the space between is as barren as the west under the dusk,
as dark as that black oblivion we call a horizon. my words are
laden with the guilt of their untruth, and sweat beneath the
sun-god angry with his number on the list.

this is the hidden, the non:

i am bitter and i am leaving. someday i will make you pay for
what you did to yourself.
you will wish (on everything) to be one of the pretty
little things at the bottom of this grave: unmarked, cold and
many,
but at least listed and prayed to.
it will come with the existence of it all.