The Night and the Rest of Nights

The night we got drunk

on a box of tiny Jack

bottles and nobody

said a word

at least not that I can remember

Angela's face got soft

like it was melting. This

happened.

We all met three

weeks later under the

premise of discussing

a book we had all read

and wanted to find

fascinating

but didn't.

No one would admit it.

It was like terrible

theater. We went on

and on, each one

smarter than

the next

until I just stopped

talking. From then on the

                     thing

I wanted to say was,

            We know first

            and foremost

            that this life is a losing

            battle. And it might get

            worse before it

                                     ends

 

but I knew that no one in their right

mind would say that

so for the rest

of the night

for the rest of the night

nothing happened

Phrenology

He had a face like the sun slaughtered

by skin. He had a face that

spoke and turned

towards whatever way

the sun was

facing. His face

would take the wheel. The last

time he stopped speaking

his face stayed

after. He never fell

asleep any faster

than his face allowed, still

stuck awake with laser-

beam pressure behind

his face's fore-

head's platter. It doesn't

hurt, this face, he

            answered.

He never had answers.

He stopped only after

years and years and years

                         of going

faster and faster

convinced that this place

had the thing he was after. If

you'd told him then

why not

it wouldn't have
                     mattered.

Here he is after. Older

and sadder, but here

he is after

and after and

                     after.

The Nihilistic Breakfast

Jesus would be the first

                              to admit

              he was a metaphor

but most mornings

I request an empty plate.

And it's plenty.

                      As a child,

my father once rode upon an un-

sheared sheep, large in body,

slow as hot                mountain drizzle.

He remembers the incident two days

after his own father (the sentence

clearly written on his face

for two narcotic-thick weeks) had his

fourth body's first and only

death. It was easy.

Know something about this song?

                     J. does. He told me yesterday 

in the car, in the snow that if he has a God

it's music.                   Why then

does he never sing?  I can't ask him.

                       When I get through, I will bring

my whole life with me. The only thing stopping

me is the gunk-glue (and the rain).

Sometimes it clears up for a bright second and

I see all of us hard at work

on the dawn. And we're not allowed

                                                       to tell.

Living is showing

off for an invisible stranger.

The infinity of sister cites. The secret stays

in one and then, after some time, the other

and so on and on

and sometimes, just briefly,

and only at night,

in the void that's                   between them.

You can't choose. Breakfasts are for families,

sharers of cells, bodies, cities giving back

one silent riddle, one empty

                                                      plate

one torch song, one constant circular

                                     pseudocide.

The only mistake you can make

is to stay a day

                      too long.