Wake

we have this chance, when the sun opens

all the doors, somebody died, someone

lost the answers in the night sky, don’t

say it, don’t say that, I tried to be in the

space, I made the plastic capsule, we’ll

come running, daydreams in hand,

there’s less now, just, there are fewer,

fewer minutes, fewer useable minutes, I

was dazzled by the words, I couldn’t

read them, be specific, say place names,

Cambridge, Southie, Providence, place

names don’t place me in my life, he said

when I was a kid, when I was your age,

when I was this, when I was that, there

was no room for me, we got used to it,

we are getting used

to it, we fall upon the thorns of life, we

bleed, and this pen, this notepad, he left

pages and pages, key words, he left I’m

not the man I think I am at home,

make the sound of some dying mouth,

give me back my life, give back what

once you gave, so they gave you the

earth, or they said they did, the earth said

remember me, I was trying to stay sane

in the other pages of the book, I am

respectable, what passes for respectable,

we are quite literally here, draw the sign

in the corner of the page, return to the

breath, he just doubled down and tripled

down on knowing the names of flowers,

he seemed to come out of nowhere,

filling the page with light, the page as

slab of light, work was my salvation he

said, get to work, get back to work, we are

the people who mask, look, a picture of a

blackberry, why can I remember that, so

I’m writing to you again, I guess I’m

saying anything and everything, how can

you leave me, how could you die, I know

you wanted to see him again, what did it

feel like to pass over, to go there, oh, how

I’d love to be in that number, turning the

paper this way and that, I want you to

read this and imagine me: in Berkeley,

in Chicago, drinking tea, eating apples,

walking slowly in the blustery day, the

day was full of talking animals

The Buried Life

 
(head full
of
plastic
(“you can

be anything
you put
your mind
to” (are

we
extinct?
(colors burn
like garbage

on fire
(we
shoot
cows in

the head
(the wind-
washed
air

(roses
(bones
(bones and
dirt

and (we’re
waiting to
die (we’re
waiting to

pray (God
the rabbit
afraid
(God the

cat
dying (God
are not
my days

few (rain
side-
ways
(redwoods

(on
fire (horses
on
fire