man drowns in
a burning house
sleeps and dreams that
he wakes up
in his wife’s arms
dreams that he
never wakes up and
all i can tell you is that
twenty years spent walking
these empty streets will
get you nowhere
the man you find in a
one-room apartment in
the most hopeless part of
the city of butchered dreams
is not jesus christ
he says you look familiar
asks to borrow a twenty
but doesn’t
offer you a drink
sits in a faded chair
watching a silent television
while flowers grow from
de chirico’s bones
sleeps
through the afternoon
and wakes up
forty miles away
wakes up
on a kitchen floor
groping for air
not dead yet but
dying
