in the blue and the purple light
on the shadowed sides
of these houses
in a room with a cracked window
and the ghost of edie
crawling naked across the floor
i am my father at 34
and his own father before him
i am the face my children fear
and the voice
and the raised hand
i am the emptiness and
the absence of warmth
and america is
its own form of violence
the boy is dead
next to his sister in the
back of the van
the father drives
with the radio on softly
with dylan’s voice dragging itself
through my headphones
as i sit at the foot of the bed
watching april sleep
and do you remember
the hill of fifteen crosses?
the girl you fucked there and
the way she couldn’t
remember your name?
and what about the man who
tells you you’re not a poet?
what about the way war feels
from 10,000 miles away?
all of the butchered
without faces or names and
the reasons you choose to hate
the people
and some of them i’ve known
and others have just written
to ask for favors and
in the end
there is only this street as it
crashes into the highway
this back yard turning brown
in the cold grey air of
september
in the blue and the
purple light of early evening
this house too cold to
ever be a home
