AND EVERYBODY KNOWS

and everybody knows

a fist clenched becomes your life,

and you learn to hate who you were

learn to hate who you are

your father’s biggest

disappointment, right?

your mother’s favorite junkie

one more goddamn ghost in a

half-empty house

just looking for a trigger to pull

and everybody knows

a fist clenched becomes your life,

and you learn to hate who you were

learn to hate who you are

your father’s biggest

disappointment, right?

your mother’s favorite junkie

one more goddamn ghost in a

half-empty house

just looking for a trigger to pull

[now to embrace the plague of every day]

or you laugh when you tell me

you’re in love with the dead man,

or you say nothing at all

you tell me you’re a believer,

but i probably don’t believe you

i probably stand in the wrong room,

the one that faces east with

light from the setting sun

slipping in through the open door,

and are we happy here?

i think so, but i’ve

learned to trust myself less and

less with each passing day

i’ve learned the

fine art of indifference, or i’ve

possibly inherited it from my father

and we were standing outside the

garage on that last day, and i remember it as

summer but i know that i’m wrong

i know that it was snowing the

morning some stranger called to

break the news, and listen

it’s actually fairly easy to

hate yourself

in this day and age

no gods, no devils, and so he just

leans back in bed and

watches her undress

and she thinks about the future,

but only as one more

missed opportunity

only as one more act of violence,

and was this the

story you said you wanted to hear?

is poetry as dead as pollock

in these new dark ages?

best probably just to write

the truth in some forgotten lover’s

blood across the bedroom walls

best to let the days all be

played out as slapstick

let the present be me, and

let it be you, and one of us asleep in

the passenger seat and the other

driving with their eyes closed

this is how we learn

this is why we need each other

and i promise we are all just

one small act away from suicide,

and i know jacqueline would

agree with me

i know all great art is a fool’s game

ask frankie b if it was worth it

ask gorky, ask vincent, but

fuck picasso

talent, sure, but a soul made of

dog shit and drunken vomit

the sound of jackboots grinding

down on the skulls of newborns

and you ask why it can’t just ever

be a love poem, and i

have no answer

i have an answer,

but no words

i have words, but always the

wrong ones, and fear should never

hold more power than hope,

but it does

and no one ever gives a shit about

martyrs while they still walk the earth

and maybe no one really

gives a shit about them ever

listen

there is no greater cancer than the

one we all see in the mirror

there is no reason to believe any of

will be remembered in a thousand years

feels pretty goddamned good

knowing i’ve

already begun forgetting most of you

how it ended

you wanted to be someone saying

fuck all these assholes dying young, or

you wanted to be someone, or

you wanted to die

you told me

and i laughed

drew a circle around us in the

dull grey upstate dirt and

dared you to leave

promise ring

was tired of

telling you the truth

was tired of living at

the edge of the desert

brought you the news of

your death and you laughed

even as you lay there rotting

a shroud in grey painted

over grey like

the upstate hills and i told you

i was going to the store

for a pack of cigarettes and

a case of beer

told you i was in

love with your sister or

your brother’s wife

pointed to where the

sky was falling

laughed like the

asshole i’d always been

[everyone looks like a tombstone to me]

says that fucker camus

says the idea of ideas, and i

see what he means but i

still believe in both words and the

silences between them

i still believe in love as something

more than some cynical top 40 hit

and sid, who killed nancy,

or sid, who didn’t, but she’s dead either

way while the ghost of god endures

and were you drunk on the

night you pulled the trigger?

jesus

just give me a straight answer, okay?

spare me all of that

patti smith bullshit

spare me rimbaud & burroughs &

horses and all of

that vacuous 1975 hipster crap

all of that self-righteous sanctity

what’s left at the end of each day

is a false king waiting to

rape your children

a ship filled with fire moving

slowly towards some new world

the death days, which we

always mistake for

the best times of our lives

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