A Man Who Never Learned

No more looking for signs! Christmas cactuses lined up above the sink, now and then a crimson petal falling into unwashed plates and knives. Kissing her tears and other reconfigured Satanic pleasures. 

In those days nobody knew what to do with dogs so the dogs died hard and lonely deaths. 

I liked pumping gas, reading poetry, fucking at night away from the fire. Stevie Nicks would have something to say about this, whatever this is, and I'd listen.

This is no longer about loss or gain, okay? Nothing wasted ever - even their bones were carved into dice we threw. The last guitar solo ever, which one day there will be.

On my knees in a desert I neither chose nor rejected.

How the sheep died differently than the pigs died, and how pigs dying made you think of your grandfather praising you for participating in killing. Maybe it's true there are only reflections but still. Curses in me, blessings in me.

Quiet in me just because.

The last shade of blue before the sky is black - can you see it? I don't know how dreams mean and still the dreams come and still I live in them for days, like a man who never learned he didn't have to pick up a gun. 

Childhood disappears into a camera, comes out a barely recognizable fairy tale: this this.

What can you prove?

I mean, I learned to love getting high because it took the edge off how angry I was and that anger tripped me into murder zones that still scare the shit out of me, so yeah, from time to time I smoke weed, fuck off with your judgment. 

This fist loosening, these ghosts insisting it's okay to let them go, this long drop I've nearly reached the end of.