this age of shame

we were talking like it was beautiful,
like the buildings weren’t dust,
like the sky held promise

we were talking
like we knew the words

were laughing while villages burned,
while the radio station kept fading in & out,
and this man at the door said he
wasn’t going to leave without you

this child on the carpet
wouldn’t stop bleeding

wouldn’t stop calling me daddy

wanted so many things i could
never give him

escape

this landscape silence

this open hand

i wanted things
you see
or at least wanted things to be different

found strength in reasons to hate

laughed at the deaths of priests
and at the empty rhetoric
of anarchists

stood in an abandoned house overlooking
the highway, the railroad tracks, the
river, and i was cold in
january sunlight

i was afraid,
but only for myself

didn’t see it as a failure until my
children were too far away to save

in the valley of quiet grace

and i picture you in the
too-bright light of january, where
i never saw you, where our shadows
never broke free of the larger
shadows of abandoned buildings,
and i picture you smiling

this much is true

this much i remember

hope was a word we
passed between us without regret

poem at absolute zero

started sleeping all day so i
wouldn’t have to write,
and then i practiced forgetting
my children’s names

learned how to
lie like a politician

learned how to fuck like
a coward

felt better than saying
i love you