chromata

fuck you & yr
bed of nails, okay?

yr goddamn pain yr
ideas of sorrow

we are not nothing
we are less

we are ghosts in the
world of sunlight

glass reflected on
dirty ice and
i am not sorry

i am not drowning

it’s the only thing
i’ve ever
truly believed

the story, as i remember it

and this is earlier,
back when things still mattered,
the two of us in a sunfilled room on a
dead end street and he’s popping pills. he’s
flipping through my collection, telling me
exactly why the stones suck, looking for
just the right song to soundtrack the afternoon, and
he asks so how do you know if you’re
a failed poet anymore?

and he laughs, or maybe he doesn’t, and i
remember the sound of empty hallways,
remember that i’m already forgetting how to breathe, and
he asks how do you know you’re depressed if
you’ve never been anything but? and so i
try to explain the idea of being saved by
the person you love, but even then
it’s starting to feel like a lie

even then i’ve come to terms with the idea of
hating myself, and i want to leave but
this is where i live

i want to sleep because it’s been a couple of days,
but now he’s got the fridge open, is
bitching that i don’t have any beer, says he’s got to
go see one of his kids later on, is hoping that
his ex is feeling horny and if not there’s always
her sister, and so i tell him i need to get
ready for work

i tell him i’m leaving town for a few days and
he nods, sees me for the coward i am,
walks out without another word, and i have no
concept of being 30, or 40, or 50

my father is still alive, but has nothing to offer

will die without ever knowing anything
about me, but this isn’t what i was getting at

this is only a poem in the sense that it
hopes to express some vague,
undefined truth

i am only a failure because i
never had the ambition to be anything more

one of us will live

but i remember you
circling the sun

i remember your face
like i remember the future

your sister crying behind a
pane of broken glass as you
slide your hand through the jagged
opening to touch her and then
picasso’s suicide at the
news of paul’s death

the simple fact of ringo

told me he was your favorite but
i think you were drunk and i
think we were through

a phone call, maybe,
or a letter from rehab

the drugs that you swore were
better than fucking

the threats from your
husband, the communist

said there were children both
real and imagined that
needed to be considered

said there was an ocean view
and a brighter future and that
the stones were better anyway

told me he was on
the next plane out to
come and find me

told me it seemed like kicking
my ass would definitely be
worth his time

was the last thing i ever heard
from either of you