"the anguish of departure" and other poems

the anguish of departure

this sky frozen and beautiful
above these frightened lives

this town
where it ends uncertainly

where the houses become trailers
and then fields filled with
stones and the yellowing bones
of indians

and what about linda
dead of cancer at twenty two?

what about all of the doors
i've closed in my life?

and the roads that go to juarez
and to mexico city
and this small piece of paper
i keep tucked in my wallet

the facts of my father's life
that have nothing to do with the
man i knew

the way i could
never quite escape

the shadows of the hills
swallowing everything i love

---

pancho villa, remembered

wrote you a letter
without signing it and
hung up when you called
and on the morning my father died
the sky was the color of
lost ambition

the streets were all dead ends
and i laughed at the
idea of escape
and nothing was funny

nothing was real

all of it mattered

---

postcard from the human cathedral

a candle in every window
and every room empty and
all of the ways that magic
has failed us

your fist through a window

your feet amputated cleanly
or your tongue

not a war
but a way of life

cold rain in
a field of bones and ash
and you said it was just
a dream

you said we were in love

one thousand miles from
home
and i believed you

---

silent meditation while waiting for the shortest day of the year

a small white light in
every window
of every house on this street

a blessing
for the newly dead

a quiet song to hold back
the rain

all of these things
while tanguy's ghost crawls
through the weeds and trash to
the river

all of these things
and the tears of teenage mothers
staining the alley walls
like blood

the soft voice of christ
spilling
from the mouths of suicides

my son
whole and beautiful

---

pollock, alone, in the room of mirrors

out to where the idea of houses
gives way to
the silence of fields

the sky nailed flat and brilliant
to the horizon

the poet found dead
behind the wheel of a borrowed car

and this image stays with me
and the thought of all
the women i've known left bleeding
on cold linoleum floors

their concepts of love
which tasted like rust

which tasted like copper
or broken glass

and in january
the sun is without heat
and the wind without mercy
and the drowning boy is trapped
beneath the river's surface

his parents
close the door to his room
and gorky steps from the chair
for the millionth time

and the first person to arrive finds
four bodies laid out politely
on a well-made bed

finds the fifth
still in the tub with
the mother staring down at it

with a radio playing softly
in another room

the blinding white light of
america
flooding in through every window