All of them laughing

i only write about the dead. 

the dead are all i write about 

because i cannot get over those 

cold still hands. 

i cannot get over those 

lonely sounds.

i cannot, just cannot 

get over them. 

Hours, months pass 

and graves close up;

new things grow on top; 

a hard scab forms that only 

hurts if you move

the wrong way. 

best not stress that scab or else 

it bursts with hard new pain. 

i only write about the dead because 

i cannot get over them, 

i write to rip their fingers from my heart, 

to scrub their dander 

from my skin. 

the suffocating dead; i see their faces, 

all of them laughing. 

all of them content, 

all of them tired of me, 

my endless mourning.

Cry a gray river

All day every day their cries 

invade my house, 

cries so shrill they burst 

from souls of souls from all directions, I hear 

the screamers shot, gassed, 

blasted from homes, 

kicked over borders; 

every day I hear 

the whimperers--sick, hungry; those 

despised for some singularity, 

some disparity at birth and then 

there’s the mourners like me 

whose lovers left them. 

What can we do 

after the postcard to Congress, 

after the march, 

after the all-night benders? 

I can say crying a deep gray river will soothe us, 

somehow a gray river of tears

will hold us steady;

and so will chanting 

and so will rocking, 

and so will praying, 

though no one 

beyond the lamp post 

will give a damn but

we can rest.