kingsoftrain

Letter 061424 words toward my daughter getting married

Dear Ethan Hawke 

A song played that made me forget a song was playing. I made my daughter laugh a couple times in a place that knew itself into beauty. There is always a church. A church near a church. I don’t really pray bc I pray all the time. My healthy sons sat with my sick son. I don’t mean to say it that way. Say, I say, to saying. It all felt very young. Very elsewhere. Elsewhere, the worlds of more. Beside me, my wife looked perfectly alone. I mean to say it that way. Alone in her own perfection. My sick son is not sick unless you account for healing. It was such a great day. It gave way, and gained. I hate the world, and days end. We only get one simulation. Run out of sadness.   

Forgetting loses its house to an angel with a photographic memory. Hell falls back into hell. Most deer remember a deer in headlights. Loss beats me to my kids, but not to yours. God can’t dream. I wear a blindfold and throw a rock made of blood. Up to three wasps fit in your mother’s eye. Week ago I saw a man punch a woman while she was driving. I’m not weak. My knees, my teeth. Mean rain. 

Three days after surgery and god is still saying violent things. The angels have gone to see the oil spill. My son cries weird, but not like that.

Keep, cricket. 

The mirror’s
been 
unplugged.

I drink
under star
the y
from stray. Say god, 

say nearer
my stomach
to thee. 

The outside child
is outside, the inside

child
is a pill, a lobster, a banshee

in a cup
of mouthwash.

All things dead

dead
right now.

I deleted the poem. The kids were out of food. The kids were praying to the period detail in your dream. The kids were all the same. One went missing for like seven minutes. The angel of toothaches pulled a weeping bone from a tree we thought would cry. Cry, we said. Angels aren’t even strong. I deleted the poem. Your death, your death.