Dear Juden of Grodno asking to stay

 

where have all my enemies gone

 

put the kettle on

for gentle something in my veins

tangential to gunpoint

bloodier than blood

 

like light sneaks down

through seams in your roof

splits open

your workbench-bent head

 

motes hover over you

seeming to be wholly

unmoored

 

wings roped to your back

your bones prayed hollow

 

the language

of the numinous

unimaginable

mercy a tailwind

effervescence escape

 

what deference what violence

 

separates you

from church and state

 

what straps you

into this grease-grimed place

 

I settle for bricks

made of fact

 

they build their chimneys

they weigh your lack

 

you slipped away

too long ago to say why

 

am I here

 

where did you go

on that god-shat train        //

 

I cant           I can’t

 

keep quiet dear reader

 

it is a new 2000

 

I am in Massachusetts

fifteen

shit-faced in the woods

with friends

 

I grow compressed and morose

 

we don’t know

I have disappeared

 

into citizenship

and scarlet trail

of letters and land-lines

 

I am driven

downtown

 

I wink whitely

at lifeguards

pass

 

hassled but whole

 

swim shirt still tucked in

later

 

I doze off

on the sunset lawn

small town music

headphones on

 

where have all my enemies gone

 

some people are into time

some people are thrown

 

down open heir

 

dear there there

dear then then then

 

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