Two Poems

watch everything
erode
then watch
it happen on television in

slow


motion



or on some setting
between pause and
esrever
to remind us all that
tears do not put out fires
in Haifa

a home i won’t stop writing about


____________________________________


a state that has the power to use the soiled memories of sheep to a slaughter and the metaphor of showers to rain down fire on sheep of a different color within minutes to an hour cannot even salvage its own saints from the fumes and don’t for a second think that the next fucking word will rhyme with “consume” because this is what is happening and it hurts too much to spell it out for all of you.

meanwhile I lean and devour my grief in a drunken stupor at the local happy hour and do not tell me that me writing this down on the tablecloth or a beer-soaked napkin feels wrong in a bar over dieted coca cola drinks where glasses shatter every single time their owners decide to toast and clink and where the only thing I'd really like to do is sit around with myself and think of these anonymous women whom I picture without a shred of clothing be it wool tweed satin or mink.

over these caskets I mourn faces and names My family My home My view and this place means too much to write another poem about sheep of a different color so I will not do it for some reason or another or succumb to edit this thing till the ring-finger goes from pink to white to purple to numb.