this time

Time is a leaking faucet,

annoying as hell and

persistent as a bitch.

In the same way

blood can be wiped nicely off

a leather seat if you clean it soon enough,

I can clean my mind

of everything, and you’ll never see

what was there.  It’s

clean

and empty

as the back-seat –

the man whose blood’s been cleaned

probably dead by now.

But we still can smell the unseen

blood underneath the seat

that I missed with the once-over,

smell it cook

in the heat of the sun.

Friends get in my car and ask,
what’s that smell?

and I tell them,

I don’t know.

If he’s dead, he’s dead.

Is it true that

the pain of the lost

is God’s smile

and their torment

His grin?

Is it true of the man burning in hell,

oh well,

he deserves that shit and we don’t,

and right is right

and wrong is wrong,

is it true I am right,

you are wrong,

is right true?

is wrong?

I sing my own demise.

Greet me sweetly,

oh demise,

come when I’m not looking

come when I’m down

come like the first time I saw a woman

come like a sunset

if the sun was a mass of burning truth.

Muse, sing in me

if the muse is my demise,

and my demise is love given to me but

withheld from me to others.

Time is a bleeding man

moaning MY FUCKIN ARM when he’s conscious of it

and otherwise dead wait.