Sing me a song for the hollow dead

echoes in their eyes, dust for lungs

the anguish of distance and the greyness

of a sky heavy with rain. Sing to me

church bell goodbyes. Sing the way that

willows will bend, the shape of the earth.

Sing a song for the hollow-eyed living,

a hymn for the saved, or something that

sounds like salvation, or just the sounds

of sheets against the mattress, the hush of

a lover sleep-softened, a sudden startling

coldness to that side of the pillow.

Sing me a new day. Sing me renewal.

Who are you going to kill tonight?

The ghost in the mirror who

Cries when you look away,

Or the ghoul that screams in

Your mind as you fail to sleep?

Kill the little parts of you

That still insist upon bleeding.

Leave them in unmarked graves.

Forget them, kill them, kill them.

Shall we write the stars a requiem

As they cremate themselves?

My love, I feel this pain daily

Shuttered lights won't reach us

And we live in darkness because

It is what we believe we deserve

I am writing us our requiem

We were, like stars above

Too fond of distance

Today, she turned to me and said,

"How do you know that I'm real?"

The static in my ears rumbled

It's hazy beat, a mechanical heart

Gripped by some magnetic fear.

The trees were silent and

Oh so blinding, oh, bleeding,

Too full of life to be anything but dead.

I knelt down to feel the stony ground,

And it laughed at me, running away

Like a child playing a game of tag.

Today, she turned to me and said,

"Do you know what is real?"

I want to kiss the sun and

Not cry out when I fall

I will not be sad in leaving

Him to his empty sky

Because I loved in such a way

That I cherish a death in his eyes

How many times must I write

The word, "Love"

Before it at last reaches you?

Cracks open your glacial heart,

And lets me bury myself

In the cradle of your bones?

Do you exist for me to love?

Do you exist at all?

I will write it once more,

And hope to God you hear it:

"Love"

If I could show what he meant to me

Behind eyelids, stars would form

From dust and fire and pain

An all-consuming emotion, devotion

If I could let you know what he is

There would be no such things as

Shadows, a light touches every

Blank corner of my chambered heart

If you could hear his honey-sweet speech

You might know love that is beyond love

There is blood on my hands

Is it mine or is it yours?

When you strung me up

By my fragile wrists

I bled

When I took the knife

From your shaking hands

You were bleeding

Now that our edges blur together

Are we brothers?

The cactus flower blooms once a year,

And then withers in only a night

When there is no one around

To give witness to its passing.

In this suburb, yards either hold

Pebbles dumped by the ton in space

That did not need the gross intrusion,

Or grass and sprinklers and the

Wasteful act of preserving pretension.

The cactus will live for decades

In this suburb I now leave behind me.

I am not sure I know how to miss it.