the police shoot targets shaped like themselves.
Sometimes the targets shoot back.
Saturday governors throw clay pigeons
into blue sky.
This is the truth, not just a poem.
On this street, two men have shot themselves,
one held his wife and children hostage
from life and bills.
It is a nice street,
that’s what they say,
where houses have helping hands in windows,
where in daylight
the curtains are laundered
in tubs and hung on lines.
But when dark comes,
even stars are bullets
in the sky’s black belt.
In this country, men have weapons
they use against themselves
and others. It is the dying
watching death. Light a candle.
This is a poem and not just the truth
and they are not shadows
but bone, marvelous bone
and skin, beautiful skin
that holds life in,
and hearts with their own chambers
of living, hearts
that want nothing,
not paychecks
on nightstands, not guns in the drawer,
nothing
but to knock on walls of the body.
Let me in,
let me travel veins to the eyes,
light a candle
with the arteries in nervous hands
and let me look out
on the beating world.