Tell me how the nervous system collapses 

each wire catastrophic and dumb 

how, when the lights get cut off 

mouths open and close, 

missing teeth 

missing limbs 

missing vowels mealy

anise-shaped explosions 

fine dust of smoke 

this city’s vibration 

tuned down and musty

I have been waiting for you all these years 

to come back home to me

            come on home to me

Remember the love electric 

youth, and its lies, 

            sizzle in my ear anyway 

Today we are thinking the same thoughts 

of what it means when we say war, when we say terrorism,

missing sinew

missing eyes, closed and dreaming 

missing synapses that say This I have done or 

will do or wait

Under the streetlight, on the abandoned corner
where no one walks anymore a kind of sanctimonious 

urging, here is a tree that has died long ago, 
count its rings and tell me otherwise. 

Here, we sit on its stump and wait, 
carve our names in its bark, try to remember 

what it was like to love longer than the time 
taken to find the intersection, secure the bag. 

There are men in the shadows of the trees, 
lurk and lark, branches a touch too heavy 

to be springtime birth. How the lichen 
once arrived spreads, unruly, terminal. 

How the ivy chokes. There are men 
in the cracks of the awnings, in the windows 

of the buildings, there are men who hide 
themselves deep in our blood and, in wait, 

rot us from the inside out. There are men 
curling under the roots of this tree, 

into the dirt, to the core of the Earth 
where they tap their big feet impatiently, 

as if it is your fault planets exist to begin with. 
Won’t you come already, they will say, 

aren’t you ready already, already, already, 
nevermind, I don’t care, tap, eye roll, tap. 

These are the men your mother 
warned you about. Don’t go, 

the tree is never as beautiful as they claim it is. 
The night is not clear.

There are always clouds
covering the stars.

Watch
your drink.