"Tell Me," A Weird Catastrophe Poem

                                                              Tell Me

            somewhere in Toronto I saw a group of jacobins marching 
            in the street with heavy heads and rueful hands gripping 
            signposts and beaver tails,
            I saw a sad woman drinking from her own breast and living 
            in an apartment made of shrines and memorials,
            I saw former farmers coming to grips with their shattered land,
            I saw woolen blankets on fire being thrown from windows,
            and down below a tattooed beating heart sank deep into the earth,
            photographs of buildings now leveled and people disappeared 
            were kept hidden in a storage unit on the edge of town,
            crushed kids were playing with sticks and bombs on the sidewalk,
            and something has left us, I’m not sure what,
            but I can feel where it once was 
            if I squeeze my fingers around the back of my neck,

            none of this is working like it used to anymore,
            the institutions falling in and out of broken arms and 
            fractured shells

            I received a letter from some secondhand source telling me 
            that they talked with her and that she was still in love with me,
            and sometimes I still wake up in her arms or 
            with my arms around our daughter gently breathing,
            only to find I was dreaming,

            I’m so tired of not seeing anything anymore,
            I’m so tired of being a son,
            I’m so tired of not hearing any news from the front,
            this isn’t working like it used to,
            if I thought it would do any good 
            I would run to the window and cry out 
            that this place is making me mean,
            lying with you in the dark again with your radical books piling up,
            you can’t bother with it,
            running in and out of crowded rooms and 
            strange, crude arms

            there is somewhere that you’ll always be
            trying to keep ahold of what’s left

            I saw a faded drawing with your name on it,
            tucked inside a drawer,
            left behind from the days of moisture in the air and
            surviving each hour with little college keepsakes for mom and dad,
            from before the amnesia and violence 
            carried us safely through a desperate foreign city 
            of shifting yellow lines and shaky alliances,
            a drawing sketched before,
            a drawing of smooth advances and lovers detwined for good

            tell me the stories from before you knew me, love,
            from before your shattered escape into the crowning country,
            before we propped the windows open for the endless
            sleepless summer nights,
            before all the stories I’ve heard before,
            please tell me it gets better or 
            it gets worse or 
            it gets something,
            tell me you want so much more than this
            and I’ll put my hand around your back
            and raise my brows
            and tell you 
            that this is all there ever is

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