biting the bullet

Sometimes I picture the gun in the window across the street

Sideways and small, bright blurred light

I picture it racing above all the shouting- in dirt, fluttering ash below, in strangled harmonious hearts, internal, in vein, incessant- above this little corner of chaos to meet me, lay a path of roses across my forehead and set more fire to the street

Petals dripping and dancing down to rest by my feet

I picture it going through the window I always keep open, just in case

I picture it streamlined and silver, soaked saccharine by sentiment and out of place

Sometimes I think its smoke would taste as sweet

As the tar we drank in large gasps every night

And if the aftermath would rise up in dark wisps like the worst of what we did

And maybe the reason for sadness is the beauty in that smoke it spits out when it’s done with you

In the whispers it wraps you in so that you can finally sleep

In the feather touches that numb you as you claw from the deep

Sometimes I think about my father and his piles and piles of rocks

Do they comfort him, weigh down the weightlessness of the lost cause

Sometimes at night I don’t sleep thinking about all the ways that it hurts

And I wonder if my mother is on the little couch she lives in that I always hated

Doing the same thing, waiting for the lull of the broken record, for the static on the tv

On nights like these it seems that a car horn is always blaring 

On nights like these it always stops right before I scream back 

Sometimes I think about the man I loved and all the sounds

Strung out, psychotic in the static

Sometimes I think about my uncle and the bullet

Sometimes I think maybe the gun I see is the same one

And I don’t sleep again imagining it finding peace in our little anxieties

In all our silly wars, in all the drilling all the banging in our brains

Sometimes I think about my uncle imprisoned in broken body

Sometimes I think about his lump of stuck sentences, worse than the pain

And I don’t sleep again thinking of the mountain of words he tried to say

Snuffed out, silenced forever by that same gun

I see it in the window

Sometimes I think about my brother alone in his dark room

Sometimes I think about the mountain of words he covers with lies

I see it in the window

The cool silver of helplessness, the hard absence of god

Sometimes I think about the man I love and his hands on the trigger

Sometimes I think he’s quiet power, a gun always cocked

I see it in the window

The reflection of desire, the diamond shining under lost cause of rocks

On nights like these I reach for him in the dark

On nights like these he doesn’t reach back

Asleep fast; alone in the static

And I see it in the window

I see it in the window