• 

Rockets Like You

How strange a sound
ripping through
this “love songs to think about me”
mixed-tape cd,
that you scribbled half-shaded hearts
and I love yous upon,
before you sent it out to this desert death land;
a sound roaring to life from afar
and dreamy,
dragging jumping Marines
from their lover’s arms
to this concrete floor
of filth and care packages.
Their presence is shaking.
And I have to watch the freeing grit
rush out like South Carolina waves
through the sun rays
gushing in from the sandbagged windows
just to know that I am still alive.
Just as alive as I was with you
while pretending to be a shark
grabbing at your ankles
in the salty tidal pools
of a past summer’s vacation.
Now, the air raid siren sounds,
blasting validity through the barracks
of sober faces.
It should have been a warning well received,
about the woman that you would become;
of how you would make that rumble
in the yard
become the roar inside of me;
how your uncertainty
and unfaithfulness,
your fire and your shrapnel
left me charred and dying
in a world of new beginnings.

My Wounds Are Not Invisible
In response to a T.V. commercial about PTSD and “invisible wounds.”

my wounds are not invisible
they scald my hands red with drywall fractures
they beam the backyard midnight
with bright sweeping strokes
looking for nothing
or something unknown
maybe a feeling
or a peace under the flares
where sleep comes hard to those who fight it
and nights bring death and damnation
to the faces of feared men
look
the scars are there
jagged and crimson
in the eyes of a staggering fool
who fell
and who has fallen
again and again
when no man should be left behind
there he lies at the side of my bed
by the blade and spare magazine
for the black beast on my nightstand
and I whip open the sheets
to let him in
because his wounds are my wounds
reflecting in the bedroom window
they are bloodless and bare
but brim full of vile and last chances

To Feel Alive

No pistol tastes the same.
Mine
is a bourbon muzzled truth maker
as bitter

as those night terrors
of a columned world around me
exploding,

as real as self-inflicted regret

so familiar in my hand
and cold on my tongue.
It burns

on the way down.