Poetry

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery,
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.

I didn’t make present
those days he didn’t complain
but I knew he was sick, felt
sick, and a look would pass between us,
a doomed look that nonetheless

I can’t
drive anymore and find a park in Bakersfield
where it is quiet and there are no
other cars. And can’t sleep.

Just because I was born
precisely here or there,
in some cold city or other,
don’t think I don’t remember
how I came along like a grain
carried by the flood—

The trouble with you is you’re not
loving enough. A drastic
summons, a trumpet of

Poetry is not a code
to be broken
but a way of seeing
with the eyes shut,