I might have answered.

But you've wrapped yourself in

others' flesh too many times

to force your presence on me.

without an acknowledgment,

you ignored me when

I cried out to you,

when I pled you my case.

Too many times I've splintered

my fists on the unopened door:

There, in the rasp and click

of mechanical breathing

machines and suction tubes;

there in charred children's

flesh and bandaged bodies;

there in parents' anguished looks—

the grief, the pain unfolding.

I've seen enough of you

there, in old bodies, pleading

to be released in death,

to suffer not long

endless days of nothing

there in wasting forevers

in the prisons of the old;

There, beside dead father's

corpse, the widow grieving and

the child not touching,

the flesh growing cold,

the anguishing feeling,

the truth of separation:

no more tomorrows of him;

There, in cheap wine mists of

consciousness clouded clots of

memories fading

in a green bottle

sea of forgetfulness:

there is no room in the inn

for the alcohol children;

There, there in a hundred

deaths' hundred thousand dyings,

where I have seen your face,

I reached out to them,

I reached out to hold them,

because I saw them crying.

And now I am burned out.

Now I am burned out and dead.

The little left to me—

my specially loved—

You have begun to eat.

And when I cry out to you,

you crucify me with pain.

Once more, from your left hand,

the unfolding question-marks,

the tear-rimmed eyes brimming,

the coming of death,

the silent anguish they

strain to hold within themselves,

within their webs of aching.

Thus, god, I am tired.

Thus, god, so goddamned tired:

no resurrecting strength

is left where fires

consumed my heart, and

left cremated ashes in

my flesh, an empty vessel.

© 2011, Used with Permission