Where I Live: Each Exigent and All-Inclusive Empty Moment

All these empty houses in the brown autumn air of the afternoon
and I have the feeling that someone is coming home to all of them
spraying high-fives and hugs and 'How was your days'
in the roar that is common complacency
when you see

Every day is Perfect.  But some days are more perfect than others.

Swirls of yogurty clouds reflect their enamel light 
across the surface of our silverware
I reach for a spoon to eat up or bluff
sniffing back boogers to blow into a hankie later
as you get dressed in the semi-darkness of the closet nook
filled with black and white shoes that remind me of
the happy frowning children next door listening to Iron Maiden
who once blazed a conquistador's junkie trail out of the underbrush
where that deer disapeared at night long ago
those woods that come out by Moore and Governor Insurance
and you have a ticket in your hand
and it is autumn.

I say goodbye, and you say goodbye
and soon you will be listening to a woman talk about safety
and watch the language of the earth's surface
spell out in its curlicues and sprawls indecipherable
like Scottish cries meaning war
so many words forgotten that mean the same thing that no longer exists
like tinted shadows overlapping in the yellow cones of streetlamp light
where I drive my old used car and allow myself to follow the course
of all the red taillights turning slowly away, thinking of
so many empty rooms in this neighborhood, filled with men
who dream of you.
Or someone like you.

At 6PM the church bells ring
tonal odes to the river in this city passing sisters worried about their mother,
passing churches and businesses closing their doors,
passing dirty cabs at airports and brothers who felt "yes, I think we will stay for dessert" only now asking "Did you get enough to eat?"
Animals souls who really care. 
You, staring down with a prairie storm blown across your flat face
remembering your equation of phallic art with Midwestern Cities,
their rolling cold amber waves of grain giving way
to vast and verticle alabaster erections that sink into the shadowy depths of
the world beneath her as she flies away.

Imagine the world "Hill" in a language no longer spoken
and you wake from the alarm clock of a ticket in your hand.
Walk from the car almost to the door, blow my nose and
see every expression as a variant of the thought "goodbye."
All these empty houses filling like coin-slots in the late afternoon sun
a web of sewer pipes and wet dreams connecting all of them
until the steep forest's edge where all the children and deer play,
slip into the blackholes and nether-realms of animal existance
as orange stars come out, winking goodnight and good luck.

I wear our wet lawn on my back
and it cries out to be free,
wouldn't be the first time I
muffled screams into my father's shirt.
Next door a neighbor pulls in and doesn't see me
all his lights come on and I worry that he'll think
something is wrong
seeing me lying there flush and discarded,
the word for a house that once was mine on a night long ago,
but he is thinking about his childhood
and I am watching the airplanes chalk their lines across the last
glimmers of purple twlight.

Who's to blame for ruining a fine work of art?
Who's to blame for forgetting a word when its no longer needed?
This city is filled with emptiness, thousands of windows where thousands of people level screams of thousands of words that mean nothing more than
goodbye.
Each day is perfect, and there is a reason for everything.
But some days are more perfect than others.