nightingale

these streets after the rain

dry except for the edges
and the deeper cracks
and then heat returned like it
was never anywhere else

like the lover who said
he'd rather kill you
than let anyone else have you
and when you laughed
he gave it a shot

and this is nothing but
the same sad story told a different way

this is the truth after
the truth no longer matters

the town has begun to die

the factories have begun to collapse

there is a woman who pushes
an empty shopping cart
up and down the sidewalks
and mutters to herself

there is a man who collects
empty bottles and cans from
the edges of
abandoned parking lots

a car with a body in it

some twenty four year-old loser
shot to death by his girlfriend
and the guy she's fucking on the side
after the coke was sold and he said
he wanted a bigger cut of
the money

and no one notices for three days
and there's the possibility
that no one cares

there's the possibility that
the poem is for
no one's sake but my own

that all i want is to end it
before the last light of day is gone

leave it sitting in a dark room
like a child no one wants