While Driving in the Suburbs on Valentine's Day

I’m sure of nothing, no one;
we’ll never be ourselves.
Our lone device is left to searching
through bins and vessels
on drives and circles
one by one, houses upon houses
secreting pills and thoughts and air
behind their stealthy doors and bellies.
I stab into each of their ugly little anthems.
What is mine?
What is mine.
Windows caught on Christmas trees
pathologically white
the pale hypnosis of television
bleeding through curtains drawn to a slit.
What dares to go on living in there?

Dawn comes drunk and begging
shrill and shameless, undiscerning
‘till the string breaks high above the plains
‘till it’s engorged on everything
the hairline crack in a potted blue sage
the lip of the gutters haunted by cats.
Houses are holding things close to their lungs
moistened in darkness, a glorious sadness
that no one's allowed.  Left out!  We're left out
of unholy communions, distensions of time.
I've only the rumors to cradle my demons
and only your face, sweet promise of grief.