To Rachel

Take me to the woods, Rachel,
with pinches and pinches of mesquite
fire smoke, held together with your hand-
some life preserver, fade out the
sour stomach and itchy neck, perched
in the trees shooting tin cans with sawed
off shotguns, drinking cokes in commoditized
50s diners, pretending the Nighthawks are
actually bluebirds, miles of wild geese and
sky-folding ducklings narrating.

What cannot be imitated perfect must die.
Farewell Rachel, your sadness may it melt
away when you take a drag off my cigarette,
while I think about the government and Ed
loads a bowl of medical so we can all sleep
without the dreams of dead or dying fathers.
Not busy living are busy dying, bum hunnie
bum, may you bring your state, Rachel,
may you bring Iowa wherever you go.

But if you gotta go to the teen wolf and plead
for the scent of his cock, then be sure to use
emotional protection. Fuck what you cannot
love, love what you cannot fuck.

Any day now, you'll be
released from your chemical moods and
thrown into alright-ness, but I want
that alright-ness to be bliss for you,
while the rest of us listen to our phil-
osophy professor whine about
epistemology.

The stakes were highest when we
chose to deny silly cures for the many-headed
Cancer beast, and instead, crafted
another head for it to lay its eggs in,
that time when we chose to buy cigarettes.
The lows were never lower.

One day, maybe in your grave,
your chains to reality, they'll rust and fray.

Because, really, you held my hand
in the dark and made me see it was all pretend.
I hope one day I can understand
in better light the plights of one
nineteen-year-old girl.