brawl

Brought up in solemn butter and burnished bronze

Don’t you ever consider the love-making, generous and steady

Gravity deepening the furrows, widening the cavern

Old man, you get worse the more you talk about it

You are more beautiful the farther you move from me

Your nerves do not worsen when you are there and I am here

Gold shackle, golden son, your mother explained hard shit to you

And you learned to talk hard shit, too, while punching walls and plucking plums

Smooth butter sugar, boy-- when did you decide it was better to grieve and easier to ache

Remember when you had wit that lined the curve of your mouth

And an auburn flame in your palm, before you stopped laughing about the burning 

Can’t we just go to bed now and pull down the sheets

You tell stories about others beating that gentle jaw

Knocking you all the way down to your humility
A homecoming to the mud house, the flood house 

The slave that you were to the sinking and the salvage

Too afraid to tell her sorry, not enough of you suffering to keep her there