As to offend, himself being offended,

So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing

I bear Antonio, that I follow thus

A losing suit against him.

weight in useless gold

Now everybody’s atheist like me, nothing’s sacred

buy and sell your grandmother, eat up old age homes,

Peddle babies on the street, pretty boys for sale on Times Square

he would argue, is not the worth of being alive.

But still he checked each lottery ticket which littered

the empty lot next door, praised their silver latex glitter,

praying to the beautiful unscratched, like little gods.

They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

Clearly money has something to do with life

----------------------------------

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

In the evening sun. It is intensely sad

is admirable, but he knows

that now no one retires,

everyone works harder

----------------------------

Happiness, I used to think,

was a necessary illusion.

Now I think it’s just

precious moments of relief,

Locked in the beauty of her bones,

She counts eight engagement rings

At least twelve times a day 

& rage. When it shuts off,

something else switches on.

--------------------------

To live

in a world of flesh

& teeth, you must

learn to kill

what you love,

& love what can die

, none of us are pure

---------------------------

We don’t want comfort 

yet–we want vindication

, acknowledgement

, the nodding of heads saying

yes, this happened, and

It    is    horrible.

----------------------------

We have

forgotten comfort, how

and where to look for it

-----------------------------------

It was almost night then, and we were spared the detail of having to see and read each other's faces.

---------------------------------

Anders’s boss had said he would have killed himself, and the following week a man in town did just that, his story followed by Anders in the local press, or rather online in the regional section of a large publication, the local paper having shut down long ago, this man shooting himself in front of his own house

---------------------------------

Anders’s father sometimes looked at the dark person who sat at his bedside and knew it was his son, but sometimes he looked at Anders and did not know who he was, but he knew that he had a duty to this person, that he ought to give him what he could, and so he tried to, and did his very best even, or especially, when he was unsure who this person was, because then he felt a father feeling, or maybe it was a son feeling, as though he was the son and this person was the father, both of them father, both of them son, and they had a bond, and they would make the passage together, or, if not together, at least they would approach it not unaccompanied.

----------------------------------

He even passed an ambulance, and it was just driving normally, no siren blaring, just driving from someplace to someplace on a regular day, in no hurry, how crazy was that, and when he got home he went to his father and gave his father the medication, and then Anders passed from room to room and spread the curtains, he spread the curtains wide.

--------------------------

she feels shame and relief, in which order she cannot say.