It would be Kurt Cobain’s birthday today,    
But he is a slowly fading memory,

Like a track mark on your record collection,

After years of being clean.

Seattle is just a memory, but today

Just outside of Aspen a man, age 67

Pulls the trigger of his gun like

Calling an old friend, reconnecting,

Talking for hours, in warm tones

The color of blood in veins.

We are a generation of native orphan children

Long legged, springing from one corpse to the next

Spanning the Gunshot Archipelago

Letting our toes hang in the water

Searching for our mothers and other heroes

While dodging the inksplot bats that eclipse the sun.

But we can’t stop here.

Every one of us will tend to Aspen, then leave it,

Another truck stop, another bullet wound,

Another genius leaving us to clean our shorts

While we wallow like swine in acid baths.

But this is not for us,

This is a single typewriter key covered in sweat

For a boy built like a cigarette

Because today he mourns a patriot,

A kindred lunatic,

Left wing gun nut.

He mourns dark figments in Nixon masks,

He is not an orphan.

The old man calling from Aspen

Tells him “This is it. This is the horizon

Where the wave broke,

This is the desert rolling back upon itself,

Folding this broken down stolen car

Like an origami lizard.

Hey rube, this is it.”

Every 14 year old girl who skipped school,

Lit a white candle

And listened to Nevermind for 27 hours straight

Is laying on my bed right now,

In a heap of

This boy, who must know that

Most of America didn’t know his friend was still alive.

Hunter S. Thompson claimed the FBI has been after him since he was eight years old,

He liked Robert Mitchum for being the first white man arrested for pot

Even though he wasn’t.

He liked Kerouac for killing dogs,

He tricked Rolling Stone into paying him to take drugs.

The man shot himself.

And if this was an elegy, I’d coat it in gelatin

And drop it in Ladybird Johnson’s tea,

But I’m too young for that.

This is a typewriter key, and it is for you,

It clicks louder than a trigger

Looks like the tracer of a hieroglyph,

And they call it legacy.

The phone spit it at you before it went dead.

It's been a good year, only one school shooting,

one root canal, and one open heart surgery (meaning my lover left me)

but it's okay cus over all it's been a good year!
The Red Sox beat the Iraqis, the Yankees beat the Yankees outside a bar
when they couldn't find any Indians.
I found a baby in the trashcan and it’s going to be on Reality TV!

It's been a good year for science, folks:
We discovered that Michael Jackson is from Mars
because his face peels like cheese off a pizza;
cancer now causes cancer

(I'm not going to talk about AIDS though

because it chaps my lips)

and they finally made a cell phone that's also a toothbrush.

It's been a Good Year blimp over my head
while I regain consciousness and lose my dreams;
Corporate symbols fill the sky and there's no space
for dream's imagination, but I'm not ranting just cus I'm talking wild,

no, I'm composed cus I've got cue cards:
3…2…"It's been a good year,

Shira Erlichman got arrested for trying to take a picture of the sunset
—for kissing her reflection
—for underwater indecency

when she was spotted making out with Ariel.

But thanks to extensive therapy,

she got married to Eric and is a now a member of Reformed Dykes for Disney.

It's been a good year: feminists all over the United States are saying,

"…but don't worry, I'm not a feminist"

meanwhile using birth control, having the right to vote,

and getting a college education.

It's been a good year. Poetry was my anti-drug,

and it got broadcast across America all the way to my dealer’s mom!
and with all this acid rain we’re bound to get high so it's been a good year;
I went to college like a good girl

I didn't kill anyone (yet), I didn't lose my mind
but if I did I could rely on time to find it.
I read a lot, I made new friends, my body's still intact
I have enough limbs to hold money
and I quit school—I did, cus apparently I ask too many questions
but crazy is as crazy does
so I ate my dog, therefore
no, I don't “have” the homework.
Oh, I must be dreaming again.

Dreaming romance is dead
but you give it mouth to mouth.
Dreaming my poems start walking
and reach you.
Dreaming

there is weather buried under our tongues,

tell me your lightning – I want to get struck by stories.

Now I know I’m not nothing knotted,

I’m sacred as an eyelash on your cheek,

check me out of the library of girls

and wear me on your sleeve, I am the book outfit!

Life is art’s medium and baby, you are the bee’s knees

and I am the tongue’s giraffe!

I am the mapmaker through sadness’ woods

and all that is hurt and hopeful

and it’s been a good year

I saw god

and he was looking up.

Don’t tell the Government, but I’ve started dreaming again

and it tasted like nothing you can brand bottle or label.

I can still feel my heart opening, a little every time,

like a chrysanthemum breathing;

under a sky like an umbrella of rotting teeth,

it’s been a good year.

Dear sunset [click], thank you.