Poetry you never lied to me

So where do you end up when your eyes are finally working
so well you can hardly see in front of you instead you look
inside out you feel the acid in your brain
working through to the page as pitiless as economists
adding up zeros you live in this world it opens its arms
exactly what you feared it is worse than your dreams
shutting your eyes to find the tortured boy printed
on your retina the hole in his cheek the slashed
arms bloodless now the cigarette burns how did they
and the big stupid money fracking the laws of mercy
all the connections obvious and obscene and still you dream
of linoleum in kitchens that years have demolished
into hygenic visions mothers in aprons squawking for decades
of migraines and butter or bending over shining ovens
in their Good Housekeeping skirts their hair in scarves
their perfectly polished children executive husbands televisions
you murdered them all you stood in high heels and vomited blood
better than madness your sister’s eyes turned in to policemen coming
to slash her to ribbons her visions of Lear her naked pain
poetry you never saved me but there was the rail
of words that promised a fake redemption you knew
it was fake but out of the dream stepped those ample summers
as real as the camellias opening outside your window
red as your fingers red as your newborn babies beautiful vaginas
speaking the possible here in this same world
where chemical hells scour the skin from children
o poetry who stepped down and clapped her manacles 
speaking her legislations knowing the sentence is life
its fluid chains its solitary rooms its knives of ice and blood
opening inside you like forgiveness you think
of your mother’s will where she ministers justice your sisters
and you laid out in columns neat and shy and obedient 
polish the skirtings weed the roses death will visit at last
and run his finger along the shelves and find us wanting
but he can go to hell him and his little brothers
all those feminine lessons I flung on the fire of my ego
refusing death although I invited him in with every word
every cigarette every failure poetry you never lied to me