Letters from Colorado

May 2007

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One day I’m going to open up
The window wider than the summer sky
And a bottle of whiskey, the horizon and I
Are going to meet up at the top of Pike’s Peak,
Sort things out between God and Man
And the postmaster-general of Eastern Cheyenne.
He’s been troubled by visions
Of the dead letter office
Consumed in fire, and the letters are coffins,
But he doesn't understand what he came here for,
And he doesn't understand what it means.
He doesn't understand what he came here for,
But the mountain burns red in his dreams.

One day I’m going to send you
A letter written entirely in Arabic,
Asking for mercy, and the sweetly acerbic
Way that you used to hold your head
When you didn’t know better
Than to laugh when the world exploded.
When the pipes in the walls all suddenly corroded
We were left drinking nothing
But red, red wine, dark as the water,
And I called you the Devil’s adopted daughter,
And you said
You had nothing to fear from the offer.

But you’re not really going to read that,
I’m not really going to send it,
But you’ll hear through three lanes of full-throttle roar
Or I’ll carve it in big block letters on the door
With a highway flare.

One day I’m going to wake up
In a cold sweat with a knife in my pocket
And I’ll jam it straight into an electrical socket
And wait for the tide to come in
To a studio apartment on the 31st floor,
Open the window and let it all pour
Out in a column of sweet, glittering light.