don't talk,just listen
pick their story's glisten
grasp how not to fail
from their perishing folktale
pay heed to their lamentation
to put yourself on flawless direction
learn about hell and misery
as this is the map for victory

Sad reflections from
donated dreams.
Charity's
fallen embers.
Like a high UV index
they burn right into
your skin.
Freckling
your thoughts with a bit of compromise.

Close your eyes
to the possibility
inertia
has made itself at home.
You'll feel it, feel it
right to the bone.
But you crossed that bridge
long ago.
In the time of
tranquil misgivings.
You gave consent to
sin by offering up
your sons and daughters.
Drowning them
in the shallow end of dissipated water.

Sing hymns
all you like.
Piety
is not for sale.
And the angel light
that hits the wall
is not in the shape of Mary.
Evil always figures into
these things.
Don't you know? Heat rises. Blood falls.

So burn your prayers
on a stick. Roast them
in the campfire. You'll never turn
to God until you lie
dying. Broken and heaving.
Asking for forgiveness.
Which a man of cloth
will grant.
Such a charmed life to leave.

Only it's a cheat.
A spoonful
of circumvention.
Making you feel
warm and clever
as you bleed out. Regrettably,
your vacuous heart
sailed off on the Greta Garbo
and mortgaged
your future for such marquee.
Banking on the
here and now.
From this there can be no redemption.

I think that love is an old wives’ tale,
Whispered low to suckling babes
Beneath the glows of grapefruit firelight.

I think old women sick of pails
And endless spools and groaning crates
Sat by the sinking smoke of twilight

And made it up, like ancient hymn-songs,
To ease the creaking of their hips
And the dusty clink of emptiness.

I think they spun it from their wool-threads,
From the creases of their lips,
From the shadows and their heaviness.

I think their youngest daughters listened,
Then wove this teeth-and-murmur myth
Into the folds of cracking tapestries

I think they painted, whistled, christened
This hallowed folklore into gifts
And all the while grew its majesty.

I think these tales turned to scripture
And the scripture into ballads
And the ballads into diction

And now all these many winters
Since that single haggard crone-wife
First dreamt up this wind-swept fiction,

And that first pink-****** maiden
Spun beside these tales and heard them
And repeated them anew -

And now, we murmur these same fables
To our teething, blushing children
And believe them to be true.