I used to bow my head
and fold my hands
and close my eyes
the rules were very important
                 the game was to play by the rules
to watch your mouth
                       wear shorts under your dress

never lie
                never yell
                        
        in dreams
                             that bearded menace
sat on the Golden skyline
                               and wrote down
what I had done wrong
                 the rules I had broken
and screamed my sinners song
into small ears
    that night, I climbed the staircase,
        I would fly,
                         I had planned to fly.
        every cell lifted me to the top of the
       staircase with the eagerness of the adventure
I got to the top
            stood on the rail
    balanced like a swan
                          and as my young knees bent
to leap to the sky
                             above the black lit dark,
  I heard that law mans
                                    booming dissent
Jillian, don't play God
                                         and I didn't.

shirelles
monday night
alone in a big house
light the candles
another one of my rituals
born one hour,
dead the next
to make room
for other
prayers
postures
pen tips
but the way candles
flicker in the sweet
soul
is not another ritual
warm life
to the tune of golden
notes
swimming through
once bleak
     once empty
once impure
       air
and suddenly, I am baptized
more than I ever was
in that sterile, dead
chlorine
    more than spent hymns
in drafty cathedrals
       so, the sound lives.


my bed would tilt
           at twelve years old
I'd wake
               startled of the
                       psychic death
spread like bodies after
            a paid for war
I'd scream like the cats
              fighting by the window
at my aunts house
               I would huddle with
my childhood
                     hiding from the puberty
that stalked me
like a jungle cat
               the mind reeled with
my spent pulse and
                 at night
                        under shamed
                   covers
                                 bitten fingertips
the white light
           on the street
                              looking on

and when your babies were born
you named them for the stars
but the backyard was all they ever saw
when your mother got the call
the world was obsessed
but when we change the channel
you'll still feel him inside
you'll still feel him

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us and none of us were ever the same
and how the music filled us better than any
meal we had ever eaten
and how the smile of a friend was the
only success we'd ever needed
and how the first kiss was the best
but every one after was as soft or hard as
the love we thought we'd lost when the
lies they told us lowered our eyes
and how I thought I knew it would never end
and how I knew it would
and how the music filled us better
than any God

Oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things
they cease to shine,
and looking up at frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way
ever toward an inner light
ever toward  a mundane night
you cannot ask for want of asking
ever toward the soils crashing

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all your dreams
will lose their rhyme

and so on past
the child at play
and past the girl
on bridal day
an further past
the humming hag
until she reached the grave at last

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things, they cease to shine
and looking up a frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way

I grieve you
the way I grieve my last cigarette
knowing I'll have another
and another
and another
but I grieve him
the way I grieve the very last
knowing I'll spend eternity
searching for
just
one
drag