Like a messaged bottle patiently paddling ashore,
My love eternally yearns to be read from your sandy fingers.
And if nothing else,
Let the tongue of the waves swallow me whole
only to reveal my love as deep as the ocean’s floor.

And if nothing else,
may the foreseeable crack of this see-through-canteen
breed a new beginning of shredded glass.
Let it crash into cobble stone thrones
to have its remnants slowly be soothed, smoothed
and scattered amongst the sand dollars.
If nothing else,
Let them be picked, piece by piece by
the wandering,
the curious,
and the kind collectors who stash them in their sea-green dining rooms.
Let them rest amongst the plethora of previous lovers
and reflect their eternal light from dining room windows.

He utters “A reading from the acts of the Apostles.”
We are his people,
the sheep of his flock and
we don’t even fancy sheep.
I wake my mother at the sermon
“We’ll talk at the end of mass,”
we never do.
Putting our hands together for a
for a pointless chant,
I pick off little white hairs from my jacket.
******,
focus.

My mother frowns and pulls the
dress over the run in my stockings
The speakers lisp blurs everything except
Grow up, go to school, go to church.
Go to college, make love.
Wait,
don’t do that.
Make kids, buy a dog,
promise not to cry if it dies.
Or if the dog dies too.

******,
focus.
Bountiful baldlessness as men earning their halo’s
pat the thinning hair beneath them.
Thanks be to God.

Do you might know where
I, the elicit dreamer,
found religious home?

no muffled *****
no basket of tarred pennies
no rueful speaker

Simply, sacred blues.
Blue's ain't the Devil's diction,
though he applauds it.

Shamelessly present-
trampled by words and wine
*She had goals before this.