I believe in the match, white phosphorus,
scratch of Bic lighter spurting like a miniature sun
in the deadpan havoc of the darkest night.

I believe in the neon sign, blare of argon
red like lava. The invitation to come inside a place
where everyone is a saint in rehabilitation.

I do not believe in a steeple. I do have a church:
it is full of cripples carrying their hearts like a crutch.
It is full of ***** fingernails, swollen thumbs,

epileptic prayer circles, a choir of bums, riff-raff,
pulled off the street into the warmth of this fiery song.
We are all martyrs burning, like pyres, exploding

in moments of sorrow like gunpowder. God is not
in this church. We are too far from his icy heaven to hear
the cold menace of his manic threats. We are aflame,

making heaven out of the hells we were born into,
the ones we had no choice but to carry like a deformation,
but making our heavens the kind where work is.

We have built heaven out of pillars of words. We
have scorched even the newest of testaments, sifting
through its ash to divine new meaning of resurrection.

I do not believe heaven or hell are nouns. I do not
believe they are adjectives. They are verbs! ******* it
they are verbs: boiling or churning with photographs

of every failure, every success, every bruised knee,
every severed tie, every father that did not love us,
every mother who could not save us, every lover who

kissed the dark sides of our light hearts. I believe
you make heaven, that you make hell. I believe in
only the fire, crackling like skin molting from sunburn.

I want only to be consumed. The world is too far ruined
to douse this from me. Let me burn. If you look closely,
there are doves in the smoke, my bones glowing branches.