your mother spoke of god
in whispers that threaded your childhood
with this golden sense of safety
that could coax you to do anything
because if you
****** up and
tum
bled
the landing would be soft and padded
with furrows of cloud and
spidersilk angel fingers
brushing the dirt from your forehead,
every time.

now you
find comfort
not in thoughts of
the gnarled brown
fingers of
your heavenly father
grasping your heart tight

but in bloodstained sunsets
observed from wet ground,
feet loving the long grass
beneath you,
ugly birds slicing strips
of the livid sky into ribbons
beyond you,
the nakedness that
will come later
when the night
lumbers forward
like an old, black dog.

these days
you don't think about god
at all

unless you are drunk
and feeling nostalgic

then he falls upon you
like an ocean of canvas,
clings to your bones like
a milky fog,
the sky sinks low,
you feel the truth
raw and wet
in your molecules
and against
your shiny eyes.

your mother would be
so unimpressed
with your snagged
version of
faith.

to this you would argue
that you've got no one
to save,
you awake happy
on most sticky
cherry-eyed mornings
and it's not like
you have forgotten.

you are in the thick of it
and

you still watch the ****
sunset
whenever you can
from a perspiring patch
of warm ground
beneath a
tree that looks exactly
like your
grandfather
and you praise it
with all of
your hardboiled youth
feeling
coddled and breathless
all the while.
feeling  


safe


as you ever have.