Religion is
your grandmother sleeping,
When you're four and sitting alone
after dark

When your aunt lingers in silence
and lights one up under an ocean
of emptiness, in cold light,
while the white night-
gown drapes the knees
and bare bones warming
under mortality's thin skin

Religion is waving warning
and smiling under a fading haze
of black stratum
of burnt out sexuality, nonexistent,

Is feeling comfort in absence of
the Sun, of levitating in gravity's wake,
to swim in birth's pride and fade
in death's grace.

To remember the dead-eye
of drifting in silence
to meditate Zero's ecstasy
and forever, ever, ever echo

the mercy of sterile wisdom.