politicians recycle their tired clichés
plastic Christs with plastic pulpits
pitch platitudes like mucking stalls
to a million suckers ready for saving.
pockets bulge with lucre. Lambs slaughtered.
the guilty dance on innocents' graves.
Rod was always gentle calm a lovely man,
a friend dead with AIDS before we knew.
Breath rattled inside his chest and skin
hung on bone like tired faded curtains.