"Love is the worst religion,"
croons the dying television,

with no further explanation;
well, thanks for the news -

I see myself in emptied glass,
a bust carved rude and inchoate,

poet, captain, lost apostle
of the worst religion,

baptized in changeling pools
of day and week, scribbling

my night's peak breath
on the flypapers of insomnia.

Sun over sainted skin,
stars where evening eyes were,

swain's vespers, all of it
splitting like new ripe fruit

in sticky hands of the acolyte,
ardent hands of little silver.