Out of the old myth
A seed spit in a melon
Contest while all the good
Kids mostly still (and some of the bad)
Believe in Jesus
Yet I imagine
The afterlife
As this bar my sister-in-law
Trolls, a good roadhouse once,
South of the state line,
Until the vote lifted
Prohibition and it moved
Into town and the Keno
Afternoon and cigarets
Until the vote
Against tobacco
& now the furtive hits
Off the newly legal dope vapes
From the neighbor state,
Slowly losing retirement funds
And the food--
It's not what it used to be.

The other way was magic then,
Left roadside as the animals,
Uncomprehending speed of men
Come slaked with fire from banquet halls,
Front-slanted as the rising sun,
Whose dangerous appearance mocks
The dark,  where lovers come undone
And hearts are picked like rusted locks.
Your singing is the holy sound,
The wailing of the innocent
That brings the spirit up from ground,
Where lust renews from passion spent.
My words come slow, unbent to taste,
As love is unconcerned with haste.

This small town quiet night has left
My mind imagining you free,
The world cracked open at its fault,
Fruit ripe and willing from that tree
That leaves no indication here,
Where traffic is a happenstance
Until you make yourself appear
And I invite your sly advance...
Fresh Eden always ours to test
Against a subtle offering
To be like gods and never rest
And never cease at conjuring.
Come ******* seed in innocence--
Don't look behind for consequence.

I can't compose myself today,
Have no imagination left
That's worth the time it takes to say
What might reflect somehow what's felt.
This odd pursuit is no escape,
No recompense among the just--
If anyone could claim that shape,
Who rose and fell among the dust.
As morning scrolls to afternoon,
Long evening to outer dark,
The wailing heard, the gnashing soon--
The trinity of heads that bark,
Until the music stills their breast--
In dulcet tones, then sudden rest.

How beautiful the children's feet,
Mothers at the border crossings,
The cellist in the war-torn streets,
Resplendent in the evening,
Who know that evil has a name,
A placid face, blue eyes of death,
Who murders with a toxic rain
That sears the skin,  that takes the breath.
The earth grows dark with fallen leaves;
Blood brothers, elders, innocents.
Say nothing of the amputees,
The blinded and the minds that went
Beyond recovery.  God's hooks
Were never meant for common folks.

i quicken, not for the ghostyard
but its house, whose monotheist
message,  the missionary's charge,
has long eclipsed the sacred mist
that birthed my sacrilegious soul,
which worships wood unscarred by nails-
cascading birch, midsummer pole--
a rotted stump the missing grail.
i've seen the sun come through the leaves
to wake the boys who stayed up late,
young satyrs with their lust relieved,
imagining the girls they'd date.
we had no parson preaching sin,
no other world to lose or win.

if any man has loved a woman more
than i love you he must be heaven's seed,
as i expect a soul does not endure
without connection. what it is i need--
and i am much in need--your heart supplies,
unto the depths of fear while holding fast
to my uncertain, passionate disguise
as someone recognizable at last.
permit me one more privacy tonight,
that i may outweigh heaven and its sun,
give something to the darkness more than light,
and shout until the living has been done,
a sacrilegious lover and a fool,
whose throne has all the makings of a stool.