If I could pray for something more
Each blessed day, it would be just
To always have the strength, endure
The arrows and the missing trust,
True potion from the mixing bowl
Of mine & yours and everyone's
Belief in any altered soul
That saves the nation's slaughtered sons
And daughters,  but that's not the world
We're here to see, and so this night,
As good as any, I lay curled
Inside the quickly passing light,
And praise the god who holds my hand,
She's always better than I am...

What matters now that time has long Resigned itself to peering in
Through black cat glasses that belong
On overwrought librarians
Flipped out on sheets like ridicules
Of mockingbirds as shy kids find
Their *** on shelves at grammar school,
At least the represented kind.
Can someone take these shelves away?
They've given books much too much space,
Quixotically arranged the day
In covers where the lost embrace
Lost lovers from a borrowed song
And lives are lived, however long.

That scream of thought holds damaged wits
Responsible for absences
Long overlooked or spiked in fits
Of badly scattered witnesses,
Yourself the more exemplary--
If such sweet modesty allows--
For having landed here with me,
While others mouth consuming vows.
A useful god would not condemn
Such pecking at the heels of thought,
Unbowing to the seraphim,
Or even him the shepherds sought.
Tonight that child has much to grieve,
Whose mind has nothing left to leave.

And will these pixilated snaps
Look dated as the Polaroids,
Half **** but wearing baseball caps
Long borrowed from the naughty boys
Who brought the **** & Mad Dog wine
And 8-tracks blasting rock & roll
In pull outs on the county line,
That back seat dancing we'd been told
Would cash a ticket down below,
With those outside the sacred fold,
Incapable of what they owe,
With prices raised on mortgaged souls,
The ancient myth still holding firm,
Anticipating some return.

Half steps slide further in the dark,
When no one's watching anymore.
The band, four players in the park,
Slap out religion on the floor
As ladies circle round a fool
All night, and breakfast later on,
While giving up their Sunday school,
For one whose crown is cardboard cone.
All blues surround the passing time,
Wildflowers on a rotting stump,
Stark gestures of a tortured mime;
A hop, a skip, at last a jump.
Should I forswear my witless words,
Will motion follow, undisturbed?

She found the future
proof
of her illusion;
evidence,
experience,
suggesting
modifications, to wit
striking capitals
and modifiers--
gone,
lacking
color,
shape
and time.

What had to be the way it was
For this to be the future, now
That everything has hour-glassed,
The question yet remains and how
Would I begin the rugged search
For lonely time still spread across
A frosted morning, swinging birch
Or any rutted road criss-crossed.
Where are you, in this place of need,
My long abandoned plans and who
Will ever mount that fiery steed
In seasons where the sap is low?
The mind still bends, as scribblers lean
To scratch out what is yet unseen.