If my Valentine you won't be,
I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.

"In a row???" I ask, incredulous.

"Nah, man."

"Were you at least #37?"

"Well, yeah. But still that gets to me," he says. He starts counting change, playing with pennies on the glass counter.

"If you didn't see it, it didn't happen," I reply. I pull out a $5.00 bill.

"That's childish!" He looks at me like I'm a babbling idiot.

"That's my life!" It was my life.

"I can't believe you sometimes," he says. Nobody can, bud.

"You better start. I'm smarter than I look." I'm bluffing now; I'm a ******* idiot.

"Yeah, yeah. Do you wanna buy anything or not?" he goes back to his pennies on the glass counter.

"Yeah--Marlboro Reds," I reply hesitantly. For a moment I thought about Camels.

"$5.00 even." It's always $5.00 even when you're with friends.

"Alright."

"Shorts or 100s?"

"****, man, shorts!" It's my turn to look at him like he's a total stranger.

"Just asking." He puts the bill in the register.

"Shorts say badass. 100s say suicide mission."

"I suppose you're right."

"It makes perfect sense!"

"Either way you're going to die."

"Yeah? So are you, buddy."

"*******."

I exit the convenience store, pack my Marlboro Reds, turn two up (one for luck, one for ****, to be smoked lastly out of the pack) and light one.

I was 15 years old
when I tried ******
for the first time.

I got it from an older girl
with a mane of obsidian
hair and a porcelain face
shaped like all
her teardrops.

She told me she'd let me
**** her
if I went to prom with her.

I didn't want to **** her;
she smelled like
the Boston Harbor.

I smoked the ******
that first time.

Gray smoke curled thickly
into the damp air of
a basement haunt--
in the Georgian heat
the rain had steamed away.

It tasted like the sands of Persia
or the ambrosia of Mount
Olympus.

It smelled awful;
burnt rubber after a highway
blowout.

I couldn't move;
I sat on my moth-eaten
sofa, dozing in and out
of life in a golden daze.

Everything was golden then
in that instant and I knew
the golden love of a mother's
glowing gaze for the first time.

Then I heaved and my stomach
purged itself.

Then I knew the black hate
of my own vicious glare
for the first time and awoke
an hour later.

Then I threw up my guts
again.

When I woke to the sounds of silence
once more I was confronted
with a golden warmth
and the feeling of the presence
of the Sacred Heart--

and I knew that I loved it.

This altar of teeth and ****,
crumbling into dust, into ashes
to be swept away in the sour wind
of the idiot daylight hours
in the jibber-jabber of the streets

Dead on the water
is not a paid vacation;
floating in black
stagnation, figures
treading water around
your center.

Dissolving in the
uncaring ripples of
a green and murky pond--
men lost their lives
for this place.

Buried treasure
glints in the bent
sunlight of the soundless
depths--

locked out in the winter
is not a blaze of glory.

Forever and ever
Without a choice,
Roofs were raised
In booming voice:
God the Father.
Proclaimed the choir.

In our two millenia,
The communal host blessed pro-choice,
With Omni-this and Omni-that:
Christ the Son.
Christ has won.
The carollers rejoice.

The Spirit transubstantiates
With tongues of creativity;
Is One with femininity.
What greater God!
What a Trinity!