Gabriel’s Harley
Your old Harley rusts next to a broken ATM,
gum-tacked mirror smashed in by the church’s poker iron,
your fingers bloody and buried inside me,
before dawn daubed its collared black puff
over your thick, stained-glass lids.
x
I want you to know that I’ve made it real far,
but I won’t tell you how,
not over a cigarette in your barren backyard,
the pond’s filtration system clogged with Christ,
cause I fear that if you knew the truth,
you’d never sleep a wink again.
x
I’ve never been the pious type, darlin’,
not like you, a sinner now in Gabriel’s glad rags,
but when you got to your knees,
kneeled before me on those
hot, silver-silken evenings,
I hope God was watching.
Dog Teeth
You came walking that day,
past the house of dog teeth,
canine picket white fence, sewn with
human floss and Prussian blue cuffs.
x
Your limp quickened; hope burnt
out to a prayer’s wick, the shoreline
littered with cigarette ends.
x
It faltered eventually, snuffed out,
It will never be you. You will never come
back home
x
to that lonely four-walled woman.
They Asked For One More Day
Time chased them underneath a thousand suns,
missing nothing with her mindful eye,
pocket watch a tall and grand fellow, embalmed
in white-hot iron. Neither fought the dying of
the clement afternoon, for the darkness of dusk
was not feared as long as they dreamt in
colours of vermillion, scarlet, oleander red
in the moon’s pale underbelly.