MaNGoD

When did I become
a man?  When
did I fall?  I am
face down in feathers--
the smell of you--                                                          
and yet
the bed is empty.

No music plays.
No lepers dance, no thieves
descend to make amends
with lovers.  Stolen
hearts are still
the currency of Jesus
in there late hours...

There will be
no death bed conversions.
There will be
no last vestige left
of hope.  There will be
only the disconsolate
salvation
of this mortality.
                                    
Once you had
unraveled fingers, unfolded knees
and stumbled somehow
back to your feet
you kept repeating,
you kept                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          saying the prayer...

Your tongue,
in reverent whisper,
evoked the mystic monkey/
God that you created
that you called
Mango D.

Belief is so easy
for you.  Faith
is nothing.  More
than my beatification
I miss the piss
and vinegar
on your lips, the irreverent
reflection of me
on the viscous memory
of your brown eyes.

I am/I was
once Mango D
and I was/
I am angry to see
you sleeping.  Those mirrors
now shuttered, your mouth
still ringed with the drying
glaze,
cum from
these supplications.

Your mouth in yawning
open.  Your butt is clenched
tight.  You who are
bored by my stories,
immune to my wiles.
You are--
in my bed--
disinterested; worse
you are tired.

Brief but amorous,
devoutly riddled
with heresy and doubt,
this religion you founded--
this sect, this cult--
appealed to my vanity
and sat on on my desk.
But it made such a mess
of everything...

that came after.