Hail Mary

How's your faith these days
Father...
Does it lie dead, dismembered;
the masticated pieces spat at the feet
of your stained glass Gods?
Does it choke your private sanctuary
with the stench of decayed hope?

How's your faith these days
Father...
Does it hang heavy, cold against
the collar; a bloodstone Rosary
strung on veins of attrition?
Are confessions sold in confidence
to cast the Judas cross in tarnished silver?

How's your faith these days
Father...
Does it have the sweet persuasion
it once had, or has the hypnotic drone
of the doggerel lost its melodic allure?
Or is it all finally a figment
of the contrite collective; blind masses
drawn to fat candles lit by weary wanderers
to illuminate the path to salvation?

How's your faith these days
Father...

Looking For Oz

I. Twister

Baby rolls rock-me hips
through the undertow,
twelve moves like twenty down oceanside,
mama's little lure trolls for fish
driving money cars waxed to oily glisters;
the metal skins reflect

bad boys watching from tattoo fronts
with hard eyes, hooked fingers scratching
thoughts bulged at their crotches;
they spit laughter at sharks
looming up behind tinted glass and

baby strokes this school-
cherry red bait in a feeding pool,
looks like daddy's got an angler;
she snaps her ass at beasts
cruising by like sleek nightmares,
the painted scales of bad boys
rippling on the edge of thier wake.


II. We're Not In Kansas Anymore

The glare of neons
splatter on wet concrete,
drops of irridescent rain;
they spread oily rainbows
beneath spiked heels.

Glittering ladies gather
along the yellow safety curb;
soaked and shaking lollipop gals
looking for the great
and powerful Oz
through windshields
sparkling like the Emerald city.