Banking On An Evening Prayer

His fire was coyly hated

In bars he once paraded

'gainst the great rebellion of his pockets

And scathing old wise lackeys.

“Just you wait, kid”, they'd say, “yere gonna pay.”

But aye, t'were the days

Was easy to waste a-way

When little choice was it to be

What was needed and not;

And oft it was the latter.

An' he spent his days in chatter,

An’ quick, the word replied: 

“My brother, I am opened wide”

And it swallowed him whole.

Lay beg for an hour of ease

That bold and great deceit

Ragged as old, old mountain feet

Brought the mighty young lighthouse down—

An' gifted endless nights on the town.

With grace it gave

Loud whining for his ears

With pace it gave

Stallion throbs for his heart.

An’ each morning at noon,

In the sinking gulleys of the room

Listen there, the pale, magnetic rump,

Drunk with brandy croon.

 

Then the hours of deep solitude arrived

An’ time hath came to bid goodbye.

What shall become

Of this man?

This rabid, ill, physical lover

Ill, yes, potently, with unguided desire

Look how he serenades thee, 

To try, to soak, to croak his fire

Keeled, for love, with needle and pin,

and full bottles of twilight ink.

Mercy help, for he is wasted

Blind to the halves of love:

Sincere to cold indulgence but.

T'last, he turns to her, and says,

“I am willed by an incredible divine grace

To take on you, that cannot be bound

By the hanging threads of currency.”

She shudders at the word-

And bleak as the misled herd,

Drives them from the great cliff

Into the ocean's furl.

Now, he is old, and his liver hails mercy

But in the deep trenched passion,

He consumes himself, contently