Banking On An Evening Prayer

His fire was coyly hated

In bars he once paraded

'gainst the rebellions of his pockets

And scathing old wise lackeys.

“You wait, kid”, they'd say, “you’ll pay.”

But O, t'were the days;

Was easy to waste a-way

When it was little choice to be

What was needed and not;

And oft he was the latter.

So, he spent his days in chatter

An' just as quick the world replied: 

“My brother, I am opened wide”

And it ate him up whole.

For an hour of ease, 

That great deceit

Ragged as old mountain feet

Brought the great lighthouse down—

An' gifted endless nights on the town.

With grace it gave

Loud whining for his ears;

With pace,

Stallion throbs for his heart.

And each mornin' at noon,

In the sinking galleys of the room

Hear the limp, pale, magnetic rump,

Drunk with his sailor croon.

 

The hours of deep solitude arrive

The time hath came to bid goodbye.

What shall become,

Then of this man?

This rabid, ill, physical lover

Ill, yes, potently with desire,

He serenades thee, to soak his fire,

Begging for love, with a needle, a pin, a palm

and bottles of twilight ink.

Mercy help, he is wasted

Blind to the halves of love; 

Sincere only to cold indulgence.

T'last, he turns and says,

“I am willed by an incredible divine grace

To take on you, that cannot be bound

By the hanging threads of currency.”

Now, he is old, and his liver hails mercy

But with a great, great passion,

He consumes himself, contently.