I smoked my friends and lovers
down to the filter
hounded people who’d wounded my pride
fought my bosses
shredded it all
and ended up in this room
typing incantations to the empty evening sky
and poems to the prostitutes on my street
especially the one with the fading dye-job
and a broken shoe.
I go to Mass on Sundays now
would you believe it
then get drunk
as I read the papers
which are full of iconoclasts
congratulating each other
on their new methods of
slaughtering sacred cows.
I see them fight like hyenas
over their dying god
in my muddled dreams.
And after violent nights
fragile mornings
in which everything seems
like a photographic negative
of the glory to come
including this hope.
