I Trinity

All these words are second-hand:
we preferred our ammunition
time-tested,
lethal.
Practical and cleansing,
like a forest fire,
domestic.
Healthy,
per modern television psychology.
This is what we've trained for.
The dinner table is a hanger-on
of prehistoric days, a basecamp
for the world we're trying to leave behind
and it's gaining.
Doctors and treading water,
backstage,
the view from the spires must be magnificent
but it is resigned to the 12:00 bell and not us.
Catholic bottles,
infinite wishes - the major denominational appeal -
and dramaturgy. Bridgeside,
praying to break the suffocation of tolerance:
martyrdom was such an easy out,
and your convictions haven't aged as well as you.
On your side, of course,
it's not about hiding weakness:
it's about removal.
Not in front of the children,
and the Son
and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

II Parking lot

Secret meetings
in church basements
lose (contextually) their
appeal but retain all the
drama and politics
of the 17th century
Vatican.
Hunter / gatherers,
circling obliquely. Wide
awake &
goddamned hungry,
it is a generational whirlpool.
Save your strength.

III Interred

consumed
and in the process
where are you even at
spiritually
physically
?
reduced in numbers
this evening
and worn down,
shot uh milk
& beer
it takes all kinds
brother.
atheists on crusades
and quiet the game's on
champagne for my real friends
and I'll make you all background noise,
willowy and awkward and disordered.
listen if I can just
borrow like
five bucks
I'll tell you all my secrets
okay?
but first
what do they have on the jukebox?
I bet they play some great music in Heaven.
And in Hell?

Industry

We rode illegally
thinking we could fake our way
out of anything,
and what a disappointment
finding out how right we were.
This city exists for only us
and we keep to the alleys and fire
escapes,
eyes open for the dull ache of sirens
and syncopated rhythms of the old after dark,
skirting the parachute factory and years
around the defiant maypole smokestacks,
the holy trinity give or take,
rumbling.
Out in the hills,
it all burns the same.

Coal

Harping
on this tune,
but who has the time
these times
I leave to my estate.
A timeless melancholia,
engendered,
all dressed up and nowhere to go,
our overdeveloped vocabulary:
and yet.
If we recast
the daily routine
in the form of a ritual game
we may divine
and what of life?
We are to be the last of our generation.
That's what you always wanted
us
to be,
distantly,
vacantly.
All regrets are choices,
distantly.
Calliope and eucharist
and we're revived,
cleansed of our ambition
that we never wanted,
the blight that held us
degrees
asunder
and maintained
iron contraptions
forcing the blood
from our arteries.