Rosary beads in the garbage can
for a hundred nights I tossed prayers to some
scratched document of a god.
Far more than a hundred
I lost count at a hundred,
before I began to lose my childhood belief
and my fraying frame of mind, and
losing became everything.
This is not my mother’s faith.
It lay buried in the rain
under the curb glittering under soot
and I stopped on a wandering ride down my street
brushed off the wet october leaves
and made it mine.
It was not until years later
that I took it back home
and lay it on the shelf next to hers
to see they looked the same.
I fall asleep to sad songs
written and played by poets
who have found true joy,
polishing their trumpets with
tears over lost dreams and wounds of the blues
and from laughter, that takes over like
the warm ghost of Pentecost.
The sun sets early these days.
Cold cereal for every meal.
People I don’t know smoke on the veranda,
but I still smile in the dark.
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