Courting the Executioner

Bacchanalia born they plunge torches
In the river, and cigarette incense
Billows out of crozier lungs;
This religion draws no lines in which
The ends don’t touch.
I refuse to waste my dreams on sleep,
I plan Avalon beneath a fog of war.

Martyrs and mayhem!
The victors and the vanquished!
Boys and girls along the oaken bar;
Soft-spoken self-immolation; some burn,
Others are ashes in painted urns
Atop a skyscraper berm between a
Slaughterhouse and a stockyard.

This is the firing squad!
The volley from the arrayed line!
That finger on that glass of gin
Has squeezed a trigger like
A quaking monk his crucifix;
I held my own head by the hair
And threw it to the scaffold’s crowd.

I stepped in front of the popping guns;
I hoped they fired blanks;
I heard the knell the shells were keening,
So I knew they were not.
Hope is hard, but you don’t stop
Hoping until you start bleeding.
I bit the bullet and liked the taste