Waypoints (2nd draft)

In those autumn evenings when the sun dripped dry
we slept in the harbor, swam in our clothes.
We picked up the drunk at the liquor store,
and from the bed of your truck, he asked us
for a ride home from AA,
and then for some beer.
We left him on the corner of Wilkens and Fulton
and he popped some pills, ducked into a stoop
and out of our lives.
We never went back.

Left on Rolling Road, we pulled into U.M.B.C.
(You Made a Bad Choice we'd joke),
threw such lofty fits in the the dorms,
pushing each other into and out of new -isms
and your finger slammed like an apple
in the basement door, its skin
dangling from the bloody core,
and we rushed you to St. Agnes in our pajamas,
sat out front with the addicts for hours
throwing bottle caps in the birdbath.
Those sirens were little lobotomies.

No wonder we were so lost then.
Past the rowhomes we ran downtown,
the city’s charms rising in Bromoseltzer hues
and were we falling to the sidewalks like beetles
drawn in by neon letters, places with names like "BAR."
Did we want to die like Poe,
right there in the gutter?
or to pass through the Blues like those other
kids bitching about their mothers?

We rode through the streets and out to the diners,
the Double TT on Rt. 40, smoked cigarettes,
drank coffee until dawn, our books left in their bags,
wrote poems one line at a time, sharing the rhyme,
the paper accordioned with doubt.
It’s odd how in these habits,
you blink and you miss it.
We paid the bill and out in the street,
the sun etched our impressions onto the bay.

In those days we looked forward to so much more,
but time has no direction or memory,
like the Chesapeake, only buoys light the way.

Leaving the Parish late one autumn night

It was ten before we'd arrived,
But they had been on for a half an hour.
They only played another thirty minutes,
Long enough for just one beer,
Not even time to shake out the rust
To consider dancing.
Maybe it was the fifty people,
Maybe it was the smoking ban,
But we couldn’t help but wonder
How a once British supergroup
Could end their show before eleven,
Even on a school night.
Is this what happens when we comb over the spots in the past?
His long hair couldn't hide how tired he sounded.
I'm glad I gave that shit up.

Sinisteria III

Showered with a rain of golden nouns,
passages of a midsummer harangue,
I found myself on the defensive.
Daring not respond, I bit my tongue
and held it tight against my lower lip
like a child with a lisp
at the first sound of thought.

And that was how I spent my summer
in a pool of pride, eyes open wide
but tongue-tied at the tip,
daunted by what I wanted to say
and how to express the duress
that presses against my palette,
a pendulum in need of a fulcrum.

The Word

There was this foreign feeling
Encountered this cool morning;
I caught myself soaking
The marrow out of the Word

Something I thought myself
Incapable of comprehending
For the many years of my youth
Which I have somehow scored

Differently than my peers,
Marking yesterday more than tomorrow.
I sit waiting, staring at a his life-sized
Statue or more precisely, toward,

And accuracy is important
Since in this pale light
With goose pimples on my arms,
From acclimation to long summers,

I see in his shadow more
Clearly than light,
More in his dying for
Than in his life.

3,000 angles on a raven

There is something significant
about a single black raven
perched upon an episcopal
steeple in the afternoon sun.

Maybe it's the heat that walks me
to and from these hallowed doorsteps
or perhaps it's the growing cold
to compensate for the global
climate getting warmer with change.

In this era of instant cause
and effect, tangos with terror,
religion must repent, relent
on its claims the world is error.

Though traditions die hard, lying,
one thing I will never forget --
crying wolf will call them, baying.
But change is a moving target,
and is flying a steel carpet.

The raven lands, still as a tower.
Always has, always will to power.

St. John's Episcopal

I walked by my local Episcopal
on a daily path that serves penance
for the ten years of driving
to wait ten minutes for the bus.

As I passed the arched windows
I stopped to contemplate the statue
of Jesus and then my receding hairline.
This is my humility.

Sending my hands wringing
through a primeval forest of anger
Why are there no bells on modern churches?
with their ringing holy recitation.

The angelic singing reminds us of vespers.
Today they are but whispers.

Sinisteria I

Never having thought
I'd know her
I never learned how to ask,
and always feeling so
left out of love,
the thought of entering her,
becoming her
was always further from my mind
than what I imagined
I would do
if I were her
and I knew me
the way she thinks
she does.