Status Updates From English as a Second Languag...

The Billy Graham Elegy

Nobody much mentions the floor of the Sistine Chapel
that’s touched so many more than the docents
or the ceiling or the premonitions on the wall. Come papal loafer
and heathen sneaker, come Ked and ECCO
mingling dog shit off the viale e strada on this scuffed stone...

One can’t, after all, be messiah forever. Eventually, the ball club needs a fresh message, a fresher messenger, fella in a silk suit maybe, a Carolina drawl, maybe another mother appointed chairwoman of the Pietà.

It gets so you wish there were actual
barbarians at the gate, anyone to crush with a mace,
but there is no gate, not one guy in a pelt
banging with any malice; just dad bods
and threenagers storming the bouncy castle.

Don’t blame me, cupcake, I voted for the other guy.
But somebody still has to pay for this shit.

When you sack the villain’s estate,
you have to raid the villain’s kitchen.
You dress in his topcoat and drink his gin.
You set his horses free and drive them
home through the rain. You see?

absolutely bizarre, bolina

setting down the YA romance for now and entering my poetry era