On the verge of dust and out of our day's margins,
We swap versions of our lies, truer in this convergence

Up here. Now stoops all our tall tales, and laughter
Is what we gargle with to wash away the taste
Of ash--- defeat's daily bread--- when the sour water
Of our faith douses not the flames we keep. All else is waste.

Whoever the gods for whom we are gobbled up we deem
No redemption. Nor the goblin in a child's dream.

Let us then take this night by the tongue, waxing
Poetic until the clouds melt the moon like a sacramental
Wafer. It's two hours past vespers. But our verses, rehashing
The lizard's lick, its creed of crepuscular

Kiss, shall keep us faithless from its hackneyed bit
Of earth. What hungers harry the motorists underneath

This skywalk do not matter to us at the moment
Nor the blind beggar nearby murmuring his mantra of mercy.
Our words, cowling us occult with threadbare habiliment,
Swaddle us against the dust as sodium lamps glaringly

Stain us with saffron. We hunker down like monks. Or maybe
Monkeys, huddled round a bunch of bananas, might as well be

A simile for ourselves. This we must glean from the wary
Skywalk pedestrians, in the way they heave a leery sigh.
Or in that lady's distrust while she moseys on, dainty
And nonchalant while we loudly chant. Down the high-

Way, the swoosh of the traffic seems hushed by our wanton
Voices. Hearing us, as if enthralled, a waif of a vagabond

Sidles closer to our circle; his elfin giggles rousing us
To read him between his smile. I can read too, so goes his gap-
Toothed boast. With a sleeptalker's fluency, he stammers on as
We strain to listen. How decode vocables on the brink. Or flap

Of mothwings? Smoky like tallows in the night's borders, we thaw.
What will burn on the altars if we go to mass tomorrow?