The Way We Hold Our Guns

You didn’t mean to make it my job to put your            

sacred things into boxes for you, but here I am.

Sacred things get more tattered, less sacred as the

box fills. But I am not one to give up on sacredness.

I make your sacred things fit into manageable boxes.

It’s been a long time since I felt safe looking for God in you.

When they ask how we are, I try to anticipate

what they want to hear so I can tell them the truth like that.

“Not my will but Thine be done”—like that.

I don’t hint at the eroding sacredness. The boxes.

The full moon brings something out in you.

It would be easier if you grew fangs and fur.

Or cancer. Cancer would be easier.

No one ever says cancer would be easier,

so I must be some kinda lunatic too.

Our occult is a cautionary tale,

the way we hold our guns like edible cake toppers,

like these guns are going to taste so good tonight,

tonight when the candles are out and the moon is

asking a favor again.

Cruel mistress, that moon. How we chase her

with poppy seed mistakes on our breath!

How we make a hoax of that chase, how we laugh.

How we let our bones stretch out, holding out

our guns like sugar figurines.

You stopped wearing shoes in the desert,

but you were hoping we wouldn’t notice 

(You were hoping to step on a scorpion. Maybe then

it wouldn’t take a gun. Maybe in those last moments

things would get sacred again).