“Prayers That God May Curse Other Angels”
the able-minded men sometimes make
a sorry case for strength,
with folding brows they might mistake
the softest rounds of honest cheeks
long across the shoreline’s break
or the gentle age of mountain lakes
for a heaven or a holy face,
for a future solid under shaking feet.
Kindly aims are no account for fakes,
for promised lands for exclusive faith,
If our devotions bring us snakes
over ankles, hiding quiet teeth.
Our world has known many to wake
from uneasy prophecies, to forsake
the future storms of black and flame,
the fires lit as, for gods, we seek.
able-minded men read books of guilded page,
sometimes convict truth with hate,
and spoil peaceful bread with ego’s waste
as age comes quick to leave hope weak.
