For the first ten years of his life,
his parents took him to the oldest Baptist church
in town for the Wednesday and Sunday services.

The music was terrible. Anybody who could sing
with conviction was starving to death twenty miles away.
The songs were all monotone skylines of Heaven,
and nobody was even looking in that direction to begin with.

One hundred pairs of lonely eyes burning a hole
straight through the hymn books and on into China.

Pastor Frank drooled when he spoke
and was always starting fires he didn’t know how to put out.
He referred to his many mistakes
made during the gory 80’s with a few too many chuckles.

On the upside
there was always a great lunch
when somebody passed away.

And Sunday was somehow more infinite to him
than Saturday or even Friday. Or at least it was just easier
to finally calm down when the sun was setting. Imagine
over one of his father’s cigars that the next day
would go to pieces when faced with so many directions
made for faithful hitchhiking. All those strangers
obsessed with possibility, loud voices and weird languages.

The girls were the best thing of all. Naturally. Most of the devoted
were gorgeous, and the older ones were well-aware of the irony
that went into their plain dresses. They smoked cigarettes
behind that huge building and made elaborate, dangerous plans
for the rest of the week.

For obvious reasons he was terrified of them.
Probably with good reason since he was never the same
after that one foster child got through with him.

She was the ghost of a heroine who didn’t have
a thousand mournful songs from the long-gone days of country music
going for her, and boy was she was vengeful about that. She was seventeen,
smiled like an old-timer with years to kill and didn’t have much to say about Jesus.

The other girls stayed the hell away. Probably with good reason.

The last time he ever went to a Sunday service
was the afternoon she picked him out of the crowd
in the aftermath of the usual three-hour sermon.

It was shockingly warm for October. He was standing
off by himself and thinking about that when she approached him,
and without a word shoved him against the wall with hands
that could sink a piano like a thousand laughing, immaculately capable stones.

She moved in for the carnage amidst his abrupt
and profound silence. What the hell good was there in talking?
Drawing a little bit of blood was just a matter of a breathtaking
time-out that lasted about fifteen seconds. Her breasts added
to the chaos. Her long hair drilled a series
of snake bites into the sides of his neck, and her breath took
from him what most women spend years borrowing and promising
to return in good time.

When she was finished she let him go. Disappearing
as she turned some useless corner. The silence on her part
was so deliberate it kept him standing there for almost an hour.

Nobody saw them. Nobody would believe them.
He was pretty sure her named started with either an L
or a B.

Somehow he was able to pretend to recover quickly.
On the way home he chewed incessantly on his lip
and was distracted to the point
where his mother thought he had been smoking pot
with those kids who were just no damn good.

Sunday was still infinite,
but it was with a much more cautious sense
of optimism. He ran his tongue over the gash
on his lip and didn’t like that caution one bit.

When he went back on Wednesday
she wasn’t there, and he couldn’t remember
who her adopted parents were.

When she didn’t show up Sunday
he started asking his parents if he was about the right age
to start finding the right spirit to move him on his own.

They told him to bring it up again
when he turned sixteen.

11/03/2010

Author's Note: nothing like writing a really long poem that no one's going to read. i tried to keep this short. i really did. and then i decided to hell with it. i like this one, and i wouldn't dream of cutting it for length. also: the above was not written as a clever plea for people to read this. i just have a history of really long poems (longer than three-four hundred words which is what i usually wind up with) not doing particularly well in terms of comments. that's not a complaint. it's just a note.

Posted on 11/03/2010
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