So long I believed in you.
You and your cheap redemption, salvation.
Why I even wore your light-sucking blacks –
my bat-wing cassock; me with my power of absolution and redemption.
All those hushed Friday confessions – light summers, dark winters.
I stood on your high holy altar and I kneeled before you, Lord
and you doled out your black and white clap-trap and I believed.
I even baptized – practiced Apostolic Succession –
    - the laying on of hands.
I kept your secrets, God. I kept the as if you existed.
So after twenty years of serving you as your Officiant
I brough t you another like me and I came with him to your thin place –
Said you were Good and Right; we the Quick and the Dead.
I should have remembered back when
the after-absolution port-wine taste in my mouth, my cousin’s kiss
-    that was true absolution.

These days your heavy door swings shut.
My Jewish cousin propped against your stone wall
I told him I had confessed and was pure.
I asked always, Are you penitent, cousin?
he kissed me against the brick and I knew then that I was not.
We made love in the tall wheat grass behind the church
And in that moment when…
He called me by the Hebrew…
In such moments I found salvation.

You lied to me God.
You made me your whore.
You broke all of your promises, every last one.
I’m not like you God…
I keep my promises.
You lied to him about me and you took him, you bastard -
I am through with you.