A Prayer
LB: The difference between a rant and a prayer
lies only in position and delivery.
MS: Raising yourself to the skies,
facing either the biggest laugh
or the only great eye.
SH: Hands up and open in surrender or supplication
or fisted in the fiercest demand,
the voice modulated between a thick strangle and
the soft, humble hangtime of pleading.
RM: You say the same thing;
You’re looking for an end of the pain,
looking to strike to world or the unworldly
with your anger, with your weakness,
with your absolute and complete inability
to take this shit anymore.
KH: Personally, I prefer prayer.
It’s not that I know someone’s up there.
It’s that I can’t bear to think that there’s not.
DK: Prayer is the knot at the end of the rope
that keeps us from finally falling.
KM: Prayer is the small tug at the robe of a myth
that stands over your shoulder
with its comforting color
and irritating politics.
KD: Prayer is small and tentative
and set against a whispering background of hope.
And so we pray . . .
LB: You, rage-cropped father,
MS: You, earth-stained mother,
SH: You, flaming spirit,
RM: You, laughing jackal,
KH: You, rising bird,
DK: You, knowing shadow,
KM: You, inner being.
KD: I won’t kneel,
That will bring me closer
To what defeats me now.
LB: I won’t bow
because I can’t cower
in the face of a question.
MS: But I can ask
and hear my plea flood the air
and take comfort in the fact
that I still have the strength
to want.
SH: I am so tired.
Cliches about weight aside,
the world has nested on my shoulders
settling down for a long winter’s nap.
RN: My life follows the coldest road,
dark and indifferent
and quite happy to roll on without me.
KH: And sometimes I feel like I’m the only rider,
and that rests in me so heavily
I can only sit down and hope for a deep breath.
DK: When I look to the light of the future,
I see no bright goal,
only that same road
that forgets the sound of my steps.
KM: You,
who know the true meaning of the word beyond,
KD: You,
who hold the lives of so many in your strange justice,
LB: You,
who promise that this life will be justified,
send some of that folky old narcotic my way,
can’t ya?