Parish Cruz

                  for Micah Ballard

The bones of sunset dipped into the
tide shallows & the rocks there imprinted
with scripture of some sort
graffiti that predates any known language
or wireless reception

Some see a self-portrait in every possible cure
one god or another to pin to the sky above
but light me a candle & pour me a drink of
something darker than that bloodstained
cough syrup of the Chosen Ones

& nail the chrome to the lip of a deeper silence
beneath residual sacrificial debris, the wasted
palm trees aglow with a cheap mortality
tied like us to revolving shadows & empty psalms
that echo endlessly against an exhausted windswept
amen you can almost hear now & then

inside an empty 24 ounce Tecate can
smeared with lipstick