This is my submission in response to The Writers Block's Poetry Contest Prompt
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Source
I
After we have finished wiping bums
In search of absolution,
After ablutions in the morning
Before curses fall like seeds,
We will crumble into dust
And break bread with death again.
Father forgive me;
I fondled her hips
And caressed her eyelids;
I worshipped beneath her heat
And she absolved me, father, with a kiss.
I am washing my feet in the dust
Let ashes clean the sorrow from my head.
I am counting beads with weary fingers
But my amins are stuck in my throat.
After we have wept before his feet,
And genuflected before his name;
After we have washed our elbows clean
And rinsed our tongue of sinful spit,
We shall cross the street
And poke holes into the broken skins
Of brothers and friends;
We will worship in blood and tears.
II
Look at us, you and i;
Broken, lost in this cold darkness,
Chained beneath the crushing weight of time.
Where is hope?
Did she call you?
Did she whisper any titbit
To succour our parched lips
That has refused each other's kisses?
Did she make promises?
Even unkept promises are better than silence.
Come, do not go.
Let you and I watch the sun set on the world together;
Endings are always beautiful
Like a movie hero staggering in slow motion,
The weeping song bleeding sniffles
From buried lips swollen with kisses.
Come, why do you frown?
Can't we speak of love ?
Can't you and I cuddle our memories
Into the soft shoulders of our thoughts?
Can't we embrace the fading warmth
Leaving the fast cooling embrace of yesterday?
What do we have left?
Hope?
But she left us bare, naked in the sun.
She denied us peace and even this,
This broken flesh is not ours to keep,
So what do we have left?
You must leave, it seems.
I am sorry to have kept you.
I will watch the moon rise alone;
I have always done so.
Hope has gone home to roost.
Good night.