On Exile

No bells strike at Saint Matthew’s; midnight

   means lights out; across Fayette Street, windows

send slow signals; but for hope of daylight,

    no means of evoking, painted or not, halos.

Occasional cars; the 7-11 parking lot empties

   not completely, the night crew forced to spill

      laced coffee, pills, down throats, past painted

faces reflecting gloom, as they plan candies

      passed around to kill behind, enemies

         locked in basements, unwilling dross killed.

Dull, dense, reptile-laden world— nature’s phantom

    side, scarred with imperatives to destroy— I

stride past Calvary Episcopal, its handsome,

     enchanted spires, trying to forge a “who” and “why.”

Caravaggio’s John the Baptist, crouched darkly

     in murk, I superimpose on Conshohocken at

       night, including the succession into severed head—

knowing that in there (7-11), warnings sharply

    uttered mean nothing, less than nothing at that,

       humanity is lost, then its corpse is bled.

This is not the world I was born for— Butler

    Pike, a Honda pulls into the abandoned

Dairy Queen lot, the young male driver scuttles

    out into the apartment complex, fear-flattened—

as to what John Milton would say about these

    suburban straits, everyone changing form

       like Satan, a poet singed by lost innocence

up all night on his own pills, thoughts, caffeine—

     I divine he knew all this, putrid fires warmed

to kill brains, rigid rules passed on, idiot to idiot.