1.
I hear voices, Father. I hear
choirs – sopranos and altos and
tenors and bass, their thousand voices like
angels praising me into Paradise.
I can’t stop hearing their glorious voices
commanding that I

drown my daughters
hold their heads beneath
baptismal waters until they kick and
spew forth the light of Heaven,
float limp in the ecstasy of God.

Proficiscere, anima christiana, de hoc mundo,
in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, qui te creavit: in nomine
Jesu Christi, Filii Dei vivi, qui pro te passus est…*

2.
Did you hear about Butch? Sumbitch
nailed the Holy Trifecta
at the buzzer.
Priest barged in, shoved the
Reaper away from his bed,
busted a few Latin rhymes and
clicked off some cut glass.
Lawyered Butch up just before flatline.

Three ball, corner pocket – easiest
shot in the game.

In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti…

Got to git me
some Jesus like that,
hear what I’m saying?
Not today, though – I swear,
ain’t nothing I hate worse than the
smell of a church. All dying inside,
all that dust floating in the stained glass.

Butch said he read somewhere that
dust is 95 percent dead skin.

Si quis dixerit, Christianos omnes in verbo, et omnibus
sacramentis administrandis habere potestatem:
anathema sit…**

3.
Iron horses split the clouds,
boxcars brimming with flagellants
singing and tearing at their hair,
chugging toward eternal
interment in the swelling
camps of Heaven.

__________________

*Depart, Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the Father almighty who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you…

**If any one saith, that all Christians have power to administer the word, and all the sacraments: let him be anathema.