The Agnostic's Prayer by Mark Flanigan

                 "Lord/I had such a good time and I don't

                  regret anything--/What happened to the prayer

                  that goes like that?"

                                        Franz Wright, "Kyrie"

The morning is of no concern to me

despite there being nothing more embarrassing

than a corpse. Little

dead feet, little dead hands

with no one to hold them.

So little dignity in life,

and even less in death. We

go for a swim at 7 a.m. or

play cards while the sun rises.

The morning is of no consequence to us.

Every time I flick on a light switch

a bulb burns out. Every time I

fill the soap dispenser, it overflows.

Maybe there is a lesson here.

Outside the rain falls as if angry.

Inside there is a spider in the tub

I must remove before running

water. What if we are only spiders

living precipitously by a drain? I live that way,

love that way. It’s not worth being saved

by something less kind than me. Fuck mystery,

give me joy; that is mystery enough. 

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain: Books

are like parents, they mostly show you

how not to live. I haven’t embarrassed any

body by taking my web underground.  

stopped doing it / ralph la charity

I wanted to make a poem you could stay inside of

one that you'd say over & over, & over everywhere

you'd could & you'd would would be how it would go

one that whenever you'd keep at it you'd always be

in, circling onward inside itself & outwardly radiative

rolling like that, and feeding off resonance just that way

and by resonance I mean aloud even in the wee hours

even when making love or idling along in a pew or 

while stopped in traffic or paused above the abyss

the old joke about sliding down a bannister of Light

one that'd end precisely when you stopped doing it