I held your hand
as you sighed,
chest heaving
caving and rising,
that old cadence, that old chestnut rag.
“God is a bastard, a true SOB,”
I told you, patting at the sweat breaking beads on your brow.
“Your mother won’t tell me about it,
because vows and such.”
But I can see it,
in the way he moves around the yard,
listlessly mowing, not really into it,
always bitching about how
‘David made the whole thing up’, and
something about boning an asshole,
or… whatever.
Outside the window,
there are those damn crows.
He’ll try again.
Maybe a flaming sword,
swung round and round by another drunken angel
outside the garden,
just another ineffectual scarecrow
flapping in the wind.
After all that, despite all that,
he says the afterlife’s kind of a let-down,
that the mowing’s at least more interesting
than the harping.
And that he’d love to help.
but I know he’s a liar – and a drunk.
Did you know he forced his kid to make him _wine_?
True story.
I miss you.
But you figured out a path.
So kick Peter’s ass for me, along the way.
He’s earned it.
And it’s good to know
that love is the dominion of the dead.
Writer Moe 