There are narcotics in your voice
and a slur of words on your tongue about the state of moral decay in America’s gymnasiums.
Perhaps it’s not wise to mix pills
and pills,
but your heart’s a piece of heavy machinery
that doesn’t operate otherwise.
Sunday mornings don’t come easy when you’re breathing
from the inside of a paper bag
that still stores the remnants of your medicinal miracleworker
and the faint hint of a half empty bottle of cologne.
He’s gone
and, now, so are you,
listening to the poet/songwriters of the Seventies
who still believed in God before that sort of thing fell out of fashion.
And you wish you could believe,
if only for a minute,
long enough to catch your breath,
or for the room to stop spinning,
or, at least,
long enough to reach the chorus.