honesty.

I

I am a liar --
I have been.

From air I called dust; phantoms;
I made them dance and
it was as though I had made them live.
They danced; not alive, they are
blown asunder in your breath.

I have stolen --
valueless, infinite.

Blood with blood I salved wounds
and taken from me I took back;
Your trust: your enduring faith,
again and again I took you,
valueless and paid for.

II

He watched himself fucking against a bed corner,
driving her into the mattress, her face away from his,
and the guilt in him, watching him, being him, denied him.
When she came, she looked back, into his face,
and he closed his eyes and wiped cooling sweat from his back.
Shortly afterwards he packed his bag.

III

I was soft --
self-determined endgame.

Father Jack and all the rest, in high
judgment seated among shadows and flags;
the impurity of mind, manufacturing ghosts,
the impurity of breath, making of them particulates.
Crushing paranoid collapse: remove the witness.

IV

He lay on his back where he had fallen in the gravel and mud,
and it seemed the stars were a cosmic baseball field mirroring the ground;
he knew fear then, by the stains on his jacket and the star-bright pins
of his eyes -- he knew his polluted mouth and his swimming teary vision,
and the words -- caution, always caution -- in his stereo-looped sense memory.
Stumble drunk Tuesday night, walking home to nothing.

V

I am called Traitor --
President-in-Exile, fraud.

Mirror-flash recognition; it's as we feared, Sir:
we've been compromised by
That -- you have always known That --
oh, his fractured Ghost, come to claim him, finally,
In His coal-mine eyes he will claw and
That will be his prison.

VI

Standing quietly with his hands muting strings, waiting for the words --
and they do not come. Hum pitch and stuttered coughs and
and
It's like waiting for dawn at two-twenty-seven a.m. Ring.
Aside-set for bruises, chair shuffle waste of time. He's choked, and
the audience has gone looking for another show.

VII

You, That -- we,
forgive him?
for
give him?
Oh, only in exchange.
Yes.

VIII

I don't know your God. I have not walked with Him; I don't understand His significance. These steps I walk alone, not in the sand. I leave no footprints to be followed, only breadcrumbs and blood.

I don't know your God, but I have run from your Devil. He is your Devil, too, after all, isn't he? A decade's worth of running, and the breadcrumbs are all consumed. That -- He -- there, behind me, cold on my shoulder like a lesson.

I have run from your Devil for ten years, and He has been My Devil; and I have been yours, and You have been His, and We are ourselves all angels.

And we forgive.

IX

Today I stand. I carve it in my arms, to remember, always to remember.

I am Myself, angel -- That. Fraud; Being; Perfect.

It's getting light. Finally, it's getting light.

X

Say it again -- make it real -- please, time is running out --

Today I stand.

Today I serve the truth.