Instead of Praying

I will burn
these scriptures
as scraps 
because I have
nothing left
to burn.   
See, we once existed,
not like God who lapses
permanently.   
I hold old rosaries
under my soft sheets
while I sleep this May,  
their beads I count
with the memories
of whistling teapots  
and sirens.  Please say
the examiner’s gloves
never took you  
away,
did not carry out
of that door frame  
the man
I did not choose
to be my father,  
who, if I
had the chance
again, would name. 

Diversion

What is to be done
with the trembling onyx
knot of feathered seizure?
Its beaded eye, imbedded
discomforted stone, transfixed
beyond my wet shoulder?
Am I to be made into
the necessary brute, the steady
hand to hold the persistent
heart to concrete?   
Dread begins
to settle in my grasp
around its vibrate neck,
not for the looming obligatory act,
but for the easy sway
of my arm upward,
back and down again
in blind deliverance.  
Perhaps I can blame
the mechanics my muscles learned
on the baseball mound
as my father pitched
his automatic swing at me.  No
anticipation was needed, only
an infantile clairvoyance,
to sense the blurred mass cast
from his own ridged grip.  
Letting fall
the spattered brick,
I abandon the obscure
heap I have unknotted.  
Something in the darkness caws.