three chalk outlines sleep in the dirty street and in our beds, under the sheets, they're the halo of guilt hanging around your neck, next to the rosary you count, falling asleep and we're praying to treat the symptoms of letting go of all our hope.
since we can't compete with martyred saints, we'll douse ourselves in gasoline and hang our bodies from the lampposts so that our shadows turn into bright lights 'white light, white heat' we'll make as we're blacking out in the center lane, we swerve to the beat, spill all the ink No revisions Do you hear the church bells ringing? wake up!! wake up in an outline and try to speak with the shattered voice of the lives we lead.
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have we slept too long between the bullet holes in a stained-glass window state? when we repent, we fall on the page [read, in the margins] we are the symptoms of letting go of all our hope.
someday we'll be complete like modern saints, baptize our kids in gasoline and hang our doubts up in cathedrals so that they turn to faith in the colored sunlight.
'red rain, red rain' we'll make as we're blacking out in the center lane.
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do you hear the church bells ringing? they ring for you.
we woke up this morning to a street filled with a thousand burning crosses and what we thought was the sunrise, just passing headlights still the choir girls sing, 'oh lord, can you save us? oh lord, sing hallelujah' they are the symptoms of letting go of all our hope.
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we're falling asleep with open eyes falling asleep inside the chapel falling asleep in chalk outlines falling asleep as the headlights pass us by.
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