-at the confessional / the early years-

I’m kneeling on a roughly planed slab in merciless wood

in a place approaching turmoil.

beyond the walls of this booth, dank

with the stench of unrepentant venial sins,

(God demands a sincerity few of my kind can muster)

my young friends are linked in a chain of guilt, packing

the chosen pew reserved for the applicants to purgatory.

I have no sense of the guilt I've been indoctrinated

to confess as I ready myself to report my failings.

my boney breastplate tightens, my lungs seem filled with fluid, stinging

like fatal holy water splashing its inquisition into my bid for a ticket to paradise

when the curtain to the far side of reason opens in its brutal authority and,

–– well, you may ask, what's the worth of this exposé

of an ancient neighborhood ritual.

well, nothing,–– save to say I, too, my brethren sinners,

have found myself alone on the inside with the exhibition of

my naked, soiled and always presumed guilty soul.

amen and amen.