You were once a penchant creature,
Guzzling the day’s bloody destruction
From a goblet of platinum rapture,
Sticky fingers wanting more, more, more,
Than slick lust, song, or I could give.
    Yet, now,
As penitently as Cain sipped tears
Off bruised lips of a dying brother,
You weep stars from stratospheres.

Bowing your bridal head for no groom,
Danced prayers of supplication once fell
On a god-husband of your own design.
You named it rain, licked it’s sweet tongue,
Consumed life’s musky, painted marrow,
Fed wantonly on acolytes’ sugary adoration,
Then filled a penurious soul with passion.
Ember lips seared, white-hot, cataclysmically
Through the caves of many hearts’ darkness.

But gone now is the childish innocence
With which you twisted zealot’s mantras
Into origami games with sleight-of-hand.
The girl I once knew now sports suffrage
Like dull metal pinned to milk-bled breasts,
Too bruised by guilt to whisper
Why life now requires penance.