Be the means mild or wild,

the great looker-downer upon them all—

the slicers, the jumpers, the drowners,

the guzzlers of poisons and the swillers of pills—

the swingers from ropes,

is soft on those who surrender their luck

and even blesses their mourning  

with the briefest of wafers 

and great, bright thunderbolts of cheese

But as for the others,

the dawn-diggers, fortune-scramblers, 

coin tossers, fate-climbers, and assorted Pagans

of every stripe, 

they better cleanse their doors of perception and 

tidy up all their other orifices, too;

squeeze their rosary beads

and double up on their h. mary’s

because you’re born and you 

ARE

writ barge-blank and spare

long ago and far away

by the captain

of the bleak unchangeable.

fruit darkens, a treasure cries for 

it’s trove once it’s been pinched,

and we all cleanse our mouths of untoward tastes.

So help me, Rhonda,

there must be gods in this house.