This is YOUR salvation. This street is your Garden of Eden and just West of it there’s a river. No one bothered to fix the railing on the bridge where a car went over last summer. No one stopped to check and make sure the rest of the bridge is safe. Your prophets are the hopped up junkies at the coffee shop who know more about life than the person who wrote it.

You sit there eating packets of sweetener because your paycheck won’t buy you anything more than a cup form the place on the corner. Sweetener’s free but sugar’s not. Your saints are untouchable, walking along in their baggy clothes and chains, too bad a reputation for you but too unearthly for you to keep away. Bow down and worship. Saints around here don’t die like the ones elsewhere. They don’t hold themselves on crucifixes. Instead, they hold grudges.

The man who sold you the newspaper makes a rude comment. You can’t understand his language and you just leave without change. You can’t afford a bible so you just read about politicians. Just as good as reading about Judas.

The rats kind of took over the east side of town and no one could tell the difference between them and everyone else. All have claws. All come from the sewers. You don’t need a savior. At least, you don’t think you do. If you did, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be too busy with the angels. Oh, you want to hear about the angels? You’d love ‘em. There’s at least one on every street. Some don’t even charge.

Music spills from a bar, spilling like blood into the cracks on the street. Someone really should fix that street. Too many accidents. Or were they? Here, virgins give birth every day. No one believes them and nobody cares. The kings sometimes sell the babies. They can get more for a gram of pot than they get for the kid, but food’s expensive.

Four Horsemen ride by on motorcycles. You dated one of them once but it didn’t work out. Buildings crumble but everyone’s too drugged up to notice. Some man nailed an EVICTED sign onto your apartment door but you don’t really care. Take notice: your apocalypse came and went.

11-18-2004. Alternative religion.